Psalms 32:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Blessed is the man, &c. We are here taught wherein true happiness consists, and what is the cause and foundation of it. It consists not in the possession of the wealth or honours of the world, or in the enjoyment of its pleasures, but in those spiritual blessings which flow from the favour and grace of God; whose transgression is forgiven He does not say, Blessed is the man who never transgressed. For he knew no such man could be found; all having sinned and come short of the glory of God, and consequently of that happiness conferred on man at his first creation. But he lays the foundation of fallen and sinful man's happiness on the only foundation on which it can be laid, and that is on the pardon of sin. For as all our misery came in by sin, so it is not likely, nay, it is not possible, it should be removed, or even alleviated, without the forgiveness of sin. It is true that, in the first Psalm, David pronounces the man blessed who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, &c., but delights in, and meditates on, God's law: and that, Psalms 119:1, he terms the undefiled in the way blessed who walk in the law of the Lord. But it must be observed that in these and such like passages he is describing the character of the truly blessed man, and it is certain he that has not that character cannot be happy. But here he is showing the ground of the righteous man's blessedness, the fundamental privilege from which all the other ingredients of this blessedness flow. Sin is here termed transgression, for it is the transgression of the law, 1 John 3:4; and when it is forgiven, the obligation to punishment which we lay under, by virtue of the sentence of the law: is vacated and cancelled. It is lifted off, as נשׂוי, nasui, may be rendered; so that the pardoned sinner is eased of a burden, a heavy burden which lay on his conscience, and of the weight of which he began to be sensible when he began to be awakened out of his spiritual lethargy, and to be truly convinced of his sinfulness and guilt, and of the sentence of condemnation gone out against him. The remission of his sins gives rest and relief to his weary and heavy-laden soul, Matthew 11:28. Whose sin is covered Namely, by God, and not by man; who ought to confess, and not to hide it, Psalms 32:5. Sin makes us loathsome, filthy, and abominable in the sight of God, and utterly unfit for communion with him; and when our consciences are truly enlightened and awakened, it makes us loathsome and abominable in our own sight. But when it is pardoned, it is covered, as it were, by the mantle of the divine mercy, in and through the sacrifice and intercession of Him who is made of God to believers righteousness; who is the true propitiatory, or mercy-seat, where mercy may be found in a way consistent with justice, Romans 3:24. Our sins, when forgiven, are covered, not from ourselves, no: my sin, says David, is ever before me: not from God's omniscience, but from his vindictive justice; when he pardons sin he remembers it no more; he casts it behind his back, it shall be sought for, and not found. And the sinner, being reconciled to God, begins to be reconciled to himself. The metaphor, Dr. Dodd thinks, is taken from writers who obliterate what is faulty in their writing.