Псалом 50

The inscription of the psalm indicates the reason for writing - the prophet Nathan’s denunciation of David for his crime with Bathsheba and Uriah, and the entire content is a prayer of repentance. God! Forgive and cleanse, by Your great mercy, my sin that burdens me. I am deeply aware of my guilt before You (3-6). I was conceived and born in sin. You gave me revelations, you loved me. Show your mercy by cleansing and forgiving my sin and make me joyful at the forgiveness I have received (7-14). Open my mouth to preach and praise You. This type of pleasing God is more pleasant to You than external sacrifices (15–19). Ps.50:3. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy, and according to the multitude of Your mercies, blot out my iniquities. Ps.50:4. Wash me from my iniquity many times, and cleanse me from my sin, Ps.50:5. for I acknowledge my iniquities, and my sin is always before me. David's awareness of his sin and his guilt before God was so deep that, praying for forgiveness and his cleansing, he appeals only to the great mercy of God. These verses very clearly characterize David as a person with a highly developed moral sense: every sin of his caused in him deep self-condemnation and painful dissatisfaction with himself, David fell low in his own eyes and judged himself so strictly that in this case he remembered only one thing, how deeply he had fallen, how much he had offended God and how unworthy he was before Him. This strength, the height of moral feeling and the severity of self-analysis show that the fall of David, which was possible for him as a person, could not be a manifestation of a bad “mood” in him, the dominance of “sinful and lustful desires” in him, could not be a “conscious” insult to God and a violation of His commandments, but an impulse, a temporary infatuation, followed by a period of prolonged repentance and self-flagellation (which we mentioned earlier, see (Ps. 24)). It is this consciousness of his sinfulness that prompts David to ask God for washing, the cleansing of his soul, since sin is “always” before Him. By this cleansing, David meant, as can be seen from what follows, not just the forgiveness of sin, but the cleansing of his spirit with the transfer of “punishment”, in order to satisfy that Divine Justice, about which His law speaks in the commandments of Moses. David's thirst for purification before God is very clearly expressed in Heb. the text where Ps.50:4 reads: “Wash me from my iniquity many times over.” Ps.50:6. You, You alone, have I sinned and done evil in Your sight, so that You are righteous in Your judgment and pure in Your judgment. Ps.50:7. Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and my mother gave birth to me in sin. The gravity of David’s sin lies in the fact that he “sinned God alone... and only did evil against Him.” This does not mean that David did not recognize himself guilty before Uriah, since below he prays to God for forgiveness of sin for shedding blood (the murder of Uriah), and does not mean that he approved of the measures taken for this purpose, but that his actions are serious, first of all, an insult to God. His law gave direct commandments that prohibited deception, murder and violation of the purity of family life. This commandment of the law banished from public and private life such phenomena that before this commandment among all eastern peoples not only were not considered crimes, but were equated with virtue. For example, depravity was illuminated by a religious cult, deception to achieve one’s goals was considered dexterity, and a person’s life, if he interfered with the personal well-being of another, was considered nothing (for example, the customs of family revenge, military glory, measured by the number of killed enemies). God gave a law by which the indicated phenomena were declared crimes, which is why David says that he is first and most guilty before God alone. For the sin David committed, God, through the prophet Nathan, imposed punishment on him (2 Samuel 12:10–14). David considers such a sentence upon himself to be fully deserved (“The Lord is righteous in judgment... and pure in judgment”), since his sin is an insult to God, requiring retribution to teach the guilty and maintain the authority of the Law given in His commandments before people. Such a prayer for cleansing, with recognition and confession of the deservedness of punishment, in addition to the desire to ease one’s conscience by suffering the latter, could also be caused by another motivation - using the example of David, punished by God for the sin he committed, to show all the people the importance of observing God’s commandments and the need to take care of the purity of their lives. However, the sin committed by David is not a deliberate and conscious desire to offend God, but is a consequence of the temporary dominance in him of that sinful inclination that was implanted in him from birth, that is, hereditary original sin. Ps.50:8. Behold, You have loved the truth in your heart and have shown me [Your] wisdom within me. “He showed me wisdom within me,” that is, he spiritually enlightened me, communicated that revelation through the prophet, which I could not have recognized on my own. - “Behold, You have loved the truth.” The Lord loves only truth, and therefore He wants to see this truth in people. To maintain their attraction to the truth, He gives revelations to people. Ps.50:9. Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be clean; Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Ps.50:10. Let me hear joy and gladness, and the bones broken by You will rejoice. Ps.50:11. Turn Your face away from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Ps.50:12. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Ps.50:13. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Ps.50:14. Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation and strengthen me with the sovereign Spirit. In order to serve the truth and be worthy of subsequent revelations from God, David prays for the cleansing of his sin, as through sprinkling with hyssop (the juice of the plant), clothes and objects and persons defiled were made usable (Lev. 14:6–7, 49–52), and for that moral enlightenment that would make him whiter than snow. Such mercy of God filled him with joy and gladness. David prays to God for the restoration of purity and former righteousness (12), for approaching and reconciling with God. By the “Holy Spirit” one can mean either God’s favor towards David in general, or the sending down of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity (13). - “Give me the opportunity to hear joy and gladness” - give me the opportunity to rejoice in salvation and forgiveness from You. – “By the sovereign Spirit” – the same as by the Holy Spirit (14). “Confirm” - make me firm in following Your commandments. Ps.50:15. I will teach the wicked Your ways, and the wicked will turn to You. David's cleansing from sin would motivate him to be concerned about converting the wicked and sinners to God. Ps.50:16. Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, God of my salvation, and my tongue will praise Your righteousness. Ps.50:17. God! Open my mouth, and my mouth will declare Your praise: Ps.50:18. for You do not desire sacrifice, I would give it; You do not favor burnt offerings. Ps.50:19. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; You will not despise a contrite and humble heart, O God. “Deliver me from bloodshed, O God” - from the sin of shedding blood, killing Uriah. - “My tongue will praise Your righteousness” so that David can praise God with clean lips for the justification (“truth”) He has sent. For the same pure prayer and reconciliation with God, it is not enough to offer sacrifices alone - David offered a lot of them - for this it is necessary to have the appropriate mood of “a contrite spirit and a contrite and humble heart,” that is, consciousness of one’s sin, illness, suffering for it and a “humble” heart, submissive before the judgment of God. David here clearly indicates in which case the ritual law is sufficient to appease God: it is not the types of sacrificial animals and the abundance of the sacrifice that are important, but a corresponding repentant mood in the one bringing them is also necessary; It is in this spiritual mood of the sacrificer that the special value of the sacrifice lies. This latter indicates that the ritual law of Moses is not an eternal, unchangeable and forever and obligatory form of worship of God, but that it can and will be replaced by a higher type of service to God - service in the spirit, i.e. here the replacement of the Old Law with the New is predicted. We saw this in a clearer and more precise presentation of Psalm 39. Ps.50:20. Bless, [Lord,] Zion according to Your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem: Ps.50:21. then the sacrifices of righteousness, the wave offerings, and the burnt offerings will be acceptable to You; Then they will place bullocks on Your altar. These verses were probably added to the psalm during the Babylonian captivity, since their content does not correspond to the historical situation of Jerusalem and the Jewish people during the reign of David. Then the walls of Jerusalem were not destroyed and worship at the church was not stopped. Jews experienced this state only during captivity. This psalm, representing the repentant and prayerfully contrite state of David, reminded the captive Jews of their past sinful life and could cause them to repent of their sins, so they could pray with the words of this psalm, adding to it a petition for their return to their homeland and for the restoration of the former greatness of the Jerusalem Temple. This psalm, like Ps.37, is called repentant and is used more often than others in worship, being part of Little Compline, Midnight Office and the Third Hour. He very clearly depicts both the repentant state of a sinner, which every person is, and the feeling of humility with which everyone who prays to Him should turn to God. The strength of the humility expressed in it and the depth of repentance contributed to such a widespread use of the psalm. You might be interested in: