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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 51:3 - 51:3
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Substantiation of the prayer by the consideration, that his sense of sin is more than superficial, and that he is ready to make a penitential confession. True penitence is not a dead knowledge of sin committed, but a living sensitive consciousness of it (Isa 59:12), to which it is ever present as a matter and ground of unrest and pain. This penitential sorrow, which pervades the whole man, is, it is true, no merit that wins mercy or favour, but it is the condition, without which it is impossible for any manifestation of favour to take place. Such true consciousness of sin contemplates sin, of whatever kind it may be, directly as sin against God, and in its ultimate ground as sin against Him alone (חָטָא with לְ of the person sinned against, Isa 42:24; Mic 7:9); for 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; and sin is “that which is evil in the eyes of God” (Isa 65:12; Isa 66:4), it is contradiction to the will of God, the sole and highest Lawgiver and Judge. Thus it is, as David confesses, with regard to his sin, in order that... This לְמַעַן must not be weakened by understanding it to refer to the result instead of to the aim or purpose. If, however, it is intended to express intention, it follows close upon the moral relationship of man to God expressed in לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ and הָרַע בְּעֵינֶיךָ, - a relationship, the aim of which is, that God, when He now condemns the sinner, may appear as the just and holy One, who, as the sinner is obliged himself to acknowledge, cannot do otherwise than pronounce a condemnatory decision concerning him. When sin becomes manifest to a man as such, he must himself say Amen to the divine sentence, just as David does to that passed upon him by Nathan. And it is just the nature of penitence so to confess one's self to be in the wrong in order that God may be in the right and gain His cause. If, however, the sinner's self-accusation justifies the divine righteousness or justice, just as, on the other hand, all self-justification on the part of the sinner (which, however, sooner or later will be undeceived) accuses God of unrighteousness or injustice (Job 40:8): then all human sin must in the end tend towards the glorifying of God. In this sense Psa 51:6 is applied by Paul (Rom 3:4), inasmuch as he regards what is here written in the Psalter - ὅπως ἂν δικαιωθῇς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου, καὶ νικῃσεες ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί σε (lxx) - as the goal towards which the whole history of Israel tends. Instead of בְּדָבְרְךָ (infin. like שָׁלְחֶךָ, Gen 38:17, in this instance for the sake of similarity of sound
(Note: Cf. the following forms, chosen on account of their accord: - נָשׂוּי, Psa 32:1; הִנְדֹּף, Psa 68:3; צְאֶינָה, Son 3:11; שָׁתות, Isa 22:13; מְמֻחָים, ib. Psa 25:6; הַלֹּוט, ib. Psa 25:7.)
instead of the otherwise usual form דַּבֵּר), in Thy speaking, the lxx renders ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου = בִּדְבָרֶיךָ; instead of בְּשָׁפְטֶךָ, ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί σε = בְּהִשָּֽׁפְטֶךָ (infin. Niph.), provided κρίνεσθαι is intended as passive and not (as in Jer 2:9 lxx, cf. Mat 5:40) as middle. The thought remains essentially unchanged by the side of these deviations; and even the taking of the verb זָכָה, to be clean, pure, in the Syriac signification νικᾶν, does not alter it. That God may be justified in His decisive speaking and judging; that He, the Judge, may gain His cause in opposition to all human judgment, towards this tends David's confession of sin, towards this tends all human history, and more especially the history of Israel.