Psalms 51

Psalms 51:1-19

The confession of blood-guiltiness (nationally of the blood of Christ; under which they yet find salvation). To the chief musician, a psalm of David: when Nathan the prophet had come to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. The fifty-first psalm is a spiritual enigma. Bishop Horsley; nearly a century ago; rightly discerned it to be “the penitential confession of the converted Jews.” He adds: “The subject-matter of this psalm can have no reference to the Hebrew title prefixed thereto; because David, polluted with adultery and murder, could not say; Against Thee only have I sinned; and because the prayer for the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem would have been an inappropriate petition in the days of David. The application of the psalm to restored; repentant Israel, is self-evident. I view this fifty-first psalm as a precomposed form of penitential prayer, afore designed and prepared by Infinite Wisdom for the use of penitent and believing Israel; in the perilous times of the last days.”*
While we may safely accept this prophetical view, agreeing, as it does; with the whole character and scope of the book; and suiting perfectly the place in which we find it, the negative side as to the rejection of the Hebrew title is by no means so clear; and certainly perilous in the adoption of a principle which makes a difficulty of this kind a reason for correction of the text of Scripture. Others have, viewing the psalm as really a psalm of David, preferred to suppose the last two verses a “later; perhaps liturgical, addition.”* But what is the value of such speculations as to unnamed authors? It will be said that there is not the same assuredness as to the titles of the psalms that there is as to the psalms themselves; and that the Septuagint has many differences.** Yet we have found so far the Hebrew titles to recommend themselves by their general suitability; sometimes to have most unique significance, as in that to the twenty-second. Here it is true that there is difficulty in tracing the connection between David’s sin with Bathsheba and the prophetic application to Israel in the latter days. Nor does it seem as if there were or could be typical meaning in this awful blot upon the history of the king. But there may be connection of another nature; and there seems no difficulty as to the details of the history, though here “blood-guiltiness” be the only specified sin. The fourth verse, which is objected; really makes none; and as to the closing prayer, can we undertake to say what shall be the limit of a prophet’s vision in predicting the future?
The psalm is enigmatical in more ways than this; nay; it is full of deep meanings which are little more than hinted at. When we consider its latter-day application, this is not so strange. It is in the meanwhile a mystery for faith; but with Christ revealed to us, the key of all mysteries is in our hand. The psalm is throughout a prayer, -the utterance of a human voice, as that of the last psalm is largely a divine. It answers the challenge there with the confession of sin; but the sin confessed here does not appear a direct answer to the charge before. There are, however, other links of connection between the two psalms: “The same depreciation of the external sacrifice,” says Delitzsch, “that is expressed in Psalms 50:1-23 finds utterance in Psalms 51:1-19; which supplements the former; according as it extends the spiritualizing of the sacrifice to the offering for sin.” But this spiritualizing needs careful consideration, and to be governed by the inspired canon of Psa 40:7, which we have already considered; “In the volume of the book it is written of Me.” Nor can we admit Cheyne’s assertion that the psalmist holds a different theory of sacrifice from the writer of Psa 1:1-6. In such ways as these, which quite take Scripture from us, how many are following each other, according to the moment’s whim; today! But let us study the psalm.

