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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 51:1 - 51:1
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Prayer for the remission of sin. Concerning the interchangeable names for sin, vid., on Psa 32:1. Although the primary occasion of the Psalm is the sin of adultery, still David says פְּשָׁעַי, not merely because many other sins were developed out of it, as his guilt of blood in the case of Uriah, the scandal put into the mouths of the enemies of Jahve, and his self-delusion, which lasted almost a whole year; but also because each solitary sin, the more it is perceived in its fundamental character and, as it were, microscopically discerned, all the more does it appear as a manifold and entangled skein of sins, and stands forth in a still more intimate and terrible relation, as of cause and effect, to the whole corrupt and degenerated condition in which the sinner finds himself. In מְחֵה sins are conceived of as a cumulative debt (according to Isa 44:22, cf. Isa 43:25, like a thick, dark cloud) written down (Jer 17:1) against the time of the payment by punishment. In כַּבְּסֵנִי (from כִּבֶּס, πλύνειν, to wash by rubbing and kneading up, distinguished from רָחַץ, λούειν, to wash by rinsing) iniquity is conceived of as deeply ingrained dirt. In טַֽהֲרֵנִי, the usual word for a declarative and de facto making clean, sin is conceived of as a leprosy, Lev 13:6, Lev 13:34. the Kerî runs הֶרֶב כַּבְּסֵנִי (imperat. Hiph., like הֶרֶף, Psa 37:8), “make great or much, wash me,” i.e., (according to Ges. §142, 3, b) wash me altogether, penitus et totum, which is the same as is expressed by the Chethîb הַרְבַּה (prop. multum faciendo = multum, prorsus, Ges. §131, 2). In כְּרֹב (Isa 63:7) and הֶרֶב is expressed the depth of the consciousness of sin; profunda enim malitia, as Martin Geier observes, insolitam raramque gratiam postulat.