A. Moody Stuart 
 
 The Fifty-First Psalm and the Encyclopaedia 
 
 Brltannlca 
 
 
 h^ 
 
^^ 
 
 OF Pli 
 
 V 
 
 imy> 
 
 MAR 12 1959 
 
 BS1450 
 .5I.S92 
 
THE FIFTY-FIRST PSALM 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA 
 
 BY 
 
 A. MOODY STUART, D.D. 
 
 EDINBURGH : MAOLAREN & MACNIVEN 
 
 1876. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 

THE FIFTY-FIRST PSALM 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ENOYOLOPiEDIA BRITANNICA 
 
 RY 
 
 A. MOODY STUART, D.D. 
 
 EDINBURGH : MACLAREN & MACNIVEN 
 
 187G. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The rejected Titles of the Fifty-first and other Psalms, . . 6 
 
 II. The alleged unfitness of David to have written the Psalm, as of Moses 
 
 to have written Deuteronomy, ..... 9 
 
 III, The Contents of the Psalm the Proof of its only possible Author, . 13 
 
 IV. Objections to the Davidic origin of the Psalm, . . . 19 
 
PSALM LL 
 To THE Chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the PRoniET 
 
 CAME UNTO him, AFTER HE HAD GONE IN TO BaTH-SHEBA. 
 
 1 Have mercy ujion me, God, according to thy loving-kindness ; 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 ^;a?-i 
 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 ^vhich 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, 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 loith thy free 
 Spirit : 
 
 13 Tlcen will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted 
 unto thee. 
 
 14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, God, thou God of my salva- 
 tion ; and m^ tongue shall sing aloud or thy righteousness. 
 
 15 Lord, open thou my lips ; and my mouth shall show 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, 
 God, thou wilt not despise. 
 
 18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion : build thou the walls of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 ] 9. 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. 
 
jrT JETOIT \ 
 
 I iiLc. stpibai 
 
 THE FIFTY-FIRST TSALM 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICi. 
 
 That the title of the Fifty- first Psahn is genuine, and that the 
 name of David is inscribed on the Psalm throughout, and written 
 as legibly in its confessions and hopes as in its title, has been the 
 nndoubting faith of the Hebrew nation and the Christian Church 
 for thousands of years. But the Encyclopcedia Britannica, in its 
 recent article on the Bible, assures us that the Psalm was not 
 composed till four hundred years after David's death. The theory 
 is not new, and its examination might have been reckoned unneces- 
 sary, except for the literary standing of the critic who adopts it, 
 and of the work in which he writes, and for the painful shock it 
 must therefore inflict on the devout reader of the Psalms. 
 
 After the Ten Commandments and the Fifty-third of Isaiah, 
 there is, perhaps, no other portion of the Hebrew Scriptures that 
 for these three thousand years has yielded richer fruit unto eternal 
 life; and if it is now plucked by the roots from its historic ground, 
 its leaf will be green no longer, and it will have lost for ever more 
 than half its fruit. During all these ages the history of David 
 has been shedding its light on every line of the Psalm, and lias 
 entered deeply and inseparably into the conviction, the comfort 
 and the salvation it has ministered to myriads of the redeemed. By 
 the words of the Psalm the historical essence of his repentance has 
 been woven through the life of kindred spirits in every nation and 
 tongue, and if the Church of the future is robbed of this priceless 
 
treasure in its historic setting, the ages to come will be sadly 
 impoverished as compared with the ages past. 
 
 In the following discussion, we must ask that our subject may 
 not be understood in its narrowest sense, when we proceed to take 
 up these points : The rejection of the titles of this' and other psalms, 
 the alleged unfitness of David to have written the Psalm, as of 
 Moses to have written Deuteronomy, the proof from its contents of 
 its only possible author, and the objections to this authorship. 
 
