(To the chief Musician. A Psalm of David; when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.) Be gracious unto me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according to the abundance of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
David prayed this after the prophet Nathan confronted him over Bathsheba and Uriah. Its first line settles how a guilty person may come to God. He asks for nothing on the basis of what he is, and everything on the basis of what God is.
A king had covered up adultery and murder. Nathan's words broke through, and grace answered David at once. But grace was not the only principle at work.
In this Psalm David is going through the deepest soul-searching after his sin with Bathsheba. The parable the prophet Nathan told him had awakened him to a true sense of it... the prophet, led by the Spirit of God, declares, "You are the man!" and then unmasks his wicked course. David, roused out of his spiritual numbness, replies, "I have sinned against the Lord." Grace meets this confession, for he hears, "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die." But grace and government are two different principles. The first says, "The Lord has put away your sin." The second can only say, "The child who is born to you shall die."
David never points to the law of Moses here. One writer explains why the law had nothing to offer him.
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love" (v. 1). David was under the law, but here he could not appeal to it. The law gave no sacrifice for such a sin as David had committed. It gave sacrifices for "sins of ignorance." But David sinned on purpose, and he knew how wicked it was. He was king, and under the law he ought to have passed the sentence of death on himself!
Notice what David does not mention in this opening line: his sorrow, his tears, his praying. The two things he names both belong to God.
David comes to God not on the ground of repentance, nor of his own prayers, nor of his own tears. You may repent, and it is a blessed thing if you do. You may pray, and surely it is blessed to pray. You may weep, yes, weep bitter, bitter tears, and this is well. But none of these is the ground on which forgiveness is known... Forgiveness does not come from Him on the ground of what we are, but on the ground of what He is.
David does not ask for a measured amount of mercy; he appeals to a supply that has no limit and no price.
God's mercy is free. To set up merit is to destroy mercy. Nothing can deserve mercy, nor force it... So do not say, "I am unworthy" — mercy is free. If God should show mercy only to those who are worthy, He would show none at all... God's mercy is an overflowing mercy; it is infinite: "Abounding in steadfast love" (Ps. 86:5). "Rich in mercy" (Eph. 2:4). "According to your abundant mercy" (Ps. 51:1). The bowl of wrath drips, but the fountain of mercy flows.
David sets "my transgressions" next to God's mercy. One writer says that is the best thing a guilty conscience can do.
The penitent places his sins side by side with the loving-kindness and tender mercy of God. This was the very best thing for him to do. The best place for a convicted conscience is the presence of divine mercy. When a convicted sinner and divine love meet, there is a speedy settlement of the question of sin. It is the joy of God to pardon sin. He delights in mercy. Judgment is His strange work... This is the order: "You are the man," "I have sinned against the Lord," "The Lord has put away your sin."
The psalm reaches past one man's failure. One writer finds in it both a picture of Judah's future and words that fit any sinner returning to God.
Like all the psalms, this psalm is prophetic. It goes far beyond the circumstances of David's life... David himself is a picture of the remnant of Judah placed under the governmental wrath of God. You can also use this psalm in preaching the gospel. It describes a sinner who returns to God like the prodigal son and says, "I have sinned against heaven and before you" (Luke 15:18). But here we are looking at the special feelings stirred in the soul of a believer who has lost fellowship through his fall, and with it the joy of his salvation.
- Exposed — Nathan said, "You are the man," and David broke. This psalm is what a discovered sinner says.
- Empty-handed — the law offered him no sacrifice for a deliberate sin. As king he should have sentenced himself to death. Mercy was his only plea.
- Ground — repentance, prayer and tears are all good. But none of them is the ground of forgiveness. That ground is what God is in Himself.
- Overflowing — David appeals to God's abundant mercy. Mercy that could be deserved would no longer be mercy.
- Settled — lay your sins beside His loving-kindness and the matter closes: "You are the man," "I have sinned," "The Lord has put away your sin."
Wash me fully from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
David prays this psalm after the prophet Nathan has confronted him and God's light has exposed his sin. Having asked God to blot out his transgressions, he now asks for something deeper — not just a record cleared, but a stain removed.
David uses three different words for wrong in verses 1 and 2. Here is what two of them mean:
Iniquity means what is crooked, warped, twisted. God had a way for David and for us, as straight as His righteous sceptre, but David and every one of us preferred a crooked way. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way." … Sin, as David used the word, means missing the mark. God set up His mark for people to aim at. Everyone who has ever entered this world is responsible to glorify God and live to His praise.
