Psalm 51:5 Kommentar

Though David penned this psalm upon a very particular occasion, yet, it is of as general use as any of David's psalms; it is the most eminent of the penitential psalms, and most expressive of the cares and desires of a repenting sinner. It is a pity indeed that in our devout addresses to God we should have any thing else to do than to praise God, for that is the work of heaven; but we make other work for ourselves by our own sins and follies: we must come to the throne of grace in the posture of penitents, to confess our sins and sue for the grace of God; and, if therein we would take with us words, we can nowhere find any more apposite than in this psalm, which is the record of David's repentance for his sin in the matter of Uriah, which was the greatest blemish upon his character: all the rest of his faults were nothing to this; it is said of him (Kg1 15:5), That "he turned not aside from the commandment of the Lord all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite." In this psalm, I. He confesses his sin (Psa 51:3-6). II. He prays earnestly for the pardon of his sin (Psa 51:1, Psa 51:2, Psa 51:7, Psa 51:9). III. For peace of conscience (Psa 51:8, Psa 51:12). IV. For grace to go and sin no more (Psa 51:10, Psa 51:11, Psa 51:14). V. For liberty of access to God (Psa 51:15). IV. He promises to do what he could for the good of the souls of others (Psa 51:13) and for the glory of God (Psa 51:16, Psa 51:17, Psa 51:19). And, lastly, concludes with a prayer for Zion and Jerusalem (Psa 51:18). Those whose consciences charge them with any gross sin should, with a believing regard to Jesus Christ, the Mediator, again and again pray over this psalm; nay, though we have not been guilty of adultery and murder, or any the like enormous crime, yet in singing it, and praying over it, we may very sensibly apply it all to ourselves, which if we do with suitable affections we shall, through Christ, find mercy to pardon and grace for seasonable help. To the chief musician. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 51 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. The occasion of this psalm was the sin of David with Bathsheba, signified by "going in to her"; an euphemism for "lying with her"; which sin was a very aggravated one, she being another man's wife, and the wife of a servant and soldier of his, who was at the same time exposing his life for his king and country's good; and David besides had many wives, and was also king of Israel, and should have set a better example to his subjects; and it was followed with other sins, as the murder of Uriah, and the death of several others; with scandal to religion, and with security and impenitence in him for a long time, until Nathan the prophet was sent to him of God, to awaken him to a sense of his sin; which he immediately acknowledged, and showed true repentance for it: upon which, either while Nathan was present, or after he was gone, he penned this psalm; that it might remain on record, as a testification of his repentance, and for the instruction of such as should fall into sin, how to behave, where to apply, and for their comfort. The history of all this may be seen in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the second book of Samuel.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,.... This cannot be understood of any personal iniquity of his immediate parents; since this respects his wonderful formation in the womb, in which both he and they were wholly passive, as the word here used is of that form; and is the amazing work of God himself, so much admired by the psalmist, Psa 139:13; and cannot design any sinfulness then infused into him by his Maker, seeing God cannot be the author of sin; but of original sin and corruption, derived to him by natural generation: and the sense is, that as soon as ever the mass of human nature was shaped and quickened, or as soon as soul and body were united together, sin was in him, and he was in sin, or became a sinful creature; and in sin did my mother conceive me; by whom cannot be meant Eve; for though she is the mother of all living, and so of David, yet could not, with any propriety, be said to conceive him: this only could be said of his immediate parent, not even of his next grandmother, much less of Eve, at the distance of almost three thousand years. Nor does the sin in which he was conceived intend any sin of his parents, in begetting and conceiving him, being in lawful wedlock; which acts cannot be sinful, since the propagation of the human species by natural generation is a principle of nature implanted by God himself; and is agreeably to the first law of nature, given to man in a state of innocence, "increase and multiply", Gen 1:28. Marriage is the institution of God in paradise; and in all ages has been accounted "honourable in all, when the bed is undefiled", Heb 13:4. Nor does it design his being conceived when his mother was in "profluviis", of which there is no proof, and is a mere imagination, and can answer no purpose; much less that he was conceived in adultery, as the contenders for the purity of human nature broadly intimate; which shows how much they are convicted by this text, to give into such an interpretation of it, at the expense of the character of an innocent person, of whom there is not the least suggestion of this kind in the Holy Scriptures; but on the contrary, she is represented as a religious woman, and David valued himself upon his relation to her as such, Psa 86:16. Besides, had this been the case, as David would have been a bastard, he would not have been suffered to enter into the congregation of the Lord, according to the law in Deu 23:2; whereas he often did with great delight, Psa 42:4. Moreover, it is beside his scope and design to expose the sins of others, much less his own parents, while he is confessing and lamenting his own iniquities: and to what purpose should he mention theirs, especially if he himself was not affected by them, and did not derive a corrupt nature from them? Nor is the sin he speaks of any actual sin of his own, and therefore he does not call it, as before, "my" iniquity and "my" sin; though it was so, he having sinned in Adam, and this being in his nature; but "iniquity" and "sin", it being common to him with all mankind. Hence we learn the earliness of the corruption of nature; it is as soon as man is conceived and shapen; and that it is propagated from one to another by natural generation; and that it is the case of all men: for if this was the case of David, who was born of religious parents, was famous for his early piety, and from whose seed the Messiah sprung, it may well be concluded to be the case of all. And this corruption of nature is the fountain, source, and spring of all sin, secret and open, private and public; and is mentioned here not as an extenuation of David's actual transgressions, but as an aggravation of them; he having been, from his conception and formation, nothing else but a mass of sin, a lump of iniquity; and, in his evangelical repentance for them, he is led to take notice of and mourn over the corruption of his nature, from whence they arose. The Heathens themselves affirm, that no man is born without sin (c). (c) "Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur". Horat. Sermon. l. 1. Satyr. 3.