 I. — The eejected Titles of the Fifty-fiest and other Psalms. 
 
 It was the ancient belief of Jews and Christians that the titles 
 are as old as the Psalms, either written by their authors, or, at 
 least, not added at some later date ; and this tradition is confirmed 
 by the facts that some of the latest Psalms, as the song of the 
 weepers by the rivers of Babylon, want the titles, and that the 
 Hebrew musical notes in the titles are so old that, from a remote 
 date, the clew to their meaning has been lost. 
 
 On the subject of these inscriptions, it is well remarked by 
 Delitzsch, that '' the custom which has gained ground since the last 
 decade of the past century, of rejecting what has been historically 
 handed down, has at present grown into a despicable habit of 
 forming a decision too hastily, which, in any other department of 
 literature, wliere the judgment is not so warped by the drift of the 
 inquiry, would be regarded as folly." 
 
 The full and explicit title of the Fifty-first Psalm defines both 
 its author and its occasion, and so long as the inscriptions were 
 held in reverence, tliere was no room for dispute ; but the writer in 
 the Encyclopcedia speaks of them in these terms : " There is no 
 reason to believe that any title is as old as the Psalm to wdiich it 
 is prefixed, and some of the titles are certainly wrong; for example, 
 the author of the elegy on Saul and Jonathan could not possibly 
 have written Psalm Ixxxvi., which is a mere cento of reminis- 
 cences from otlier poems." Some distinguished critics, like Bleek, 
 
have modestly expressed a doubt about the authorship of the Eighty- 
 sixth Psalm, and if such had been the spirit of the present criticism, 
 the rejection of its brief title might have been left without remark. 
 But in all of us critical study ought surely not to be dissevered 
 from modesty and reverence in judging the word of the great 
 God. Men by living long become aware that in widely dif- 
 ferent circumstances, separated by a long interval of time, a 
 difference of thought and style goes a very little way to prove 
 that the man cannot possibly be the same ; and they learn that 
 while deep trials, like those in the Eighty-sixth Psalm, are often 
 fruitful in fresh ideas, they also tend to throw the soul back either 
 on its own former thoughts, or on the thoughts of others. Even 
 He who spake as never man spake did not utter new words of 
 His own in the darkest crisis of His sufferings, but betook Himself 
 to the reminiscence of the well-known words of David. Yet the 
 prayer in the eleventh verse, " Unite my heart to fear Thy name ; 
 I will praise Thee with all my heart," instead of being a repetition 
 out of other poems, we had taken to be without a parallel in all 
 the Hebrew Songs. " Knit my heart into one, that I may praise 
 Thee with my whole heart," presents a thought of quite singular 
 significance and beauty. This petition, in its rarity and in its intense- 
 ness, does most characteristically fit the lips of him who could say, 
 " I love the Lord " with more depth of meaning than any other 
 man ; no man in Israel was so likely to have thought and uttered 
 it as he who had so thoroughly sounded the depths of human 
 affection, and had sung of it so exquisitely in his elegy. Learned 
 critics and men of poetic taste, as well as the devout reader of the 
 Psalm, have been irresistibly arrested by the exquisite beauty of the 
 prayer, " Uni cor meum," and they would ask with no little interest 
 out of what older poem a thought that had seemed to them so new 
 has now been found to be a reminiscence. 
 
 There is no call, however, for any earnest contention about 
 the origin of this Psalm, but the case is very different as regards 
 both the Fifty-first and some other Psalms on whose Davidic author- 
 
ship we find the following general statement : "The assertion that no 
 Psalm is certainly David's is hypersceptical, and few remains of an- 
 cient literature have an authorship so well attested as the eighteenth, 
 or even as the seventh Psalm. These, along with the indubitably 
 Davidic poems in the Book of Samuel, give a sufficiently clear 
 image of a very unique genius, and make the ascription of several 
 other poems to David extremely probable." 
 