One writer sets them in order of severity:
David speaks of his transgressions in verse 1, then in verse 2 of his iniquity and his sin. Sin is the plain word. Transgression goes further, because it breaks a declared law. Iniquity goes furthest of all, and shows a will set on wickedness. Just as David, so Israel is guilty of all of these; but all mankind is just as guilty (Rom. 3:10-19). Everyone needs a thorough washing from iniquity and a cleansing from sin. All of it must go, or there is no salvation at all.
Verse 1 asked God to wipe the record clean. Verse 2 asks Him to deal with what sin has done inside the man:
David did not want only forgiveness for his sins. He needed that, no doubt, but he needed more. He needed inward cleansing from the defiling power of sin itself. The apostle says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Cleansing from unrighteousness is more than forgiveness of our sins, and David wanted both. Both depend on confessing our sins.
Another writer names the two sides of sin:
We can look at sin in two ways: as an offence against God, or as defilement to the sinner. God has His sovereign rights and claims over all His creatures. That is what makes sin a wrong done to Him, an outrage upon His majesty and glory. Sin in this aspect needs forgiveness… But sin is also, in its very essence and nature, defiling and polluting.
David could not deal with the stain himself, so he asked for the kind of washing given to filthy cloth:
He cannot undo the past, and he had no way to rid himself of the deep stain in his soul. So he pleads for a thorough washing from his iniquity and a cleansing from his sin. He felt that his iniquity had defiled the very fabric of his soul and character. A launderer beats and scrubs a filthy garment to wash it, and David felt he needed washing like that. He longed to hear the word said over him that the priest said over the cleansed and healed leper, when he declared him clean from his plague.
David was king, with a prophet and a priest at hand, and none of it helped:
To whom could he turn for this? Not to Nathan the prophet, and not to Zadok the priest. Even with a king's power he could not lift the burden of sin off himself. His only hope was in God, and here is the gospel. The light that had exposed his sin had also shown him the very thoughts and heart of God, so he looked up in his misery and cried to God.
You might expect his repentance and tears to be what won him a hearing:
David comes to God not on the ground of repentance, nor of his own prayers, nor of his own tears. You may repent, and it is a blessed thing if you do. You may pray, and surely it is blessed to pray. You may weep — yes, weep bitter, bitter tears — and this is well. But none of these is the ground on which forgiveness is known; none of these is the true ground of approach to God. Forgiveness does not come from Him on the ground of what we are, but on the ground of what He is.
- Crooked. "Iniquity" is the crooked path we choose instead of God's straight one. "Sin" is missing the mark God set for every person.
- Rising. The words climb: sin, then transgression against a declared law, then iniquity, a will settled on wickedness. All of it must go, or there is no salvation.
- Deeper. David asks for more than pardon. Forgiveness lifts the charge; washing deals with sin's defiling power inside him.
- Scrubbed. David pictures a launderer beating a filthy garment clean. He longs to hear over himself the word the priest said over a healed leper.
- Nowhere else. No prophet, priest or royal power could remove the stain. David's one hope was God, and he pleaded on the ground of what God is, not on what he himself felt.
For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is continually before me.
David wrote this psalm after the prophet Nathan confronted him. He had taken Bathsheba, and he had her husband killed. The verse gives the reason behind his plea for cleansing. It also raises two questions. What does real confession look like? And why does a forgiven man keep his sin in view?
Verse 3 opens with a word of reason. It explains why David can ask God to blot out his sin and wash him. What he leans on is not the size of his repentance but the size of God's mercy.
The psalm opens with a repentant man appealing to the grace and loving-kindness of God. He sees that with God there is an "abundance" of tender mercies, and therefore God's mercy is greater than his sin.
A man can own his sin and still come to God on the wrong ground.
David comes to God not on the ground of repentance, nor of his own prayers, nor of his own tears. You may repent, and it is a blessed thing if you do. You may pray, and surely it is blessed to pray. You may weep, yes, weep bitter, bitter tears, and this is well. But none of these is the ground on which forgiveness is known.
To know your sin here means to own it. Older translations read, "I acknowledge my transgressions." David softens nothing and blames nobody else.
This was true conviction. He made no excuses. He did not blame his circumstances. He did not point at other people. It is simply "I" and "You"; I a sinner, and You the God of truth. The secret of true restoration consists in taking our real place, as sinners, in the light of the truth of God.
Two excuses come up again and again: my circumstances, and my own weakness.
In true confession there is no question of the force of circumstances, nor of one's own weakness... If I look at the circumstances and shelter behind them, I am hiding behind lies.
David does not stop at verse 3. Two verses later he goes behind the deed to what produced it.