Celsus has not explained how error accompanies the "becoming," or product of generation; nor has he expressed himself with sufficient clearness to enable us to compare his ideas with ours and to pass judgment on them. But the prophets, who have given some wise suggestions on the subject of things produced by generation, tell us that a sacrifice for sin was offered even for newborn infants, as not being free from sin. They say, "I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me"; also, "They are estranged from the womb"; which is followed by the singular expression, "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies."

But we, according to the epistle of James, “all stumble in many things,” and “no one is pure from sin, no not if his life is but a day long.” For who will boast “that he has a clean heart? or who will be sure that he is pure from sin?” And we are held guilty after the likeness of Adam’s transgression. Hence David says, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And the blessed Job, “Even if I were righteous, my mouth will speak wickedness; even if I were perfect, I will be found guilty. If I wash myself with soap and make my hands ever so clean, yet you will plunge me in the ditch, and even my own clothes will abhor me.”

I need not go through the lives of the saints or call attention to the moles and blemishes that mark the fairest skins. Many of our writers, it is true, unwisely take this course; however, a few sentences of Scripture will dispose alike of the heretics and the philosophers. What does Paul say? “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all”; and in another place, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” The preacher also who is the mouthpiece of the divine Wisdom freely protests and says, “There is not a just person on earth, that does good and sins not,” and again, “When your people sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin,” and “who can say, I have made my heart clean?” and “none is clean from stain, not even if his life on earth has been but for one day.” David insists on the same thing when he says, “Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”; and in another psalm, “in your sight shall no man living be justified.” This last passage they try to explain away from motives of reverence, arguing that the meaning is that no human being is perfect in comparison with God. Yet the Scripture does not say, “in comparison with you no one living shall be justified” but “in your sight no one living shall be justified.” And when it says “in your sight” it means that those who seem holy to people are by no means holy to God in his fuller knowledge. For “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” But if in the sight of God who sees all things and to whom the secrets of the heart lie open no one is just; then these heretics, instead of adding to human dignity, clearly take away from God’s power. I might bring together many other passages of Scripture of the same import; but were I to do so, I should exceed the limits not of a letter but of a volume.

