Psalm 50 (MT 51), 2 Kingdoms/2 Samuel 11-12, Romans 5:12-17
David’s confession, Psalm 50/51, is one of the most well-known psalms. It is used both liturgically and personally in prayer. Though it has a historical “anchor”—King David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah—its framing in the first person makes it apt for anyone to pray when approaching the righteous God.
As the penitent speaks to God, divine justice or righteousness takes first place, but we think also of is lovingkindness, mercy, desire for human uprightness, ability to cleanse, and purpose to renew us from the inside. Here is the Psalm:
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.
Immediately in the preface to the Psalm, we are directed to 2 Kingdoms/2 Samuel 11-12. This sad story speaks of David’s temptation regarding Bathsheba, the wife of a Hittite soldier called Uriah, who served in David’s army, of David’s adultery with her, of his attempt to hide the sin when she became pregnant, of Uriah’s refusal to take a furlough and go home to his wife (because others were still in battle), and of David’s command that he be put in a military position where he is inevitably killed. The prophet Nathan confronts him with the triple sin of adultery, deceit, and murder, and elicits David’s repentance, though there remain painful consequences for the king to bear. The psalm gives us evidence that David, though sinful, truly was a man after God’s own heart—here we see his heart-felt response to God’s rebuke, coupled with his acknowledgement of the generous character of the LORD. Here is a model for any of us and all of us flawed sinners before the face of our God and Redeemer. As St. John Chrysostom reminds us, “Nothing is more characteristic of a Christian than mercy” (ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 32.3).
The Psalm, with all its depth and beauty, also confronts us with two puzzles—David’s declaration that he has only sinned against God, and the nature of ancestral sin.
How is it that the king can declare in his confession, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned”? Here is a man who has committed three grievous sins involving others–adultery and murder against Bathsheba and Uriah, and deception which he has put into motion with the help of his subordinates. Today we would also point out his abuse of authority, which is a general sin against his people: the king is meant to keep justice, not profit from his position. Even in terms of the layout of the ten commandments, the first set are organized as sins against God (idolatry and so on), and the second group as sin against our neighbor.
I am reminded of an evangelical chorus that I sang as a young person which had the line “to You alone must my spirit yield.” Protestant though I was, and raised not to call others with the clerical honorific “father,” the line bothered me. Of course I had to submit to those over me, whether in the family or in the LORD: the words were too independent for my liking, even while I understood that God was the supreme authority, in a class by Himself.
That, I think, is the point: in comparison to what we owe God because of our trespasses, what we owe others is infinitesimal. David’s statement is not true factually, but it is true theologically. Every sin that we commit against a creature is, in the first place, a sin against God, the Creator. What may seem only to be a pious exaggeration reveals a deep truth about our relationship with each other and with God. This is, it seems, similar to the confession that we make before communion, and that St. Paul also made, that each of us is “chief” or “first” of sinners. How can this be, since it appears that we are comparing ourselves with others? The purpose of the “only against Thee,” or the “first of sinners” language, though, is to change our perspective, and remind us that we stand, alone, before the mighty and utterly holy God. He alone compels our attention, and in His gaze we see our sin (perhaps minor in human terms) for what it really is—participation in death and in the spirit of His adversary. As Gregory of Nazianzus reminds us, “God demands of us, as his only sacrifice, purification—that is, a contrite heart, the sacrifice of praise, a new creation in Christ, the new man, and the like, as the Scripture loves to call it” (On His Father’s Silence, Oration 16.2).
This is, then, our apt stance before God, as all worldly cares and commitments are laid aside, and we meet Him, so far as we can bear it, face-to-face. Once we have been healed, of course, we will also see the damage that our sins have done to brothers and sisters, and hasten to remedy this, if we have not done so already. But when we come before the living God, the only comparison is between Him and us. And, as He is loving, we know that He will not turn away. St. Augustine, paraphrasing what David says to God, puts it this way:
Do not turn Your face away from what You have done; turn your face away from what I have done. Let Your eye … distinguish between them, or else the nature may perish because of the flaw. You have done something, I too have done something. What you have done is called nature; what I have done is called a flaw. May the flaw be remedied and thus the nature preserved (Sermon 19.1).
What David prays is, then, “Do not despise the work of Your hands” –“what You have done.” And so we, too, see our deadly flaws for what they really are, and admit them before the only holy One.
The second problem we face is found in the phrase “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” From the earliest years Western commentators have seen this as evidence for a particular view of original sin, made popular by St. Augustine, that sin is passed on in the marital act, and that every child is thus born (indeed conceived) already guilty (Augustine, On Orignal Sin), and thus exposed to God’s wrath. Here is a doctrine that was maintained from Catholicism into Calvinist teaching, and which is construed in a different way by most Eastern fathers. We must not exaggerate the differences between East and West here, for Orthodox also speak of “ancestral sin,” and of the universal propensity to sin seen in every human being. We are indeed in Adam, inheritors of death, and with a spirit, soul, and body that do not work together as they should. Yet Eastern commentators have not seen in this verse a foundation for the doctrine of “original guilt” passed on through universal “concupiscense.” After all, we consider the genre of this OT passage, which is expressive poetry, and do not typically look to the OT as a sole source of doctrine—its aim is to point to Christ, first and foremost. Thus we would not be convinced by the argument of the blessed Augustine, who in his Sermon 170.4 argues that since David was born in lawful wedlock, the verse does not speak to his historical beginnings (his mother did not conceive him sinfully) but to the fact of original guilt in us all.
Of course, Western theologians hasten to add that the doctrine is also found in the New Testament, particularly in Romans 5:12-17. The most pertinent verses there read: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the Torah was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the One who was to come….” Here, the sequence is; Adam’s sin, death in the world, death spread to all because all inevitably sin. This is not, however, the rendering that we find in the Latin Bible, where the conjunction “because” is instead rendered “in whom,” that is, “in Adam all sinned” instead of “because all sinned.” This Latin wording, found in the Old Latin version, as in the Vulgate, reinforced the idea that every human being is conceived already guilty, since each of us were in the loins of Adam when the first parents sinned.
The doctrine was so powerful, in fact, that the Roman Church codified a necessary exception for the Theotokos, stating formally that she was “immaculately conceived” so as not to be stained by this guilt, and could thus be a fit bearer of the Christ. Orthodox have no need of such a dogma, since we know that, though born into a compromised world and as beings that are damaged, each of us does his or her own sinning; yet the Theotokos, from her early years, practiced saying “Yes” to God. She, like us, need a Savior, though, for there is only One who is absolutely holy, and it is before Him that we stand. Sin and ongoing death make up the soup in which we stew, so to speak, until we are transferred by baptism from the lineage of the Old Adam to become members of the New Man. So, with complete truth we confess, “behold, I was shapen in lawlessness,” throwing ourselves on the mercy of the One who has come to recreate us. The verse expresses our utter need of God’s mercy, from conception on, recognizing that this righteous One is also our Creator, Deliverer, and Re-Creator
An ancient English theologian, the venerable Bede, reminds us of the wonder of what God has called us to be, and looks from the sin forward to the prayer that David makes later in the Psalm:
It is only by participation in the divine goodness that a rational creature is recognized as being capable of becoming good. Hence the Lord also bears witness by a benevolent promise that “your Father from heaven will give his good Spirit to those who ask him.” Homilies on the Gospels 2.11
“Renew a right Spirit within me.”
With this we close, knowing that the Psalm not only looks for and anticipates forgivenes, but that it also envisages our being remade so that by the power of God’s very own Spirit, we might become like Him, like our Father in heaven.
Edith M. Humphrey 