Second in a series of studies on Psalm 51
by Keith Bassham
In the first article in this series, I wrote that Psalm 51 stands out for a few reasons. First, it is one of seven penitential psalms, that is, the words are those of a person who is sorry for moral or covenantal failure — it is a prayer for forgiveness. Another thing is that the psalm has a backstory identified in the inscription: “To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This was David’s asterisk on his record book. And we also looked at 1 Kings 15:5, where the Bible record is, “David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”
And then we looked at the episode in detail, nearly a chapter and a half from II Samuel that tells us all about what David had done, and how his sin was exposed. And now, we see the extent of David’s penitence.
Three words for sin
In verses 1-6, the psalm begins with a cry for forgiveness, emphasizing the urgency with a series of cries for God to do several things: have mercy, blot out, wash, and cleanse.
Mercy and blotting out for the transgressions, washing for iniquity, and cleansing for David’s sin.
Hebrew poetry often uses parallel elements to stress a point. You see it in the Proverbs where the first line of a couplet makes a statement, and then the second line makes a similar statement using synonymous language.
Here is a good example. In Proverbs 1:14, evil companions seek to lure a young man, telling him:
(Statement 1) Cast in thy lot among us;
(Statement 2) let us all have one purse
While this is a fairly transparent statement, often it can be helpful when dealing with an obscure text with an unclear meaning. Hebrew poetry can also work the other way, with the second line expressing an anti-statement, the opposite of the first. For example, here is Proverbs 10:1:
(Statement 1) A wise son maketh a glad father:
(Anti-statement) but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
This is called parallelism, and there is an element of poetry here in the beginning of Psalm 51, but actually the psalm is not just piling on words as synonyms in parallel. There are distinct reasons why certain words are being used here, and one reason I believe David uses language the way he does here is to express the complete and utter moral failure he has committed. By coming at his sins these different ways using different words, he is in effect saying that we need to know there is no wiggle room for sinners, and if you try to squirm away from one way of looking at sin, another way will step into your path. Using these three words is a way of saying you have sinned in every possible way.
And what David has done here is not unique. There are some other examples from Scripture that use these words in parallel to express complete failure:
Daniel 9:24 “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, ….”
Exodus 34:6-7 “And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, ….”
Leviticus 16:21 “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, …:”
There are others, but that is the idea. If you want to say you are sorry for your sin, really sorry, without trying to wiggle out, you have to have all these things in mind.
Another reason for using these synonyms is that the words transgressions, iniquity, and sin are all slightly different.
Transgressison
Take the word transgressions. The picture behind the Hebrew word translated “transgressions” in verses 1, 3, and 13 is one of rebellion, as when children rebel against parents (see also Isaiah 1:2). It represents a deliberate departure from the proper and known path. This is no error, no mistake, no sin of ignorance. It is a step taken after a clear decision to do so.
Iniquity
Iniquity also has a unique idea behind the word. The literal sense of the Hebrew word translated “iniquity” (verses 2, 9) is “to be bent out of shape.” For example, in Psalm 38:6, where the KJV uses the phrase, “I am bowed down greatly,” the Jewish Publication Society Bible gives the translation “I am all bent.” It carries with it something about an underlying tendency, something deeply embedded that cannot be fixed until it is completely removed.
Sins and transgressions are primarily actions, but iniquity is more of an attitude, or a construct: idolatry, racism, hatred, covetousness — these are internal problems of the heart — hard, if not next to impossible, to govern by written laws, ordinances, and statutes. I think that is part of understanding what Paul meant in Romans 7 when he says that he had been a follower of the law all his life, but he said what caught him was the tenth commandment given at Sinai:
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence (lusting, and not merely sexual lusting). For without the law sin was dead.
9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
What was it about the tenth commandment? The text is, “Thou shalt not covet,” and coveting is a matter of the heart. Paul found he could control his actions, and thus follow the law nearly in its entirety, but he could not control his heart. I don’t know what it was specifically that tripped him up, what it was that he chose to covet, but when he realized that he was capable of sin within as well as without, he confessed: “I died.”
He found the practical truth of Proverbs 5:22: “The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,” and Psalms 28:3 “[T]he workers of iniquity … mischief is in their hearts.” Iniquity represents a sin that becomes like cords that wrap around you. You get caught in the entanglement and just cannot break free.
Sin
The word translated “sin” (Hebrew hata’ in verses 2, 3, 4, 9) or “sinner” (5 and 13) in non-theological contexts means “to miss the target.” Judges 20:16 tells of 700 left-handed sling warriors who could “sling a stone at a hair and not miss (hata’).” It’s the all-purpose word for sin, and corresponds roughly to the New Testament word, hamartia, that also means missing a target.
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Balancing these words for sin are three Hebrew picture-words for forgiveness. The Hebrew translated “blot out” in verse 1 is also used to “wipe” a dirty dish (2 Kings 21:13). To “wash” in verses 2 and 7 could better be translated “scrub,” as one scrubs dirty clothes (Exodus 19:10, 14). “Cleanse” in verse 2 and “be clean” in verse 7 is the same word used for washing clothes in a river (Leviticus 13:6, 34, 58).
Let’s start some application here.
