Psalms 51:1

CONTENTS

Here is a penitential Psalm, penned by David, as the title expresses it, upon a remarkable occasion; in which we trace the sorrowful workings of his soul in a devout humiliation before God.

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.

Psalms 51:1

It is worthy our closest observation, in the very opening of this Psalm, and the subject connected with it, that at least nine months had passed by, after David's falling into the foul crimes of adultery and murder before any remorse seems to have taken place in his mind; nay, so far from it, that when Nathan came to him with a message from God, because the man of God veiled his discourse in a parable, David's heart took no alarm, and though alive to punish the man that had taken his neighbor's lamb, never thought of himself having taken his neighbor's wife, and having also caused him to be murdered. Alas! how doth sin harden? 2 Samuel 12:5. We have here the devout actings of the soul, when awakened by grace to a sense of sin: all that we meet with, verse by verse, serves but to show the stirrings of a distressed, conscious, guilty soul, in the recollection of his foul ingratitude to God, and his base dishonesty to man.