The whole closes with a summons to all whom Jehovah loves to love Him for His mercy's sake. The joyful singer longs for a chorus to join his single voice, as all devout hearts do. He generalises his own experience, as all who have for themselves experienced deliverance are entitled and bound to do, and discerns that in his single case the broad law is attested that the faithful are guarded whatever dangers assail, and "the proud doer" abundantly repaid for all his contempt and hatred of the just. Therefore the last result of contemplating God's ways with His servants is an incentive to courage, strength, and patient waiting for the Lord.
1 Blessed he whose transgression is taken away, whose sin is covered, 2 Blessed the man to whom Jehovah reckons not iniquity, In whose spirit is no guile.
3 When I kept silence, my bones rotted away, Through my roaring all the day. 4 For day and night Thy hand weighed heavily upon me; My sap was turned [as] in droughts of summer. Selah.
5 My sin I acknowledged to Thee, and my iniquity I covered not, I said, I will confess because of my transgressions to Jehovah, And Thou--Thou didst take away the iniquity of my sin. Selah.
6 Because of this let every one beloved [of Thee] pray to Thee in a time of finding; Surely when great waters are in flood, to him they shall not reach. 7 Thou art a shelter for me; from trouble wilt Thou preserve me, [With] shouts of deliverance wilt encircle me. Selah.
8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shouldest go; I will counsel thee, [with] mine eye upon thee. 9 Be not ye like horse, like mule, without understanding, Whose harness to hold them in is bit and bridle, Else no coming near to thee. 10 The wicked has many sorrows, And he who trusts in Jehovah--with loving-kindness will He encircle him.
11 Rejoice in Jehovah, and exult, ye righteous; And shout joyfully, all ye upright of heart.
One must have a dull ear not to hear the voice of personal experience in this psalm. It throbs with emotion, and is a burst of rapture from a heart tasting the sweetness of the new joy of forgiveness. It is hard to believe that the speaker is but a personification of the nation, and the difficulty is recognised by Cheyne's concession that we have here "principally, though not exclusively, a national psalm." The old opinion that it records David's experience in the dark time when, for a whole year, he lived impenitent after his great sin of sense, and was then broken down by Nathan's message and restored to peace through pardon following swiftly on penitence, is still defensible, and gives a fit setting for this gem. Whoever was the singer, his song goes deep down to permanent realities in conscience and in men's relations to God, and therefore is not for an age, but for all time. Across the dim waste of years, we hear this man speaking our sins, our penitence, our joy; and the antique words are as fresh, and fit as close to our experiences, as if they had been welled up from a living heart to-day. The theme is the way of forgiveness and its blessedness; and this is set forth in two parts: the first (vv. 1-5) a leaf from the psalmist's autobiography, the second (ver. 6 to end) the generalisation of individual experience and its application to others. In each part the prevailing division of verses is into strophes of two, each containing two members, but with some irregularity.
The page from the psalmist's confessions (vv. 1-5) begins with a burst of rapturous thankfulness for the joy of forgiveness (vv. 1, 2), passes to paint in dark colours the misery of sullen impenitence (vv. 3, 4), and then, in one longer verse, tells with glad wonder how sudden and complete was the transition to the joy of forgiveness by the way of penitence. It is a chart of one man's path from the depths to the heights, and avails to guide all.