 The critic maintains that one Psalm was decidedly written by 
 David, or even two, the eighteenth and the seventh, and that the 
 ascription of several others to him is extremely probable. Then 
 the sixteenth, which the title ascribes to David, was either not 
 written, or, at least, was not certainly written by him. Yet the 
 Apostle Peter, in interpreting the Psalm by the inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit, says that the same David whose sepulchre might 
 still be seen at Jerusalem, spoke in that Psalm of Christ, concern- 
 ing whom God had sworn to him that He would raise him up of the 
 fruit of his loins. But if David did not write the Psalm, this 
 entire statement is, not designedly, yet most directly, false ; for in 
 that case the writer of the Psalm never received any promise that 
 the Messiah should be his son, and he was never entombed in 
 David's sepulchre ; and if these Pentecostal words are not to be 
 believed, there can be no faith attached to the Apostle's statement 
 that it was the risen Christ who poured out the Spirit on that day. 
 
 The Apostle Paul founds exactly the same argument on this 
 Psalm in Acts xiii. 3G ; and if we deny its authorship by David, 
 we must hold not only that both the great apostles to Jew and to 
 Gentile were mistaken in the fact regarding David, but that in 
 building the two walls of the Church on the crucified and risen 
 Christ as the one stone laid in Zion, they both altogether erred in 
 their selected scriptural proof of His resurrection. 
 
 In a case still stronger, the 110th Psalm, with its Davidic title, 
 is regarded either as certainly not David's, or as not certainly his. 
 Yet our Lord himself declares most explicitly tliat it was David, 
 the ancestor of the Messiah, who spoke in that Psalm, and He 
 
9 
 
 gives it out as a matter for earnest inquiry how the writer of the 
 Psalm could have Christ at once for his son and for his Lord. 
 No evasion can get rid of the conclusion that Christ knew tlie 
 Psalm to he written by David, for He says, " David himself saith 
 in the Book of Psalms, * The Lord said unto my Lord. . . .' David 
 therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son ? " It cannot be 
 pleaded that Jesus speaks thus, merely to stop the mouths of his 
 adversaries in their asking entangling questions, for it is Christ 
 himself who selects and proposes the question. The supposition 
 that David may not be the author of the Psalm involves the awful 
 blasphemy that the whole statement may be untrue, and the whole 
 argument a deception, because in that case the ancestor of Jesus 
 could not be affirmed to have called him his Lord. 
 
 The denial or the doubt of the Davidic titles of these two Psalms 
 is a much graver matter than setting aside the title of the Fifty- 
 first, because, however undesignedly, it does most directly impugn 
 the inspiration of the Apostles and the infallibility of our Lord ; 
 but it serves at the same time to show both how little value is to 
 be attached to the rejection of other titles, and how headlong is 
 the course of such criticism. 
 
 11. — The alleged unfitness of David to have written the 
 Psalm, as of Moses to have written Deuteronomy. 
 
 The arguments against the authorship of the Fifty-first Psalm 
 by David, and of Deuteronomy by Moses, derived from their con- 
 tents, are far from being formidable in either case ; and if there 
 are difficulties, let them be reverently stated. But when we come 
 to judgments on the fitness of inspired authors to write what the 
 Spirit of God has given them, we are treading on very sacred 
 ground, where no man could guide our steps without being himself 
 inspired ; and, without any reference to the present writer, it must 
 be said, that hitherto the forwardness of critics to " meddle with 
 things too high for us " has usually been in proportion as their 
 
 A 2 
 
10 
 
 writings fail to give evidence of their fitness for such spiritual 
 criticism. According to Kuenen, " The least elevated and least 
 pure conception of David's religion approaches the nearest to 
 the truth. His ideas of Jehovah are in harmony with the spirit 
 of his still half- barbarous age ; and it is only when the literature 
 of the age of David has been relegated to later times, that the 
 accounts relating to him become altogether comprehensible." 
 He therefore " abandons the hopeless attempt of uniting into one 
 person the poet of the Psalms with the David of history," and 
 David is set aside as incapable of conceiving the high spiritual 
 thoughts of the Psalms, which are all held to be the products of 
 much later and more developed times. But Kuenen begins his 
 Religion of Israel with denying a divine origin or authority for 
 the Bible more than for the Koran, sets aside any inspiration 
 except what flows from what he designates the "all-embracing 
 activity of God's spirit in humanity," rejects all miracles, all super- 
 natural prophecy, and ends his third volume with extolling *' the 
 most excellent individuality of Jesus," and " liberal Christianity with 
 its openly avowed Unitarianism." All these views the writer in 
 the Encyelopmclia would strongly repudiate ; and we earnestly wish 
 we could add that he also rejects his theory of development, and his 
 most irrational method of constructing history, not by inquiring 
 what its facts are, but by imagining what they ought to have been. 
 The unfitness of David for writing the Fifty-first Psalm is 
 stated in the Encyclopccdia in very general terms : — " This current 
 of productive psalmody runs apparently from David down to the 
 Exile, losing in the course of centuries something of its original 
 freshness and fire, but gaining a more chastened pathos and a 
 wider range of spiritual sympathy. Psalm Fifty-one, obviously 
 composed during the desolation of the Temple, marks, perhaps, the 
 last phase of this development." According to this theory, it took 
 more than four hundred years from David's time to develoj) the 
 chastened pathos and the wide spiritual sympathy of the Fifty- 
 first Psalm. But no pathos can surpass the lament over Absalom ; 
 
11 
 
 chasteniDg of spirit has very rarely exceeded the words, "Let 
 him curse on, for tlie Lord hath bidden him ;" and tliere is no 
 wider range of spiritual sympathy in the Fifty- first Psalm than in 
 the words of the Sixteenth, " The excellent of the earth in whom 
 is all n}y delight ;" and of the Hundred and Tenth, " Thy people 
 shall be willing in the day of tliy power/' 
 
 But the critic's estimate of David, as unfit to have written the 
 Fifty-first Psalm, will come out more distinctly by comparing it 
 with his estimate of Moses, of wliose unfitness to have written 
 Deuteronomy he speaks most definitely, and with an alarming 
 decision : — " The whole theological standpoint of the Book agrees 
 exactly with the period of prophetic literature, and gives the 
 highest and most spiritual view of the law to which our Lord him- 
 self directly attaches his teaching, and which cannot be placed at 
 the beginning of the theocratic development without making the 
 whole history unintelligible." As to the writer the whole history 
 of Israel becomes unintelligible if Moses is supposed to be capable of 
 the highly spiritual view of the law given in Deuteronomy, which 
 he holds not to have been attained till the prophetic period, or 
 about the eighth century before Christ ; — so to Kuenen the life of 
 Abraham is not true history, because its standpoint is as high and 
 spiritual as that of the same period. " Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," 
 he says, "are not only servants of Jehovah, but are also not inferior 
 to the prophets of the eighth century before Christ in pureness of 
 religious insight and inward spiritual piety .... this representa- 
 tion is utterly without foundation in history.*' This rejection of 
 the narrative of Abraham's life and character by Kuenen is founded 
 on exactly the same ground as the rejection of Moses as the author 
 of Deuteronomy by the w^riter in the Encyclopcedia, because their 
 reception would in both cases make them equal to the prophets of 
 the eighth century ; the patriarchal narrative is set aside because the 
 " pureness of its religious insight and its inward spiritual piety" are 
 so high, and the Deuteronomy of Moses is refused because it " gives 
 the highest and most spiritual view of the law ; " and beyond all 
 
12 
 
 doubt, if we accept the Encyclopccdias view of Moses, we must still 
 more accept Kueneii's view of Abraham. If Deuteronomy is too 
 high a book for the prophet to have written, Abraham's is too 
 high a history for the patriarch to have lived ; and his spiritual 
 elevation is according to this theory of development the more in- 
 credible of the two, because he lived in a still ruder age, and was 
 removed from the highly developed prophetic period by no less 
 than twelve hundred years. 
 