1. The psalmist begins with the expression of deep conviction, which is not without the accompaniment of a faith that discerns in God Himself that which answers to the need of which the soul has been made conscious. He supplicates grace from Him with whom is the fountain of grace; abundance of compassions and loving-kindness: that He should act therefore in conformity with His own nature and blot out his revoltings. He calls these by a strong name, which stamps the outward acts with their true character as emanating from a spirit of rebellion, -not defective obedience, but revolt. He prays for complete removal of all this as defilement, -to be thoroughly washed from his perversity, and cleansed from his sin. He represents how conscious he is of it: his sin is always before his eyes. Experience of it has brought him where his rebellious spirit has been humbled to realize every word of God as righteous, and the spirit which would judge even man’s almighty Maker is humbled and broken down before Him. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned” is never true in an absolute way of any sin that man can commit. We are too closely united together in the world for this to be possible. If I have another god than Jehovah; does this hurt no one but myself? If I degrade Him by an idol, or take His Name in vain, is there no reflex influence of such acts upon others around me? Who that was truly convicted of sin could say this or believe it? and how above all the man who has need to plead for deliverance from the guilt of blood-shedding! On the other hand, as Delitzsch well says; “Every relation in which man stands to his fellow-men; and to created things in general, is but the manifest form of his fundamental relationship to God:” at every point at which we touch His creatures; we touch God Himself; every blow struck at them is struck at Him, just as obedience to Him necessitates harmonious relationship to all His creatures. The guilt of every sin is fundamentally the same, revolt against God: this is; in a true sense; the only sin.
2. In the next four verses, we find the extent and character of the salvation needed. Here the psalmist begins with the corruption of origin; as to which Job asks the solemn question, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” This is often pleaded as in large measure an excuse; as we well know; though an awakened conscience cannot satisfy itself with this. Here it comes in to show how great is the salvation needed. Just as in Romans the apostle begins with personal sins and judgment in view of these, not of the fall of Adam; but afterwards; where he enters upon the subject of the completeness of the remedy, then he begins with Adam and the corruption of our nature (Romans 5:12; sq.). So here we shall find it: “Behold,” says David, “in perversity was I born,” -with a moral twist “and in sin did my mother conceive me” -not inside Paradise, but outside.

Thus sin is a leprosy, a communicable disease; -so to speak, in the blood; and needing a remedy of corresponding energy to meet it. God turns it to corresponding blessing. The “inward parts” are the reins, the kidneys; -hidden in the centre of the body and enveloped in fat, -the very type of excretory organs; for this is their whole function. In them we have going on continually the purification of the blood from what; if retained, would destroy life. Their special relation is to the processes of nutrition and disassimilation; and thus their work presents to us the plainest analogy to that work of moral discrimination and rejection of the evil which goes on under the oversight of the conscience in the quiet chambers of meditation within the inner man. There God desires “truth” or steadfast fidelity; and in the hidden part makes us to know “wisdom” (chokhma), the word used being one “applied to the discrimination of good and evil” (Wilson). Thus we find how in God’s sovereignty over all things, He turns this close and necessary acquaintance with evil in the innermost recesses of our being into an exercising of our spiritual senses to discern and separate it from that which is of God and good (Hebrews 5:14). Would that we knew better this “exercise” which would make us adepts in this work of spiritual discrimination! Here the new nature begins to manifest itself in the quickening of the conscience as the heart is turned to God. Blessed sight, the tender sensitiveness of one new born, thus searched out and exercised, even though yet the gospel be not known so as to give rest before God! and that is the condition here. But we come now to the gospel, although in that veiled way in which the Old Testament of necessity so largely spoke, and still, as all through this psalm, in the language of prayer for the blessing; not yet as realizing it. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Here nothing is mentioned that had real power to cleanse, even in the Mosaic ritual! The hyssop was of course only that by which the sprinkling that really cleansed was effected. It was used to sprinkle the passover blood upon the doorposts (Exodus 12:22). It was that which, along with cedar and scarlet, was dipped with the living bird in the blood of its fellow, which then was sprinkled upon the leper; to cleanse him (Leviticus 14:6; Leviticus 7:1-38). It was used in the case of one defiled with the dead to sprinkle the water of purification upon him (Numbers 19:18). There is no other use of hyssop given us in the Old Testament; and to one of these it must refer. We can have little difficulty in deciding which is here to be understood. The passover is out of the question. Besides its relation to one special feast, which would hardly make it appropriate to an individual case like this, the blood of the paschal lamb was not sprinkled upon the person; but on the door-posts of the houses within which the feast was being kept. Of the two other occasions, the sprinkling upon the leper might seem to be most appropriate to the case of one so deeply affected with sin; and in a state so naturally incurable; as the fifth verse has shown. In the case of the leper; however, the hyssop has no distinct relation to the cleansing: it is simply dipped in the blood, along with the cedar and scarlet and the living bird, and then it is said only that “he” -the priest -“shall sprinkle.” On the contrary, in the ordinance of the red heifer (Numbers 19:1-22) the hyssop comes again, as at the passover; into unmistakable prominence as the means of sprinkling the blood; while, in contrast with the passover; this is sprinkled upon the person; to cleanse him. Thus the reference in the psalm would naturally be to this.

