How many [are] mine iniquities and sins? make me to know my transgression and my sin.
Ver. 23. How many are mine iniquities and sins?] How many? too many to be reckoned: sin imputed to thee, sins inherent in thee, sins issuing from thee; commissions, omissions, failings in the manner of performance (for a good work may be marred in the doing, as many a garment is in the making, and many a tale in the telling); thy life is fuller of sins than the firmament is of stars or the furnace of sparks, besides thy birthblot and inward evils which might justly cause thy destruction, as a man may die of inward bleeding. When the house is well swept, and all rooms seem very clean, if the sun do but shine into it through the windows, the beams thereof discover an infinite number of motes in all places; so will it be with the best, if narrowly examined. Lesser sins, secret faults, are of daily, and almost hourly, incursion; yet we must be cleansed from them, Psalms 19:12, or else vae hominum vitro quantumvis laudabili, saith one, Woe to the life of men, though praiseworthy, as the world judgeth. A pardon there is of course for such sins, and they do not usually distract and plunge the conscience; but yet that pardon must be sued out, and these sins must be disliked and bewailed.
Make me to know my transgression and my sin] That particular sin that thou chiefly strikest at for every affliction hath a voice in it, Micah 6:9, and saith to the sufferer, as those mariners did to Jonah, John 1:8, What evil hast thou committed, or admitted? what good hast thou omitted, or intermitted? Up and search. Israel hath sinned: why liest thou upon thy face? as the Lord once said to Joshua, Joshua 7:10,11 : something surely there is amiss that God would have amended; it is, therefore, meet to be said unto him, "Make me to know my transgression and my sin," yea, the iniquity of my sin, the filthiness of my lewdness, all my transgressions in all my sins, as the phrase is, Leviticus 16:21, that is, how many transgressions are wrapped up in my several sins and their circumstances. This either Job meant here, or else he was afterwards by Elihu tutored to it, Job 34:31,32, "Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more: That which I see not teach thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no more."