Often a soul will judge a particular action and go no further, but this is not yet all the truth in the heart. David judges his action: "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me" (v. 3). But he also judges his condition: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (v. 5). It is not enough for him to judge only his sin; he judges sin in him — that which he was from birth.
The order matters: fruit first, then source, then the cry for cleansing.
So he first judges his sins in their evil fruit. Then he traces them back to their corrupt and evil source. Only then does he cry out, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
"Ever before me" describes something David could not put down.
To his conscience that guilt was terribly real. "My sin is ever before me," he said. It caused him constant misery.
Silence has its own price. One writer traces it in another psalm of David.
As long as David kept silent, God's hand was pressing on him. That pressure was there so that confession would break the silence. And when the silence is finally broken, we see it is with God he has to do. So the result of his being with God in confession, and getting pardon from God, is that he has the joy of forgiveness.
The weight is real. But God does not want the man who confesses to keep carrying it.
The Judge of sin does not want the guilty to keep bearing that burden once they acknowledge their transgression and discern their sin. With confession it leaves us and passes to Christ. It does not stay there. It ends for ever through the precious power of His shed blood.
Writers read the psalm on two levels: David's own case, and a confession still to come from a faithful group among the Jewish people.
These are the experiences of a repentant soul. They look ahead to the confession of sin by the godly Jewish remnant in the last days, when they humble themselves before God for the rejection and murder of Christ.
Even so, the psalm stays personal. It remains the experience of one repentant soul.
- Ground. The plea rests on God's loving-kindness, not on the quality of David's tears — mercy that is "greater than his sin."
- Honesty. Real confession drops circumstances and other people. It comes down to "I" and "You."
- Depth. David judges the act (v. 3), then the nature behind it (v. 5) — fruit first, then source.
- Weight. Silence keeps the weight on the conscience. Confession brings "the joy of forgiveness."
- Release. God does not intend the confessor to keep carrying the load — "with confession it departs from us to Christ."
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight; that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, be clear when thou judgest.
David spoke these words after Nathan the prophet confronted him over Bathsheba and Uriah. Two things puzzle readers here: the word only, and the reason David gives for confessing — God's vindication, not his own relief.
The word "only" is the problem. David wronged real people. One writer answers the objection by showing what filled David's mind.
We now come to a verse that is a difficulty to some: "Against You... have I sinned." There is no difficulty about that. But he says, "Against You only." Had he not sinned against the woman? Had he not murdered the very man he had sinned against?... He is occupied with God, and with God only. The thought of his fellow man would pass through his mind — "My fellow man! Ah, yes! I have indeed sinned against him. But what is that compared with my sin against You?" It is sin before God, in the sight of Him who is of purer eyes than to look on iniquity. I would not ignore or cover up for a moment the man and the woman I have sinned against, or the evil I have done to my fellow man; but it is before You.
David also had no one else left to make it right with.
Of course, he knew he had sinned against Bathsheba and also against her husband (v. 14). But when he says "against You only," he puts his finger on the most vital point. He said it because he knew he had to deal with God directly about this matter. He could not now apologize to Uriah, and he had already taken Bathsheba as his wife. There was no way he could remedy what he had done, not even by confession.
David names the wrong. One writer contrasts that with vaguer admissions.
A child of God will confess sin in particular; an unsound Christian will confess sin wholesale — he will admit that he is a sinner in general. But David points with his finger to the sore: "I have done this evil." He does not say, I have done evil, but this evil.
The confession does not stop at the act.
Until there is confession of sin, and not merely of a sin, there is no forgiveness. In Psalm 51, when David was confessing his sin, he said, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." He does not merely say, I have done this particular evil. That he does say (vv. 1-4). But he also recognises the root and principle of sin... There is then positive restoration of soul.
The second half of the verse gives the purpose of the whole confession: God comes out right. One writer sets the two verdicts side by side.
It is of the greatest moral importance to see this. Whenever we justify ourselves, we condemn God. And when we condemn ourselves, we justify God. The truly broken and contrite heart will vindicate God at any cost. "Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, 'That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged'" (Rom. 3:4)... The greatest folly anyone can be guilty of is to justify himself, since God must then impute sin. But the truest wisdom is to condemn oneself utterly; for in that case God becomes the Justifier.
Justifying God costs David every excuse.
"That You may be justified." I do not soften the sin. I do not speak of the poor creature with whom I committed it, or of my reputation before men that weighed so much with me, or even of the man I destroyed to hide my sin. I stand before You in Your sight — bare and naked as the day I was born. Now there is nothing, no hope, no rest, no ground of confidence but in You... Until you know the practical meaning of this, you have some reserve there, something you are not prepared to have searched out.