"For, behold, in iniquities I was conceived" [Psalm 51:5]. As though he were saying, They are conquered that have done what thou, David, hast done: for this is not a little evil and little sin, to wit, adultery and man-slaying. What of them that from the day that they were born of their mother's womb, have done no such thing? Even to them do you ascribe some sins, in order that He may conquer all men when He begins to be judged. David has taken upon him the person of mankind, and has heeded the bonds of all men, has considered the offspring of death, has adverted to the origin of iniquity, and he says, "For, behold, in iniquities I was conceived." Was David born of adultery; being born of Jesse, [1 Samuel 16:18] a righteous man, and his own wife? What is it that he says himself to have been in iniquity conceived, except that iniquity is drawn from Adam? Even the very bond of death, with iniquity itself is engrained? No man is born without bringing punishment, bringing desert of punishment. A Prophet says also in another place, "No one is clean in Your sight, not even an infant, whose life is of one day upon earth." For we know both by the Baptism of Christ that sins are loosed, and that the Baptism of Christ avails the remission of sins. If infants are every way innocent, why do mothers run with them when sick to the Church? What by that Baptism, what by that remission is put away? An innocent one I see that rather weeps than is angry. What does Baptism wash off? What does that Grace loose? There is loosed the offspring of sin. For if that infant could speak to you, it would say, and if it had the understanding which David had, it would answer you, Why do you heed me, an infant? Thou dost not indeed see my actions: but I in iniquity have been conceived, "And in sins has my mother nourished me in the womb." Apart from this bond of mortal concupiscence was Christ born without a male, of a virgin conceiving by the Holy Ghost. He cannot be said to have been conceived in iniquity, it cannot be said, In sins His mother nourished Him in the womb, to whom was said, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the Virtue of the Highest shall overshadow you." [Luke 1:35] It is not therefore because it is sin to have to do with wives that men are conceived in iniquity, and in sins nourished in the womb by their mother; but because that which is made is surely made of flesh deserving punishment. For the punishment of the flesh is death, and surely there is in it liability to death itself. Whence the Apostle spoke not of the body as if to die, but as if dead: "The body indeed is dead," he says, "because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." [Romans 8:10] How then without bond of sin is born that which is conceived and sown of a body dead because of sin? This chaste operation in a married person has not sin, but the origin of sin draws with it condign punishment. For there is no husband that, because he is an husband, is not subject to death, or that is subject to death for any other reason but because of sin. For even the Lord was subject to death, but not on account of sin: He took upon Him our punishment, and so looses our guilt. With reason then, "In Adam all die, but in Christ shall all be made alive." [1 Corinthians 15:22] For, "Through one man," says the Apostle, "sin has entered into this world, and through sin death, and so has passed unto all men, in that all have sinned." [Romans 5:12] Definite is the sentence: "In Adam," he says, "all have sinned." Alone then could such an infant be innocent, as has not been born of the work of Adam.

So it is because of this quite unique innocence that the psalm says, "Against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your presence, that you may be justified in your words and may overcome when you are judged," because he could find not a hint of evil in you [Jesus Christ]. Why could he find it in you, though, O human race? Because it goes on to say, "For I myself was conceived in iniquity, and in sins did my mother conceive me." It is David saying this. Inquire how David was born; you will discover that it was of a lawful wife, not of adultery. So in terms of what sort of propagation does he say "I was conceived in iniquity"? It can only be that there is here a kind of propagation or transmission of death, which every person contracts who is born of the union of man and woman.

"Behold indeed." Here he sets forth the root of the guilt. The root of all actual guilt is original sin, which is contracted from parents infected with that sin; this infection was in the father of David and in his mother. As to the father, he says, "in iniquities I was conceived" -- not actual iniquities, because he was not born of adultery, but of marriage and from holy Jesse, as is said in the last chapter of Ruth -- but in original sin; for in this sin all are born. Rom. 5: "Through one man sin entered into this world." But since original sin is one, why does he say "in iniquities," etc.? It must be said that original sin is one in essence, so to speak, but many in power, because it provides the occasion for all other sins. Rom. 7: "Sin which is in my flesh works." And this diminishes the guilt; as if to say: it is not surprising that I sin, because I was conceived in these things. As to the mother, he says, "and in sins did my mother conceive me." But were not the parents of David cleansed from original sin through circumcision? It must be said that Baptism and circumcision cleanse the soul from the guilt of original sin, but the tinder of sin still remains, and circumcision was performed on the flesh, and a person begets carnal children according to the flesh; and therefore it was necessary that the son born be circumcised again. So now one born of baptized parents is baptized. Another text has, "my mother nourished me." And this is referred to actual sins, because even in children disordered movements are found, as Augustine says in Confessions 6. Another text has, "she bore me," etc. And so, because some are sanctified in the womb, but all except Christ are conceived in original sin, he says that he was not sanctified in the womb but born in original sin.