Thus defilement with the dead is expressly what is before us here; while the deliverance sought from blood-guiltiness (in the fourteenth verse) shows us how far beyond ordinary defilement the case here goes. The finger; as it were; points in a certain direction to show us what is in question, but there is still an enigma to be solved: how can the law of the red heifer apply? was it ever ordained for cleansing from. the guilt of blood-shedding? The only answer that can be given is necessarily in the negative. The truth is that the law necessarily fails to meet the case. No sacrifice was, or could be, ordained to put away the guilt of murder.* The soul was cast for this on the sovereign mercy of God alone. The types here, as just now said; might point in a certain direction, but that was all. The one supreme Sacrifice, to be offered by Him of whom it was all “written in the volume of the book;” alone answers all questions; sets the conscience at rest; purging the soul “to serve the living and true God.” Hence the failure of all typical sacrifices in such a case as this is full of instruction and blessing. The sinner here was brought face to face and left alone with God; the types as fingers pointing to that which would do what they could not do -expressly disclaiming virtue to be in them.
So the psalmist is beyond law here: it is from God and not from man must come the purging; and yet with a plain reference to the law also; which sends us to it for instruction. Thus viewed, the type of the red heifer, with its confessed incompetency to give us more than the shadow -“not the very image” -may yet help us to find the very image." In this way another apparent failure must be carefully considered. The ordinance of the red heifer was for the restoration; simply, of a defiled person. It does not in any way speak of the first bringing of a soul to God. But the case here, as we are viewing it, is that of souls brought for the first time to God; and these two things -the salvation of a sinner and the restoration of a saint -are; of course; very different things: how are we to reconcile this difference? or what are we to learn by it? As reinforcing the reference to the type, the fact of the sin in question being David’s sin is very significant and helpful. The very subject of the psalm then is, after all, the failure and restoration of a saint: for, spite of the enormity of his offence, no one would doubt David to have been this. The type referred to becomes therefore really in harmony with the theme of the psalm. But does it not lead us away from the application we have made of it? If it apply to Israel in the last days and their confession of the awful murder of the Son of God. sent to them; is not this the time of their conversion to God and being brought into a new place of blessing, and not their restoration as saints to a state of blessing enjoyed before? How can “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation” be a suited prayer in their mouth? Consider it again, and this inconsistency will disappear. For, while of that generation it will undoubtedly be true that they will be then for the first time brought to God; -theirs will be in every respect just the salvation of sinners; -yet; if we remember that this is Israel seeking the Lord; we shall realize that, as to the nation it is in fact a case of restoration. Thus the two things are not in this case contradictory to one another. As Israel’s sin, the rejection of their Messiah looks back to their national history. Another harmony develops from this view of the type. The ordinance of the red heifer provided for the cleansing of one defiled with the dead; not a new offering, not the shedding of blood afresh, but recurrence to an offering before offered; -as far as we have any knowledge; once for all offered. How striking a correspondence is here between the type in question and Israel in the end of her long wilderness journey, cleansed by an offering long before offered! in fact; by that very death on its divine side, of which on its human side they were the responsible and guilty instruments! Thus we find in this application of the water of purification the same recognition of a lapse of time between the offering and its effect in cleansing as we find in the type of the day of atonement and its ordinance of the two goats (Leviticus 16:1-34, notes). It is surely the voice of Israel, then, that is heard in the cry, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” The hyssop itself may speak of Christ as man in the lowest place. It is used thus in contrast with the cedar (1 Kings 4:33) as the type of littleness; -“the hyssop that groweth out of the wall,” -while, as with the shittah-tree (or acacia), it grows in the wilderness, as a “root out of a dry ground,” -growing indeed in the clefts of the rock and the driest of