Psalm 51 in the King James Version

The heading above verse 1 is part of the Hebrew text, and the King James prints it in small type. The American Standard Version of 1901 renders it this way: "For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David; when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." The numbered text that follows is the King James Version, free of copyright in the United States.

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

4 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.

5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

15 O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

16 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

19 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.

The heading sends the reader to a specific story. In 2 Samuel 11 David sees Bathsheba from his roof, sends for her, and sleeps with her while her husband Uriah is at war. When she becomes pregnant he arranges Uriah's death. In 2 Samuel 12 Nathan tells him a parable about a rich man who took a poor man's only lamb, and when David erupts in anger Nathan answers: "Thou art the man."

David's reply in the King James is short: "I have sinned against the LORD." The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes that in Hebrew this is two words. Nancy deClaissé-Walford, writing for Working Preacher, suggests reading Psalm 51 as the rest of what David said.

What the heading does not settle is who wrote the poem. Superscriptions are old, and 73 psalms carry the words "of David," but the Wikipedia summary of current scholarship on the Psalms reports that modern scholars do not accept Davidic authorship as historical fact and read the headings as a way of linking poems to famous figures. Barnes and the Pulpit Commentary take the heading at face value and defend it. Both sides are reading the same line.

The heading also shifts the numbers. Hebrew Bibles count it as verses 1 and 2, so "Create in me a clean heart" is 51:10 in the King James and 51:12 in a Hebrew Bible. The Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate number the whole psalm as 50, which is why Catholic and Orthodox books call it Psalm 50 and why its Latin first word, Miserere, became its name.

The last two verses change the subject. After a prayer about one person's guilt, verse 18 asks God to "build thou the walls of Jerusalem," and verse 19 looks ahead to bulls on the altar again. Ellicott's Commentary records that Theodoret, a fifth century bishop, already said these words suited the exiles in Babylon better than David.

The Cambridge Bible goes further and treats verses 18 and 19 as an addition by the exiles, who adapted David's prayer to their own situation. The Pulpit Commentary answers that Jerusalem's fortifications were unfinished in David's time, so a king who feared that his sin might stall the work could have prayed for the walls himself. Barnes names De Wette, Doederlein, and Rosenmuller as the critics who dated the psalm, or this part of it, to the captivity, and he says their conclusion is not necessary.

Keil and Delitzsch concede that a liturgical addition made during the exile is a natural guess. They still argue that the whole psalm, closing verses included, was known to Isaiah and therefore older than the exile. John Kselman, writing in The Way, reads the entire psalm against a ruined Temple, where praise and a broken spirit took the place of sacrifice until the altar could be rebuilt.

That is a live disagreement, and this page does not resolve it. What it changes is small and practical. If verses 18 and 19 come from a later community, then one man's confession was taken up by a whole people as their own prayer, and synagogues and churches still pray it that way.

Form critics sort the psalms into types. Nancy deClaissé-Walford, writing for Working Preacher, classifies Psalm 51 as an individual lament. Wikipedia's Psalms article, summarising Hermann Gunkel's categories, calls that the most common type and describes it as an invocation of God, a lament, pleas for help, and often a closing note of confidence. Church tradition gives it a second label. The name penitential psalms comes from the sixth century commentary of Cassiodorus, which groups it with Psalms 6, 32, 38, 102, 130, and 143.

Psalm 51 fits the lament shape and bends it. Laments usually have an enemy, a sickness, or a false accuser. This one has none. The trouble is entirely the speaker's own conduct, and the usual list of lament elements offers a choice between protesting innocence and admitting guilt. Psalm 51 takes the second option and stays there.

Alexander MacLaren points out that the opening uses three different Hebrew words for wrongdoing. Transgression means rebellion against a rightful authority. Iniquity means something twisted. Sin means missing a mark. The psalm moves from that confession in verses 1 to 6, through cleansing in 7 to 9 and a new heart in 10 to 12, to a vow to teach and sing in 13 to 15, and then to the question of sacrifice.

Knowing the form keeps a reader from expecting the wrong thing. A lament is a petition. It records what was asked and how confident the asker was, and any answer from God lies outside the poem.

Verse 10 is the line most people know from this psalm. The verb behind "create" is bara, the same verb as Genesis 1:1. Brown-Driver-Briggs defines it as shape, fashion, or create, always of divine activity, and lists the clean heart of Psalm 51 among the transformations God performs. The speaker wants something made that only God makes.

Verse 11 asks God not to take away "thy holy spirit." The King James prints holy spirit in lower case here, while the American Standard and the World English Bible capitalise Spirit. Hebrew has no capital letters, so the capital is a translator's decision about how to read the phrase. Albert Barnes says it is not certain David meant what later Christian doctrine means by the phrase, and adds that the words can properly carry that fuller sense.

John Gill and the Cambridge Bible both connect the fear to Saul, the king before David. First Samuel 16:14 says, "But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul." A king who had watched that happen to his predecessor had reason to pray this line.

Verse 17, the broken and contrite heart, shares its vocabulary with Psalm 34:18, which pairs a broken heart with a contrite spirit. This site has a separate page on that verse.

