Psalms 51:9,10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Hide thy face from my sins Do not look upon them with an eye of indignation and wrath, but forgive and forget them. Create in me a clean heart Seeing I have not only defiled myself by these actual sins, but also have a most unclean heart, corrupt even from my birth, which nothing but thy almighty, new-creating power can purify; I beseech thee to exert that power to produce in me a new and holy frame of heart, free from those impure inclinations and vile affections, the effects of which I have too fatally felt; a heart in possession, and under the influence, of those sacred dispositions of piety and virtue, in which the moral rectitude and purity of the mind consist. Thus shall both my inward uncleanness be purged away, and I shall be prevented from falling again into such actual and scandalous sins. And renew a right spirit in me Hebrew, רוח נכון, ruach nachon, a firm, constant, or steadfast disposition or temper of soul, that I may not be shaken and cast down by temptation, as I have been, but that my resolution may be fixed and immoveable. He says, חדשׁ, chaddesh, renew, because he had had this good temper, in a great measure, before his late apostacy, and here prays that it might be restored to him with increase. Within me Hebrew, בקרבי, bekirbi, in my inward parts. Thus he wisely strikes at the root and cause of all sinful actions.