David prayeth for remission of sins, whereof he maketh a deep confession: he prayeth for sanctification. God delighteth not in sacrifice, but in sincerity: David prayeth for the church.
To the chief musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Title. לדוד מזמור למנצח lamnatseach mizmor ledavid.— No one can read this psalm of David, but must see all the characters of true repentance in the person who wrote it, and the marks of the deepest sorrow and humiliation for the sins of which he had been guilty. How earnestly does he plead for mercy, and acknowledge his own unworthiness! How ingenuous the confessions that he makes of his offences! How heavy the load of that guilt which oppressed him! The smart of it pierced through his very bones, and the torture that he felt was as though they had been broken and crushed to pieces. He owns that his sins were of too deep a dye for sacrifices to expiate the guilt, and that he had nothing but a broken heart and contrite spirit to offer to that God whom he had so grievously offended. How earnest his prayers, that God would create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within him! How does he dread the being deserted of God! How earnestly deprecate the being deprived of his favour, the joy of his salvation, and the aids and comforts of his holy spirit! Let but this psalm be read without prejudice, and with a view only to collect the real sentiments expressed in it, and the disposition of heart which appears throughout the whole; and no man of candour will ever suspect that it was the dictate of hypocrisy, or could be penned from any other motive than a strong conviction of the heinousness of his offence, and the earnest desire of God's forgiveness, and restraint from the commission of the like transgressions for the future. Those who reflect upon David's character on account of his conduct in the matter of Uriah, though they cannot too heartily detest the sin, and must severely censure the offender; yet surely may find some room in their hearts for compassion towards him, when they consider how he was surprised into the first crime, and how the fear and dread of a discovery, and his concern for the life of the woman whom he had seduced, led him on to farther degrees of deceit and wickedness, till he completed his guilt by the destruction of a great and worthy man; especially when they see him prostrate before God, confessing his sin, and supplicating forgiveness; and even exempted by God himself from the punishment of death which he had incurred, upon his ingenuously confessing, I have sinned against the Lord;
2 Samuel 12:13 an evident proof that his repentance was sincere, as it secured him immediate forgiveness from God, whom he had offended. See Chandler.
Psalms 51:1. Have mercy upon me, &c.— The gradation in the sense of the three words here made use of to express the divine compassion, and the propriety of the order in which they are placed, deserves particular observation. The first, rendered have mercy, or pity, denotes that kind of affection which is expressed by moaning over any object that we love and pity; that στοργη, natural affection, and tenderness, which even brute creatures discover to their young ones, by the several noises which they respectively make over them; and particularly the shrill voice of the camel, by which it testifies its love to its foal. The second, rendered loving-kindness, denotes a strong proneness, a ready, large, and liberal disposition to goodness and compassion; powerfully prompting to all instances of kindness and bounty; flowing as freely and plentifully as milk into the breasts, or as waters from a perpetual fountain. This denotes a higher degree of goodness than the former. The third, rendered tender mercies, denotes what the Greeks express by σπλαγχνιζεσθαι, that most tender pity which we signify by the moving of the heart and bowels, which argues the highest degree of compassion whereof human nature is susceptible. And how reviving is the belief and consideration of these abundant and tender compassions of God to one in David's circumstances, whose mind laboured under the burthen of the most heinous, complicated guilt, and the fear of the divine displeasure and vengeance! The original word, מחה mecheh, which we render blot out, properly signifies to wipe out, or wipe any thing absolutely clean, as a person wipes a dish. The original meaning is preferred, 2 Kings 21:13. The purport of the petition is, that God would entirely and absolutely forgive him, so as that no part of the guilt he had contracted might remain, and the punishment of it might be wholly removed. Chandler.