First of all, if David is going to be forgiven for his sin, he must acknowledge guilt. This is one of those cultural price tag changes. Sin is over-valued, while guilt for sin is devalued. Our culture does not like guilt, and we are constantly warned about feeling guilty. The fact is, though, people are guilty, and acknowledging the guilt is step one toward getting rid of it. Guilt, painful as it is, is necessary.
Paul Brand spent much of his life as a surgeon working with leprosy patients in India. Before his death in 2003, he contributed many lectures and pages on the subject of hand surgery and therapy. Near the middle of the 20th century, he became curious about deformities in those with Hansen’s disease, or what we call leprosy. The medical community had long believed that the limbs of those with Hansen’s disease just naturally led to a need for amputation. He soon was convinced that leprosy victims did not lose body parts due to rotting or the disease itself, but because they lost the sensation of pain through nerve damage caused by the disease. They did not know they were injuring themselves through cutting or burning, or that the very poor among them were being bitten by rodents in their sleep.
This led him to see the positive value of pain and the need for sensitivity to pain for tissue to be normal and healthy. And so Dr. Brand learned that a life without pain is a dangerous life, because we need that warning system to tell us when something is wrong. In the spiritual realm guilt is exactly the same kind of warning system that pain is.
It’s a warning sign that helps us know that something needs to change. When Nathan came to David with that made-up story about a rich man stealing a poor man’s lamb, David flew out of his chair in rage, but when he realized Nathan was talking about him, he went right back down again. I am wrong, he said. I have sinned, he said. The opening of the psalm is the dramatic restatement of David’s guilt.
So the first step to forgiveness is to admit guilt. Second, We have to appeal to God’s mercy. Notice that David is not asking for justice. David had committed crimes worthy of death. So if he started out this psalm by saying, “Lord, please treat me with justice, let me receive what is fair,” if God was a God of justice only, he would have to just instantly kill David, or you, or me the moment we sin.
You want your enemies to receive justice. You want them to get what they deserve. But when you’re talking about yourself, you don’t want justice — you want mercy. Mercy withholds the punishment we deserve. Mercy withholds justice. So we are fortunate that God is not only just, but also merciful.
And then there is the idea of grace, which is not the same as mercy. No, Hebrews 4:16 tells us, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” You need both mercy and grace. Mercy to escape the bad, and grace to be given the good.
Mercy is the action God takes when He doesn’t give us what we deserve — in other words, he doesn’t give us punishment when we sin. But grace is what God does give that we do not deserve. Salvation is a product of both His mercy and grace.
And that brings up a question. Do believers have a continuing need for forgiveness? The Hebrews text says, “Let us come boldly …,” implying that we should seek to obtain mercy and grace. Do we Christians need forgiveness? Is it proper for us to pray this psalm the way David wrote, asking God for mercy, for blotting out, for cleansing, and so on?
One text that comes to mind immediately is 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
It appears from this that we do not always need to be asking God for forgiveness, per se. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, all of our sins are forgiven. That includes past, present, and future, big or small. I think that is within the meaning of the term justification. Believers do not have to keep asking for forgiveness or repenting in order to have their sins forgiven. Jesus died to pay the penalty for all of our sins, and when they are forgiven, they are all forgiven (Colossians 1:14; Acts 10:43).
What we are to do (a lot, I think) is confess our sins. The word “confess” means essentially “to agree with.” It translates the Greek word homolegeo, the word from which we get our own word homiletics. I teach preaching students that the idea of homiletics is that we say in the pulpit what God says. When we fail to say what God truly says, then we are no longer preaching biblically.
When we confess our sins to God, we are agreeing with God that we were wrong, that we have sinned. It’s almost the same thing that David says when he says to God, “Against thee, thee only …” He does not deny that others were hurt and betrayed, but he keenly felt that his ultimate sin was betraying God, and that is the basis for his confession. God forgives us, through confession, on an ongoing basis because of the fact that He is “faithful and just.” How is God “faithful and just”? He is faithful by forgiving sins, which He has promised to do for all those who receive Christ as Savior. He is just by applying Christ’s payment for our sins, recognizing that the sins have indeed been atoned for.
Confession of sin, saying what God says about our sin, is a signpost of true conversion. Continuing in blatant sin is a signpost that we have not been truly converted. Refusal to say what God says is a signpost, as 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Therefore, I don’t believe we actually need to say to God, “Please forgive me,” every time we sin, but we do need to keep saying what God says about it, and not justify ourselves and make excuses. And it wouldn’t hurt probably to reiterate the opening words of this psalm as we confess. It is a way to remind us that we remain children of Adam as long as we are in the flesh.
Some things to think about.
- Children (and other immature people) sometimes try to wriggle out of responsibility by using a technical ploy or some other device to escape. For instance, “I did not hit my friend. I threw a ball at him.” How do the words transgression, iniquity, and sin make it harder to escape judgment on a technicality?
- Is it more accurate to say that a Christian is a sinner saved by grace, or that a Christian is a saint who sins?
- When you experience unusual or unexplained pain, or otherwise feel something is wrong, even for a long time, do you tend to ignore it or do you have it checked out? Why? How does this relate to the way we handle sin and guilt in our lives?