Penitential psalms “base pleas for forgiveness on the Lord’s faithfulness.” The poems reflect “the psalmist’s recognition that he or she has not acted with faithfulness toward God or neighbour and thus base their pleas solely on the character of the Lord.” (51:1).
Structure:
l Words are a communicative phenomenon. Requests:
When I ask you to do something, and you do it, the world changes.
l V1-2: opening requests for forgiveness
l V3-6: confession: there has to be a few
motivations for God to forgive. We can’t ask God to forgive if we haven’t done
wrong. The person who you’re asking for forgiveness for must be both willing
and capable of forgiving.
l V7: Shift in metaphor
l V7-12: requests. Instruct. Sacrifice of
penitence. Pick up on verbal clues, eg. Crushed heart etc.
l V18-19: Jerusalem + cult
Themes:
l Using similar words in Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
l Restoration of the spirit. Restoration of the national
spirit.
l The need for God’s forgiveness and transforming
grace.
l Sometimes we see paintings of Bathsheba as an “exhibitionist”,
which is a distortion. It’s more David as voyager.
Exegesis:
A straightforward
confession of transgression against God and humanity, with a plea for
restoration and proper action in the future.[1]
V1-2: The psalm
opens with a single word which is translated into four words in English: “have
mercy on me”: David opens by asking for God’s mercy. It’s a call for God’s
grace.
3 pleas for mercy,
3 images used: blot, wash, cleanse (as in the cult)
V3: clear
statement of the consciousness of sin, the psalmist couldn’t get this out of
his mind.
V4: Sin has a
divinely orientated direction to it/ a God dimension. Priority of God in all
relationships in life. This is poetry: you don’t try and tie it down, you allow
it to do its work. This language confronts us with an acute awareness of where
we are when we stand before God as sinners. God’s verdict is right. Psalmist is
rightly the victim of divine judgment.
V5: “I have been a
sinner from the time my mother conceived me.” If the essence of sin is rebellion,
its origin is in our fallen nature.[2]
Concupiscence: a badly ordered overweening desire, every time a human being
have sex, concupiscence is there. Augustine thinks sin is a sexually
transmitted disease. This verse is talking about universal sin, not original
sin. The psalmist could not find any point in his history where he had not
offended against God.
V6: strangely
translated in NIV. It’s literally “surely truth is what you desire in the
inward parts. You make known to me in secret places your wisdom.” It’s not
talking about his mother’s inward place where he was conceived, but his own
inwardness.
Confession leads
to subsequent petitions. It’s not just forgiveness.
V7: Hyssop is used
in cultic contexts: dip hyssop in blood and splash things with it. Exodus 12:2,
Leviticus 14 (cleansing of lepers), Lev 19 (corpses). Washing, whiter than snow
etc.
V8: a request that
current circumstances be reversed.
V9: “hide your
face”: normal context is in
V10: heart and
spirit used in parallel.
V11: advancing
parallelism: Do not cast away your presence… do not take your Holy Spirit from
me. This is one of two references about presence of God and Holy Spirit in OT
(the other one is Isaiah 33:10-11).
V12: The gift of a
willing spirit, a life orientated to God. Transformation is the landing point
in this psalm. Unless there is transformation, or else forgiveness is pointless
(like a dog goes back to his vomit). We see that David
asks for God’s mercy so that he can be restored to the joy of God’s salvation.[3]
V13: Once the
psalmist’s sin is forgiven and his life is transformed, it will teach others
and join in the same journey.
It’s not an
absolute statement. It’s about what really counts as penitence.
With God’s hesed
restored in him[4],
David changes his attitude towards other people and God. He accepts his
responsibility to his fellow humans and will teach them God’s way. He offers
his “broken and contrite heart” to God.[5]
V16-17: No
sacrifice can atone for it.
V18-19: The
community recognising that sin is always before them, and in their national
history. Any present or future they have is dependent on the transforming
forgiveness of Yahweh.
Theology:
l Deep personal awareness of universal
sinfulness. Self-assessment rather than assessment we make of others.
l For God to remember sin no more means sin is no
longer in human existence. That can only take us in the final transformation of
all things. It’s eschatological. A new future where the current order of things
is no more.
l The promises stir up our longings for
transformation. Future in Christ.
l A good psalm to use for preaching.
[1] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 454.
[2] John Stott, Favourite Psalms:
Growing Closer to God (London: Monarch Books, 2003), 55.
[3] Stott, Favourite Psalms,
56.
[4] DeClaisse-Walford, Jacobson, and LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms, 458.
[5] Stott, Favourite Psalms,
57.
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