places. If it be a caper; as Royle and Tristram agree; then, like the shittim-wood; it has the thorns of the curse upon it. Contrariwise, its name is perhaps derived from a word which means “to shine.” One would expect that the hyssop in this connection should give us some memorials of the Lord: “purge me with hyssop; and I shall be clean.” Then how blessed to be said by a poor sinner; and yet it is only confidence in God;s work being; as it must be; well done: “wash me; and I shall be whiter than snow.” Gospel this is, and he realizes it as such: “make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.” It is only prayer as yet however; but a divinely taught prayer surely. We too; if the gospel be “good news;” ought to have the joy of the gospel; and healthful; medicinal it is; even for crushed bones. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” But we pass on to look more deeply at this inner work. 3. The third section, as we have learned to expect; leads us into the sanctuary; and naturally with this speaks of the sanctification needed for the presence of God. But in the first verse we are reminded that this roots itself in, and builds itself up by, the knowledge of complete acceptance. “Hide Thy face from my sins,” he says; “and blot out all my perversities.” He must have no cloud upon that glorious Face, into which he contemplates looking. For this is the life of holiness itself, the manifestation of God to the soul, the entrancing joy of which the apostle spoke: “whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God” (2 Corinthians 5:13). But this would be impossible if in that holy Presence a single stain of sin were discoverable. Here this thought is expressed only negatively and as prayer: but he knows well no spot must be found.

The Christian finds it realized in positive “acceptance in the Beloved,” all the value of Christ being accounted to him. Not even the thought of a “Face hidden” is worthy of this. The Face beams with radiant appreciation of Him in whom we are represented, and find unchanging, unchangeable perfection. No cloud can come over this sky, save as unbelief darkens it. The veil being rent that so long prevented it; now; says the apostle, “let us draw nigh.” “Let us draw nigh”! what, need of exhortation? Here is One to know whom is to have all things, -to be without whom is the “outer darkness” of hell! God, Creator, Preserver, Redeemer of men, -Light, Life, Love; -revealed in Christ; His love-gift to us, -opens to us the Sanctuary of His Presence. It is not merely possible to draw nigh; there where Moses could not, and seraphs veil their faces; but God has brought us in, -giving us an abiding-place in the Holiest of all; free right of citizenship in the New Jerusalem of God. Here it is lawful to covet and possess, as far as faith can penetrate, -God’s word being the inventory of all that which He has given us richly to enjoy; His Spirit in us “searching the deep things of God:” so that what “eye hath not seen; nor ear heard, nor hath it entered (naturally) into the heart of man,” He “hath revealed unto us by His Spirit;” “that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-16.) After all this, do we need exhortation to possess ourselves of it; or to draw near to Him who had drawn near to us? What hinders us? What hinders any one of us? Nothing, let us speak it plainly, but lack of heart; and unbelief that goes with this, -goes before it, and springs from it as well. “The vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver unto one that is learned; saying; Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed; and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying; Read this; I pray thee; and he saith, I am not learned.” (Isaiah 29:11; Isaiah 12:1-6.) But we have got beyond our psalm. The psalmist realizes at least, as has been said, that God’s face -God Himself -is his one necessity; and that one sin discerned by the holy Eye would be impossible for Him to go on with. Does he not realize something of what the ashes of the sin-offering mean, by which just now he has been in reality asking to be purged? We, at least, know this well. But along with the need of sacrifice, there is need of an initial work also; which none but God can effect; -which needs nothing less than the power of the Creator: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” And we have learned that we are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works; which God hath before prepared, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 1:10). He does not speak formally of the new birth; nor was this clearly known until New Testament times; but he despairs of any effectual change by any effort of his own; he; like the apostle; with a groan of anguish turns from an impractical “body of death,” to find a Deliverer outside himself altogether.

