one thing to be wise headed and wise tongued, and another to be wise
hearted, and therefore in Scripture nothing more ordinary than to set
forth wisdom that is true indeed by the heart. God himself is said _to
be wise of heart_. Foolish creatures are like Ephraim, “a silly dove
without heart.” They may have _head_ enough, notion enough, _flashing
light_, appearing to others enough, but they are without a heart; they
have not the great work there, a _new head_ and an _old heart_, a _full
head_ and an _empty heart_, a _light and burning profession_, and a
dark, dead, and cold heart; he that takes up in such a condition is a
fool and an errant fool.—_John Murcot, 1657._
_Verse 6.—“And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”_
Some read it, “In the hidden part thou _hadst_ made me to know wisdom;”
_that_ thou hadst done, but I have fallen from my high state, marred thy
handiwork. “By one plunge into lust I have fallen and fouled
myself.”—_Arthur Jackson._
_Verse 6._—The copulative particle which connects the two clauses,
implies the correspondence between the revelation of the divine will on
the one part and the desire and prayer of the penitent heart on the
other. “_Thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part
thou shalt make me to know wisdom._” “What I want thou hast promised to
give.” Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and the awakened mind
is conscious that they are so.—_Thomas T. Biddulph._
_Verses 6-8._—The right conviction of sin comprehends its being
acknowledged not only in our _works_, but also in our entire
_being_.—_Augustus F. Tholuck._
_Verse 7.—“Purge me with hyssop.”_ Do I well to prescribe to God with
that he shall purge me, as though I knew all God’s medicines as well as
himself? and which is worse, I to prescribe and he to administer? But
excuse me, O my soul, it is not I that prescribe it to God, it is God
that prescribes it to me; for hyssop is his own receipt, and one of the
ingredients prescribed by himself to make the water of separation for
curing the leprosy.... I must confess I was glad at heart when I first
heard hyssop spoken of; to think I should be purged so gently, and with
a thing that may so easily be had, for hyssop grows in every garden; and
then I thought I might go fetch it thence and purge myself, but now I
perceive this is not the hyssop of which Solomon writ when he writ from
the cedar to the hyssop; but this hyssop is rather the herb grace, which
never grew in garden but in that of Paradise, and which none can fetch
thence unless God himself deliver it. The truth is, this hyssop was
sometimes a cedar; the highest of all trees became the lowest of all
shrubs, only to be made this hyssop for us: for Christ indeed is the
true hyssop, and his blood the juice of hyssop that only can purge away
my sins.—_Sir Richard Baker._
_Verse 7.—“Purge me with hyssop.”_ תְּחַטְּאֵנִי. Properly, _expiate my
sin_ with hyssop. The Psalmist alludes to the purification from the
leprosy (Levit. xiv. 52), or from the touch of a dead body (Num. xix.
19), both of which were to be done by the sprinkling of water and other
things with hyssop.—_Samuel Chandler._
_Verse 7.—“Hyssop.”_ The _lasaf_ or _asaf_, the caper plant, the bright
green creeper which climbs out of the fissures of the rocks in the
Sinaitic valleys, has been identified on grounds of great probability
with the “hyssop” or _ezob_ of Scripture; and thus explains whence came
the green branches used, even in the desert, for sprinkling the water
over the tents of the Israelites.—_Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, in “Sinai and
Palestine.” 1864._
_Verse 7.—“Hyssop.”_ Between twenty and thirty different plants have
been proposed, but no one of them comes so near the above requirements
as the caper plant (_Capparis spinosa_). It grows “out of the wall;” its
stalks supply both bunch and rod admirably fitted for the ends
indicated; and it has ever been esteemed in the East as possessing
cleansing properties.—_John Duns, D.D., in “Biblical Natural Science.”_
_Verse 7.—“Hyssop.”_ What a pity that Solomon’s botany is lost, in which
he spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that
springeth out of the wall! The cedar we know, but what is the “_hyssop_”
of the royal botanist? Mr. B——, French consul of this city [Sidon], and
an enthusiastic botanist, exhibited to me two varieties of hyssop; one,
called _zatar_ by the Arabs, having the fragrance of thyme, with a hot