On the occasion, compare Sa2 11:12. The Psalm illustrates true repentance, in which are comprised conviction, confession, sorrow, prayer for mercy, and purposes of amendment, and it is accompanied by a lively faith. (Psa. 51:1-19) A plea for mercy is a confession of guilt. blot out--as from a register. transgressions--literally, "rebellions" (Psa 19:13; Psa 32:1).

His guilt was aggravated by his essential, native sinfulness, which is as contrary to God's requisitions of inward purity as are outward sins to those for right conduct.

David here confesses his hereditary sin as the root of his actual sin. The declaration moves backwards from his birth to conception, it consequently penetrates even to the most remote point of life's beginning. חוללתּי stands instead of נולדתּי, perhaps (although elsewhere, i.e., in Psa 90:2, the idea of painfulness is kept entirely in the background) with reference to the decree, "with pain shalt thou bring forth children," Gen 3:16 (Kurtz); instead of הרתה אתי, with still more definite reference to that which precedes conception, the expression is יחמתני (for יחמתני, following the same interchange of vowel as in Gen 30:39; Jdg 5:28). The choice of the verb decides the question whether by עון and חטא is meant the guilt and sin of the child or of the parents. יחם (to burn with desire) has reference to that, in coition, which partakes of the animal, and may well awaken modest sensibilities in man, without עיון and חטא on that account characterizing birth and conception itself as sin; the meaning is merely, that his parents were sinful human begins, and that this sinful state (habitus) has operated upon his birth and even his conception, and from this point has passed over to him. What is thereby expressed is not so much any self-exculpation, as on the contrary a self-accusation which glances back to the ultimate ground of natural corruption. He is sinful מלּדה וּמהריון (Psa 58:4; Gen 8:21), is טמא מטּמא, an unclean one springing from an unclean (Job 14:4), flesh born of flesh. That man from his first beginning onwards, and that this beginning itself, is stained with sin; that the proneness to sin with its guilt and its corruption is propagated from parents to their children; and that consequently in the single actual sin the sin-pervaded nature of man, inasmuch as he allows himself to be determined by it and himself resolves in accordance with it, become outwardly manifest-therefore the fact of hereditary sin is here more distinctly expressed than in any other passage in the Old Testament, since the Old Testament conception, according to its special character, which always fastens upon the phenomenal, outward side rather than penetrates to the secret roots of a matter, is directed almost entirely to the outward manifestation only of sin, and leaves its natural foundation, its issue in relation to primeval history, and its demonic background undisclosed. The הן in Psa 51:7 is followed by a correlative second הן in Psa 51:8 (cf. Isa 55:4., Isa 54:15.). Geier correctly says: Orat ut sibi in peccatis concepto veraque cordis probitate carenti penitiorem ac mysticam largiri velit sapientiam, cujus medio liberetur a peccati tum reatu tum dominio. אמת is the nature and life of man as conformed to the nature and will of God (cf. ἀλήθεια, Eph 4:21). חכמה, wisdom which is most intimately acquainted with (eindringlich weiss) such nature and life and the way to attain it. God delights in and desires truth בטּחות. The Beth of this word is not a radical letter here as it is in Job 12:6, but the preposition. The reins utpote adipe obducti, here and in Job 38:36, according to the Targum, Jerome, and Parchon, are called טחות (Psychol. S. 269; tr. p. 317). Truth in the reins (cf. Psa 40:9, God's law in visceribus meis) is an upright nature in man's deepest inward parts; and in fact, since the reins are accounted as the seat of the tenderest feelings, in man's inmost experience and perception, in his most secret life both of conscience and of mind (Psa 16:7). In the parallel member סתם denotes the hidden inward part of man. Out of the confession, that according to the will of God truth ought to dwell and rule in man even in his reins, comes the wish, that God would impart to him (i.e., teach him and make his own), - who, as being born and conceived in sin, is commended to God's mercy, - that wisdom in the hidden part of his mind which is the way to such truth.