To possess a “clean heart,” for such as he has discovered himself to be; God must “create a creation;” and for the psalmist as for us, the light of heaven must be made to break out in self-revealing, God-revealing power; over the yeasty confusion of the barren and restless deep. O blessed and beauteous Light of heaven; though Thou showest us but the fury of the untamed swell of passion and unrest! Even so communion has begun, if fitfully, with God. The soul begins to side with Him, even against itself; and there, I suppose, a “clean heart” has begun. But a “steadfast [or fixed] spirit” goes beyond this, just in the removal of that fitfulness: the heart being at rest for communion as the calm lake mirrors heaven. But we miss here the Christian how of this: the need is felt, but the manner of accomplishment is not known. The next verse shows the believer, while it shows also the conflict with doubt. He prays not to be cast away from the divine presence. He has known it; but knows not the conditions of its permanence. Many Christians do not know them today. So, too, he prays, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me”; and many would be in agony over this. There is no need to think of anything special to the king of Israel.

To the whole work of God in the soul the Holy Spirit was always necessary; in every saint of every time. The Spirit of God as indwelling in the Christian; the Spirit of adoption by which we cry; Abba, Father, and the baptism of the Spirit by which the body of Christ is formed; -these are distinctive blessings of the dispensation to which we belong (John 14:16-17; Galatians 4:1-6; Acts 1:5; 1 Corinthians 12:13). The Spirit of God Himself could teach David such a prayer as this: for us it would be unbelief to utter it; for by the Spirit we are sealed unto the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30). But how do we value blessings so inestimable as these? The breathing after God Himself, so characteristic as it is of the Book of Psalms, may well put to shame the coldness of our hearts in view of it. Where are the souls that pant and long after the presence of God as do these men of another and darker time? We may not use some of their prayers, and can thank God we do not: yes; but do we breathe their longings? Or shall we give men to think that the increase of knowledge and the apprehension of grace chill the heart; and that the more abundantly God has shown us love; the less He is to be loved? Again the psalmist cries: — “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and let a willing spirit sustain me.” For heaviness of heart enfeebles both walk and work: the joy of the Lord gives strength and courage. We may not make light of emotion. Our care is to be that it be justified with knowledge and connected with practical result. “The fruit of the Spirit is love; joy, peace” (Galatians 5:22); but then “long-suffering; gentleness; goodness, meekness; temperance;” follow after these and sustain them. So too the practical result is promised here: “I will teach revolters Thy ways; and sinners shall return unto Thee.” Israel in fact will lead the nations in obedience. Israel shall become Jezreel, “the seed of God.” “And I will sow her to Me in the earth;” says the Lord God (Hosea 2:23). 4. The theme of the second part of the previous psalm now comes up again; but from another side. The failure of the sacrifices is now proclaimed by the lips of man, the sinner who has found them fail in his own need, and realizes the divine meaning of this failure. The psalmist returns to the thought of his own sin, which he now names distinctly, and from the guilt of which God alone can be the deliverer. As the God of his salvation, his tongue shall sing of His righteousness. This seems too evangelic, if we take it in the Pauline sense of God’s righteousness revealed in the gospel, a note of which; however, we have heard in the twenty-second psalm.