pungent taste, and long, slender stems. A bunch of these would answer
very well for sprinkling the paschal and sacrificial blood on the lintel
and posts of the doors, and over the persons and houses cleansed from
the leprosy. Mr. B——, however, thinks that a very small green plant,
like a moss which covers old walls in damp places, is the “_hyssop_” of
Solomon. This I doubt. The other kind also springs out of walls, those
of the gardens especially, and was much more likely to attract the
attention of the royal student.—_W. M. Thomson, D.D., in “The Land and
the Book.”_
_Verse 7._—The paraphrase of this verse in the _Chaldee_ is: “Thou wilt
sprinkle me like the priest, which sprinkleth the unclean with the
purifying waters, with hyssop, with the ashes of an heifer, and I shall
be clean.”—_John Morison._
_Verse 7.—“I shall be whiter than snow.”_ But how is this possible? All
the dyers upon earth cannot dye a red into white; and how, then, is it
possible that my sins which are as red as scarlet should ever be made as
white as snow? Indeed such retrogradation is no work of human art; it
must be only his doing who brought the sun ten degrees back in the dial
of Ahaz: for God hath a nitre of grace that can bring not only the
redness of scarlet sins, but even the blackness of deadly sins, into its
native purity and whiteness again. But say it be possible, yet what need
is there of so great a whiteness, as to be “_whiter than snow_”? seeing
snow is not as _paries dealbatus_, a painted wall, white without and
foul within; but it is white, _intus et in cute_, within and without,
throughout and all over; and what eye so curious but such a whiteness
may content? Yet such a whiteness will not serve, for I may be as white
as snow and yet a leper still; as it is said of Gehazi that “he went
from Elisha a leper as white as snow;” it must be therefore _whiter than
snow_. And such a whiteness it is that God’s washing works upon us,
makes within us; for no snow is so white in the eyes of men as a soul
cleansed from sin is in the sight of God. And yet, a whiter whiteness
than this too; for being purged from sin we shall, _induere stolam
album_, put on the white robe; and this is a whiteness as much whiter
than snow as angelical whiteness is more than elemental.—_Sir Richard
Baker._
_Verse 7._—In the Hebrew language there are two words to express the
different kinds of washing, and they are always used with the strictest
propriety; the one, to signify that kind of washing which _pervades the
substance_ of the thing washed, and cleanses it thoroughly; and the
other to express that kind of washing which only _cleanses the surface_
of a substance which the water cannot penetrate. The former is applied
to the washing of clothes; the latter is used for washing some part of
the body. By a beautiful and strong metaphor, David uses the former word
in this and the second verse: “_Wash me throughly from mine iniquity and
cleanse me from my sin_;” “_Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow._”
So in Jer. iv. 14, the same word is applied to the heart.—_Richard
Mant._
_Verse 8.—“Make me to hear joy and gladness.”_ This is the exceeding
great love of the Lord toward his children, that he hath not only
provided a sure salvation for them through the remission of their sins
in Christ Jesus, but also seals up in their heart the testimony thereof
by his Holy Spirit of adoption, and that for their present consolation,
lest they should be swallowed up of heaviness through continual
temptations. Though he speak not to all his children as he did to
Daniel, by an angel, “O man, greatly beloved of God,” nor as he did to
the blessed Virgin Mary, “Hail, Mary, freely beloved,” yet doth he
witness the same to the hearts of his children by an inward testimony:
when they hear it they are alive; when they want it they are but dead;
their souls refuse all other comfort whatsoever.—_William Cowper._
_Verse 8.—“Make me to hear joy and gladness.”_ As a Christian is the
most sorrowful man in the world, so there is none more glad than he. For
the cause of his joy is greatest. In respect his misery was greatest,
his delivery greatest, therefore his joy greatest. From hell and death
is he freed, to life in heaven is he brought.... The person from whom he
seeketh this joy is God: “_Make me to hear_,” saith he; whereby he would
teach us that this joy cometh only from God; it is he who is the
fountain of joy and all pleasure, for “all good things come from above.”