One writer reads the psalm as a confession Israel has yet to make.
We point out the prophetic meaning of the Psalm. It is the future confession of Israel of their sin and especially the bloodguilt that lies on that nation... When the Jews handed the Holy One over to the Gentiles, they cried, "His blood be on us and on our children!" They will confess this bloodguilt when the Lord comes. They will look on Him whom they pierced and mourn for Him (Zech. 12:10).
- Sight. David sinned in God's sight, so God is the one party he must deal with — the others are beyond apology or repair.
- Named. In God's sight nothing stays general: he points to the sore and says "this evil," not merely that he is a sinner.
- Rooted. Owning the act is only the start. The confession goes down to the root and principle of sin. There restoration of soul begins.
- Justified. Confession clears God, not us. Condemn yourself and God becomes the Justifier; justify yourself and you condemn Him.
- Reach. The same words that broke a king shape the confession Israel will yet make over the blood of the Holy One they handed over.
Behold, in iniquity was I brought forth, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Psalm 51 is David's prayer after the prophet Nathan confronted him with his sin. By verse 5 he has stopped talking about what he did. He is talking about what he is.
The verse is not about one wrong action, and not about something his mother did. It is about the nature he was born with.
He says, "in sin did my mother conceive me." He is not speaking of a sinful act. Since his mother had a sinful nature, she could only give him the same nature... The teaching of Scripture on this self-judgment is found only in the New Testament, so David did not understand it fully. But he did face the facts honestly here, and that is the first step in finding deliverance from the power of the sinful nature.
David has already owned his transgressions in the earlier verses. Here he goes further and judges the source those transgressions came from.
Where God begins His work of repentance in the soul of a sinner, sin becomes known and judged. It is judged not only by its fruits — that is, sins or evil works — but by its root and inward character... God's word through the prophet Nathan, "You are the man!", had pierced the heart and conscience of the penitent king of Israel and placed him in God's holy presence. So he not only confesses his great transgressions and sins, that is, what he had done, but what he is. He not only judges the bad fruits of the bad tree, but the bad tree itself. Not by way of a light excuse, but in thorough self-judgment... He lays the axe to the root of the tree, to judge not his parents and ancestors, but himself.
Some read the verse as a man blaming his birth to soften his guilt. It is the opposite. The confession costs him more, not less.
He is not making an excuse for his sins, or casting the blame of them upon his mother; he is saying, "My very nature is corrupt, the springs of my being are polluted."
Admitting an offence is one thing. Admitting what produced it is another. That difference decides whether a soul is set right again.
Until there is confession of sin, and not only of a sin, there is no forgiveness... He does not say only, "I have done this particular evil" — that he does in verses 1-4 — but he recognises the root and principle of sin... God has brought the soul down, by the working of His Spirit on it, to detect the principle of sin. So there is confession of that, and not only of a particular sin. There is then positive restoration of soul.
Verse 5 does not stand alone. The next verse asks for truth in the inward parts. A stained record and a stained nature need two different remedies.
These verses trace sin back to its origin. Sin turns out to be not simply sinful acts, but a sinful nature. So the sinner needs not only cleansing from actual sins, but a new nature in "the inward parts."
David is not a special case. This truth is where any understanding of new birth has to begin.
Eve fell, and her fall has involved all the children naturally descended from her. With this truth, sad and humbling as it is, we must begin, or we cannot understand the need for new birth.
This admission is rare in the Old Testament. Its language is usually about guilt for what people do, not about the state they are born in.
Strictly speaking, sin itself does not come into question in the Old Testament, though birth in sin is recognised in one place only (Ps. 51:5)... Being lost and being guilty are different. One is my state; the other is my responsibility and my guilty failure.
One writer sets this verse beside the birth of Jesus. David's confession is the opposite of what was true of Him.
His humanity was holy in itself, without the least trace of sin. David had to confess, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5). David's Lord was that Holy Thing!
("That Holy Thing" is the older wording of Luke 1:35, where the angel told Mary that her child would be called holy, the Son of God.)
- Root. David confesses more than a bad deed. He confesses a bad source: the nature he was born with is corrupt.
- Axe. He lays the axe to the root of the tree. He judges the tree, not only its fruit, and blames himself, not his ancestors.
- Confession. Owning sin, not just a sin, is what turns confession into real restoration of soul.
- Remedy. Cleansing from acts is not enough for a sinful nature. It calls for truth in the inward parts and a new birth.
- Contrast. Everyone born into Eve's family must say this verse. The Son of God never could: His humanity was holy from the start.