But to measure the depth of an inspired statement by the intelligence (real or supposed) of the writer, would be a folly that would really leave God out of His Word, and make the meaning of it often an impractical attainment for us. He has in the beginning of the psalm been pleading for mercy according to the known compassion of God, that is, in consistency with His own character. This then is already the “righteousness,” of which when delivered he will sing; and thus the righteousness spoken of is as the God of his salvation. The cross is the full explanation of this, and that, as we have seen, is in the psalm also, though veiled under the type referred to in it. He then speaks again of the testimony which in fact restored Israel will render to His praise, when their dumb lips shall be opened. Now comes the disclaiming of legal sacrifices. “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: Thou delightest not in burnt-offering.” In fact, as has been already said, none could be prescribed for sin like this, a thing which limits very much therefore the absoluteness of this disclaimer. Here the “sacrifices of God” could only be “a broken spirit!” Not as if this were the true antitype of the legal offerings, a supposition of which there has been given explicit denial in the words of Christ Himself by His Spirit in the fortieth psalm: “In the volume of the book it is written of ME.” Nor can a broken spirit be the justification of God’s grace in salvation, though it may define the condition morally necessary to the sinner’s acceptance. And this is the only possible thought here. That would not be a broken spirit which could estimate itself as having atoning value in the sight of God. It is the very confession of sin and worthlessness which makes it possible for Him to come in in mercy; and in this way indeed to come to God may have attaching to it all the certainty which the bringing of sacrifice ensured in those cases in which they were prescribed. In this comparison with the legal sacrifices, the failed creature taking his place must necessarily, with God, far outweigh the ritual service, and in fact permit God to come in in his behalf. He will act according to His heart, and we can trust His heart. The case is in His hand; and divine wisdom will be able to conserve divine righteousness in meeting so desperate a condition. Christ is the answer of wisdom as to this: and now it can indeed be said: “a broken and crushed heart” -so it literally reads -“O God, Thou wilt not despise.” 5. In the last section, it is openly Zion’s cause that is pleaded: the place in which sovereign grace will act toward Israel, and therefore the place of God’s eternal rest. “Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion: Thou shalt build the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.” The cessation of animal sacrifices is not implied then in what has gone before; and according to Ezekiel they will be offered even in millennial days. (Ezekiel 43:18-27, Ezekiel 45:15-25.) If this is not according to our thoughts, we must always be ready to correct our thoughts by Scripture. The millennial has not the perfection of the eternal condition; and the senses will be again appealed to in a way that does not accord with the present dispensation of faith. Of this there are many examples; and there is no surer way of getting into confusion in our thoughts than by judging of what is suited to one dispensation by the analogies of another. The numerical structure seems here indeed to emphasize the confirmation of sacrifice, as before it did its failure; and both things are suited, each in its place. Their retention and revival are, no doubt, God’s witness to the world of His way of acceptance and blessing ever, at which unbelief has so largely scoffed. As the carcases of the enemies (Isaiah 66:1-24) in their doom before men’s eyes will be the open testimony to the judgment of hell for the ungodly, -of that Gehenna of which it has already furnished the illustrative images, -and as the city of God will be the perpetual witness of the joys of the blessed, -so it will be good in the Lord’s sight to have this commemorative witness of the way by which the joy of His favor can be realized or attained. Thus these sacrifices will be now “sacrifices of righteousness,” because offered with a true heart and with hands “washed in innocency,” as David has elsewhere expressed it (Psalms 26:6). And the whole tenor of these closing verses confirms the prophetic character of the psalm as the national confession which will be the necessary pre-requisite for national blessing. This also makes clear the connection with the previous psalm, which is certainly a divine challenge of the nation and of the thought that sacrifices without righteousness could be acceptable to God. The two psalms together give us the double controversy between Israel and the Lord, of which the second part of Isaiah (the second Isaiah of the rationalizing critics) treats at large -the controversy as to the law and as to Christ; of the Old Testament and of the New. One might imagine, from the way that these are presented here, that they would be questions which would be raised with restored Israel in this same order, and that here they have been in the presence of the true Joseph, who has manifested Himself to His brethren; but it may be also that the order is only grounded on the history, and not itself to be thud fulfilled in the history of the future.