Natural joys proceed from a natural and fleshly fountain; spiritual joys
spring only from God: so he who seeketh those joys beneath seeketh hot
water under cold ice.—_Archibald Symson._
_Verse 8.—“Make me to hear joy and gladness.”_ Another reference to the
expiation of the leper, whose ear was to be touched with the blood of
the trespass-offering and the oil, as well as thumb and toe, to show
that his faculties were now prepared for the service of God; so David
prays that his ears may be sanctified to the hearing of joy and
gladness; this an unsanctified heart can never receive.—_W. Wilson._
_Verse 8.—“The bones which thou hast broken.”_ God, in favour to his
children, doth afflict them for sin; and the very phrase of breaking his
bones, though it express extremity of misery and pain, yet it hath hope
in it, for broken bones by a cunning hand may be set again and return to
their former use and strength; so that a conscience distressed for sins
is not out of hope; yet upon that hope no wise man will adventure upon
sin, saying, though I am wounded, yet I may be healed again; though I am
broken, I may be repaired; for let him consider—1. Who breaks his
bones—_Thou_; he that made us our bones and put them in their several
places, and tied them together with ligaments, and covered them with
flesh; he that keepeth all our bones from breaking; it must be a great
matter that must move him to break the bones of any of us. The God of
all consolation, that comforteth us in all our distresses, when he
cometh to distress us, this makes affliction weigh heavy.... 2. The pain
of the affliction exprest so feelingly in the breaking of bones, which,
as is said, is the anguish of the soul for sin, and fear of the
consuming fire of God’s wrath, and the tempest, as Job calls it, of
anger. 3. The pain of setting these bones again: for, though bones
dislocated may be put in joint, and though bones broken may be set
again, yet this is not done without pain and great extremity to the
patient.
Repentance setteth all our broken, pained bones; it recovereth the soul
from the anguish thereof; but he that once feeleth the smart of a true
repentance, will say, the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season,
are as hard a bargain as ever he made, and as dear bought; they cost
tears, which are _sanguis vulnerati cordis_, the blood of a wounded
heart; they cost sighs and groans which cannot be expressed; they cost
watching, fasting, taming of the body to bring it in subjection, even to
the crucifying of the flesh with the lusts thereof. Therefore, let no
man adventure his bones in hope of setting them again.—_Samuel Page._
_Verse 8.—“That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.”_ The
displeasure which God expressed against the sins he had been guilty of,
and the deep sense he had of the aggravated nature of them, filled him
with those pains and agonies of mind, as that he compares them to that
exquisite torture he must have felt had all his bones been crushed, for
the original word דִּכִּיתָ, signifies more than broken, namely, being
entirely mashed; and he compares the joy that God’s declaring himself
fully reconciled to him would produce in his mind, to that inconceivable
pleasure, which would arise from the instantaneous restoring and healing
those bones, after they had been thus broken and crushed to
pieces.—_Samuel Chandler._
_Verse 9.—“Hide thy face from my sins.”_ The verb סִתֵּר properly
signifies _to veil_, or hide with a veil.—_Samuel Chandler._
_Verse 9.—“Hide thy face from my sins.”_ He said in the third verse,
that his sin was always in his sight; and now he prays that God would
put it out of his sight. This is a very good order. If we hold our sins
in our eyes to pursue them, God will cast them behind his back to pardon
them: if we remember them and repent, he will forget them and forgive:
otherwise, _peccatum unde homo non avertit, advertit Deus: et si
advertit, animadvertit_—the sin from which man turns not, God looks to
it; and if he look to it, sure he will punish it.—_William Cowper._
_Verse 9.—“All mine iniquities.”_ See how one sin calleth to mind many
thousands, which though they lie asleep a long time, like a sleeping
debt, yet we know not how soon they may be reckoned for. Make sure of a
general pardon, and take heed of adding new sins to the old.—_John
Trapp._
_Verse 10.—“Create in me a clean heart, O God.”_ O thou that createdst
the first heaven and the first earth of nothing! O thou that createst
the _new heaven_ and the _new earth_ (wherein dwells righteousness),
when sin had made the creature worse than nothing! O thou that createst
the _new creature_, the new man, fit to be an inhabitant of the new
world, of the new Jerusalem! O thou that hast said, “Behold, I make all
things new:” _create_ thou in me, even in me, “_a clean heart; and renew
a right spirit within me._”—_Matthew Lawrence._
_Verse 10.—“Create in me a clean heart, O God,”_ etc. David prayeth the
Lord _to create in him a new heart_, not to correct his old heart, but
to create him a new heart; showing that his heart was like an old
garment, so rotten and tattered that he could make no good of it by
patching or piecing, but even must cut it off, and take a new. Therefore
Paul saith, “Cast off the old man;” not pick him and wash him till he be
clean, but cast him off and begin anew, as David did. Will ye know what
this renewing is? It is the repairing of the image of God, until we be