Verse 4 is the hardest line in the psalm for a modern reader: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned." If the heading is right, David had wronged Bathsheba and had a loyal soldier killed. Uriah does not appear anywhere in the poem.

Commentators split three ways. The Cambridge Bible says the words should not be pressed so hard as to exclude sin against people, because all sin is finally sin against God's law, and a king answered to God in a particular way. Barnes says the offence against God so filled David's view that he lost sight of its other dimensions for the moment. Ellicott reads the verse as the voice of the nation confessing a breach of the covenant, which removes the problem by removing David from the line.

Paul quotes the second half of the verse in Romans 3:4, and his wording differs from the King James psalm: "That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged." Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible both note that Paul is quoting the Greek Septuagint, which explains the change from "be clear when thou judgest."

Whichever reading you take, the verse describes how the speaker sees his guilt, and the people he hurt are still owed a reckoning of their own.

It does not promise that the damage goes away. In 2 Samuel 12:13 Nathan tells David, "The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." The next verse continues: "the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die." Three verses earlier Nathan had said the sword would never depart from David's house. Forgiveness and consequence arrive in the same conversation.

It does not say the speaker's mother sinned. Verse 5 reads "in sin did my mother conceive me," and Barnes says plainly that the line casts no reflection on her. Benson's commentary calls it the general reading of Jewish and Christian interpreters that the verse confesses inherited sinfulness, and the Cambridge Bible reads it that way while warning that the speaker is not using his nature as an excuse. Ellicott records that some later rabbis read it as a claim that David was born of adultery, and he sets that reading aside.

It does not abolish sacrifice. Verse 16 says God does not delight in burnt offering, and verse 19 says God will be pleased with burnt offering again. Ellicott's comment is that the psalmist no more abrogates ceremonies than the prophets do. Hosea 6:6 makes the same kind of comparison: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice."

And it does not replace putting things right with people. In Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus tells a worshipper who remembers a grievance to leave the gift at the altar and "first be reconciled to thy brother."

Verse 5 in the King James says "I was shapen in iniquity." The American Standard has "brought forth" and the World English Bible has "born." The Hebrew verb is chul, which Strong's defines as to twist or whirl and, specifically, to writhe in pain, especially in childbirth. Barnes makes the same point. The line is about being born.

Verse 12 matters more. The King James asks God to "uphold me with thy free spirit." The American Standard and the World English Bible both read "a willing spirit." Barnes notes that the words "with thy" are not in the original, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say "thy" ought not to be supplied. Brown-Driver-Briggs glosses the phrase as a willing spirit. Keil and Delitzsch take it as the human spirit made willing, while Gill reads it as the Holy Spirit. Read one way the speaker asks for God's Spirit; read the other he asks to be made willing.

Verse 14 has "bloodguiltiness" where the World English Bible has "the guilt of bloodshed." The Hebrew is the plural of the word for blood, which Strong's notes is used especially of bloodshed. If the heading is right, this is the one place the psalm comes close to naming Uriah.

Verse 7 says "Purge me with hyssop" where the American Standard and WEB say "Purify." Hyssop was the plant Israel's purification rites used for sprinkling. Numbers 19:18 uses it to cleanse a person who had touched the dead.

Psalm 51 has a long life in public worship, and the uses are specific. The Catholic Liturgy of the Hours sets it for Morning Prayer every Friday, and parts of it are the responsorial psalm on Ash Wednesday. A priest may assign it as a penance after confession. Verse 7, which begins Asperges me in Latin, is traditionally sung while the priest sprinkles holy water before Mass.

In synagogue, verse 15 in English numbering, "O Lord, open thou my lips," is said before the Amidah at every prayer service. The Talmud in Yoma 86b uses verse 3, "my sin is ever before me," to teach that a penitent should stay watchful in the area where they failed even after confession. Eastern Orthodox Christians read it several times a day across the hours.

In English courts it had a stranger career. A defendant who could read the first verse could claim benefit of clergy and be moved to a church court, where the punishments were lighter. That is how Psalm 51:1 came to be called the neck-verse.

People reach for it now in moments like these. The affair has come out. The audit found what you did. You said something to your child that you cannot take back. You are standing in a confession line and cannot remember the words. Psalm 51 gives you sentences when your own have run out.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who prized the broken heart of verse 17, also warned that for most people a broken heart held all day slides into depression. His advice, recorded in Rabbi Nachman's Wisdom, number 41, was to set aside a fixed time each day for heartbreak before God and to be joyful the rest of the day.

That is a useful test. If the guilt has stopped being a prayer and become the background of every hour, if you are not sleeping, or if you have started to think the people around you would be better off without you, that belongs to a doctor or a licensed counsellor. The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline answers at 988, by call or text, around the clock in the United States. If someone is in danger right now, call 911.

If what you did harmed another person, the psalm is where the repair starts, and the repair still has to happen. For the sacrament, call your parish and ask for a priest by name. For anything else, your own pastor is a phone call away.

PrayWithJesus.ai is software made by a company. Nobody in any church has approved what it says, and it has no authority to teach. Where your tradition reads Psalm 51 differently from this page, trust your tradition.