like Adam when he dwelt in Paradise. As there is a whole old man, so
there must be a whole new man. The old man must change with the new man,
wisdom for wisdom, love for love, fear for fear; his worldly wisdom for
heavenly wisdom, his carnal love for spiritual love, his servile fear
for Christian fear, his idle thoughts for holy thoughts, his vain words
for wholesome words, his fleshly works for sanctified works.—_Henry
Smith._
_Verse 10.—“Create in me a clean heart.”_ _Creating_, to speak properly,
is to make of nought, and is here used improperly. The prophet speaketh
according to his own feeling and present judgment of himself, as though
he had lost all, and had no goodness in himself. No doubt the prophet’s
heart was in part clean, though not so much as he desired. These things
thus opened, here cometh a question first to be answered. _Quest._
Whether David could have lost the cleanness of heart, having once had
it? _Ans._ No. The gifts and calling of God, that is (as I take it), the
gifts of effectual calling, are such as God never repenteth of or taketh
away. Faith, hope, and charity are abiding gifts, as sure as the
election of God, which is unchangeable. Indeed, the children of God, if
we only considered them in themselves with their enemies, might fall
away, but being founded upon the unchangeable nature of God, and
immutability of his counsel, they cannot, the gates of hell shall not
prevail against them, the elect cannot be deceived or plucked out of
Christ’s hands. Nay, certain it is that David did not actually leave his
former cleanness. For sure it is, his heart smiting him (as here it
did), so doing before in less matters, it was not wholly void of
cleanness. And again, it could not pray for cleanness if it were not
somewhat clean. This is most sure, that by grievous sins much filthiness
cometh to the soul, as by a boisterous wind a tree may lose his leaves
and some branches, so as that the party sinning may be brought into as
great passions almost as if he had lost all, but the desire of grace is
an infallible certainty of some grace of that kind. The prophet
therefore desireth not a clean heart because he had it not in any sort,
but because he could not so well perceive it in himself, and take such
comfort in it as he had done before, and for that he desired it a great
deal more than now he had it. So learned, so rich men, think themselves
not learned, not rich, in respect of that which they do desire, and when
the sun is up, the moon seemeth to have no light.—_George Estey, in
“Certaine Godly and Learned Expositions,” 1603._
_Verse 10.—“Create in me a clean heart, O God,”_ etc. This “creation” is
from nothing. David uses the same word of our creation which Moses uses
of “the creation of the heaven and the earth.” Our creation “in Jesus
Christ” is no mere strengthening of our powers, no mere aiding of our
natural weakness by the might of the grace of God, it is not a mere
amendment, improvement of our moral habits; it is a creation out of
nothing, of that which we had not before. There was nothing in us
whereof to make it. We were decayed, corrupt, dead in trespasses and
sins. What is dead becometh not alive, except by the infusion of what it
had not. What is corrupt receiveth not soundness, save by passing away
itself and being replaced by a new production. “The old man” passeth not
into the new man, but is “put off.” It is not the basis of the new life,
but a hindrance to it. It must be “put off” and the new man “put on,”
“created in Christ Jesus.”—_E. B. Pusey, D.D., 1853._
_Verse 10 (first clause)._—He used the word _create_ (Heb. _bara_), a
word only used of the work of God, and showing that the change in him
could be wrought only by God.—_Christopher Wordsworth._
_Verse 10.—“A clean heart.”_ The priest was required to make a strict
examination of the skin of the leper before he could pronounce him
clean; David prays God to make his heart clean.—_W. Wilson._
_Verse 10.—“A right spirit.”_ _A steadfast spirit_, _i.e._, a mind
steady in following the path of duty.—_French and Skinner._
_Verses 10-12._—Who was to do this work? Not _himself_; God alone.
Therefore, he prays: “O God, create—O Lord, renew; uphold by thy
Spirit.”—_Adam Clarke._
_Verse 11.—“Cast me not away from thy presence.”_ David lamented before
that sin had slain him, and made him like a dead man, wanting a heart or
quickening spirit; and now he fears lest, as the dead are abhorred by
the living, so the Lord should cast him as a dead and abominable thing
out of his presence. Whereof we learn this is one of the just
punishments of sin; it procures the casting out of a man from the face
of God; and it may let us see how dear bought are the pleasures of sin
when a man to enjoy the face of the creature deprives himself of the
comfortable face of the Creator; as David here, for the carnal love of
the face of Bathsheba, puts himself in danger to be cast out for ever
from the presence of the Lord his God. If a man could remember this in
all Satan’s temptations, what it is that the deceiver offers, and what
it is again that he seeks, he would be loth to buy the perishing
pleasures of sin upon such a price as Satan selleth them, but would
answer him as the apostle did Simon Magus. “Thy money, with thyself, go
into perdition;” thy gain, thy glory, thy pleasure, and whatever thou
wouldst give me to offend the Lord my God, go with thyself into
perdition, for what canst thou offer unto me comparable to that which
thou wouldst steal from me?
But how is it that he prays, “_Cast me not out from thy presence_”? May
a man be cast any way from it? Saith he not himself, “What way can I
flee from thy presence?” This is soon answered by distinguishing his
twofold presence—one in mercy, wherewith he refresheth and comforteth
his own, and this without intermission they enjoy who are in heaven;
another, in wrath, whereby he terrifies and torments without
intermission the damned in hell. As to them who are upon earth, certain
it is he is displeased with many, who, because they see not his angry
face, regard it not, borne out with temporal recreations of the
creature, which will fail them; and there are many, again, to whom he
looks as a loving Father in Christ, and yet they see not his merciful
face by reason of many interjected veils; but to them who once have felt
the sweetness of his favourable face it is death to want it.—_William
Cowper._
_Verse 11.—“Cast me not away from thy presence.”_ Like the leper who is
banished from society till cleansed, or as Saul was rejected from being
king, because he obeyed not the word of the Lord. 1 Sam. xv. 23. David
could not but feel that his transgressions would have deserved a similar
rejection.—_W. Wilson._
_Verse 11.—“Cast me not away.”_ Lord, though I, alas! have cast thee
from me, yet cast me not away: hide not thy face from me, although I so
often have refused to look at thee; leave me not without help, to perish
in my sins, though I have aforetime left thee.—_Fra Thomé de Jesu._
_Verse 11.—“Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”_ The words of this verse
imply that the Spirit had not altogether been taken away from him,
however much his gifts had been temporarily obscured.... Upon one point
he had fallen into a deadly lethargy, but he was not “given over to a
reprobate mind;” and it is scarcely conceivable that the rebuke of
Nathan the prophet should have operated so easily and so suddenly in
arousing him had there been no latent spark of godliness still
remaining.... The truth on which we are now insisting is an important
one, as many learned men have been inconsiderately drawn into the
opinion that the elect, by falling into mortal sin, may lose the Spirit
altogether, and be alienated from God. The contrary is clearly declared
by Peter, who tells us that the word by which we are born again is an
incorruptible seed (1 Peter i. 23); and John is equally explicit in
informing us that the elect are preserved from falling away altogether.
1 John iii. 9. However much they may appear for a time to have been cast
off by God, it is afterwards seen that grace must have been alive in
their breast even during that interval when it seemed to be extinct. Nor
is there any force in the objection that David speaks as if he feared
that he might be deprived of the Spirit. It is natural that the saints,
when they have fallen into sin, and have thus done what they could to
expel the grace of God, should feel an anxiety upon this point; but it
is their duty to hold fast the truth, that grace is the incorruptible
seed of God, which never can perish in any heart where it has been
deposited. This is the spirit displayed by David. Reflecting upon his
offence, he is agitated with fears, and yet rests in the persuasion
that, being a child of God, he would not be deprived of what, indeed, he
had justly forfeited.—_John Calvin._
_Verse 12.—“Restore.”_ It is no small comfort to a man that hath lost
his receipt for a debt paid when he remembers that the man he deals with
is a good and just man, though his discharge is not presently to be
found. That God whom thou hast to deal with is very gracious; what thou
hast lost he is ready to restore (the evidence of thy grace I mean).
David begged this, and obtained it. Yea, saith faith, if it were true
what thou fearest, that thy grace was never true, there is mercy enough
in God’s heart to pardon all thy former hypocrisy if thou comest in the
sincerity of thy heart; and so faith persuades the soul by an act of
adventure to cast itself upon God in Christ. Wilt not thou, saith faith,
expect to find as much mercy at God’s hands as thou canst look for at a
man’s? It is not beyond the line of created mercy to forgive many
unkindnesses, much falseness and unfaithfulness, upon an humble, sincere
acknowledgment of the same. The world is not so bad but it abounds with
parents who can do thus much for their children, and masters for their
servants; and is that hard for God to do which is so easy in his
creature? Thus faith vindicates God’s name. And so long as we have not
lost sight of God’s merciful heart, our head will be kept above water,
though we want the evidence of our own grace.—_William Gurnall._