 But if Deuteronomy is too high for Moses, what of Exodus ? 
 Is it not likewise too high ? Most certainly. The subtle German 
 criticism of the past generation went the length of maintaining, 
 not only that many things in Exodus could not have been written 
 by Moses ; but that the " Ten Words " themselves could never have 
 entered his mind, because some of the views, both of God and of 
 man, both of divinity and morality, are the highest of which the 
 human intellect is capable, and could not have been conceived in 
 so barbarous an age. " I am Jehovah, thy God : thou shalt not 
 make unto thee any graven image," in the opening of the Command- 
 ments, gives the highest, most abstract, and most spiritual view of 
 God which the mind of man can conceive ; and at their close, 
 " Thou shalt not covet " gives the noblest and most refined view of 
 morals. It has, therefore, been held that it makes history unin- 
 telligible to suppose thoughts so sublime to have originated in so 
 early and rude an age ; and on the principles of the Encyclopcedia, 
 this conclusion is unquestionably right. There is nothing loftier 
 in Deuteronomy than these first and last words of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. The apostle Paul, who loves to quote Deuteronomy, 
 and to reason from its texts, had in his own personal history found 
 nothing in its noble chapters, tln^ough which the Spirit disclosed 
 to him so high and so spiritual a view of the law as the words 
 in Exodus, " Thou shalt not covet ; " and if Moses, as inspired by 
 the Holy Spirit, is judged to have been incapable of writing Deu- 
 teronomy on account of the spirituality of its views, he may also 
 be held to have been incapable of intelligently ministering the Ten 
 
13 
 
 Commandments. And where is this to end ? The critic's own 
 faith has arrested the process for himself; hut in its reasonable 
 results, and practical tendency, it can have only one termination 
 — the rejection of all that is supernatural in the Bible.^ 
 
 III. — The Contents of the Psalm the tkoof of its only 
 
 POSSIBLE AUTHOK. 
 
 The assertion in the Encyclopcedia that it was " obviously com- 
 posed during the desolation of the Temple" is to be noted, because 
 the expression serves to assure us that the writer does not pro- 
 fess to found his conclusion on a recondite scrutiny of the 
 Hebrew words, but on features of the Psalm that lie on its surface, 
 and are apparent to all. The school of theology, which appro- 
 priates to itself the name of scientific, which is distinguished by 
 acuteness and by industry, and some of whose writers, like Ew^ald, 
 have cast their speculations in an attractive form, is at the same 
 time marked by this characteristic and most unscientific feature, 
 that while they agree in rejecting, as contrary to science, what- 
 ever in the Bible is at first sight improbable, each writer sub- 
 
 1 Deuteronomy in the New Testament. We may advert to the clearness with 
 which the New Testament vouches for the authorship of this book, not only by the 
 express testimonies of Peter and of Stephen to the person of its author ; but by 
 the testimony of Paul to its date, when, after taking his leading quotation from 
 the Law out of the Book of Deuteronomy, and reasoning from its being so long 
 subsequent to Abraham, he makes the interval not twelve hundred years, 
 but four hundred and thirty. Still more important is our Lord's own testimony 
 regarding the law of divorce, found only in Deuteronomy, of which He says 
 expressly that it was "written" by Moses; and with the certainty of One who 
 knew the inward thoughts of men, adds that the secret motive which induced 
 Moses to write it was the hardness of Israel's heart ; and still further, that its 
 date was as high as, but not higher than, the time of Moses, and was therefore not 
 at all so old as the original law of marriage : when his argument would have had 
 tenfold weight with his hearers if He had told them, as we are now told, that 
 this much abused precept could claim no authority at all so ancient and so 
 unique in Israel as Moses ; but had originated in the mind of an anonymous 
 writer of an unknown date, seven or eight hundred years after his death, who 
 had put thoughts into his lips that had never entered his heart. 
 
u 
 
 stitutes some fanciful theory of his own, or oftener of some one 
 else, without taking account of the tenfold greater improbabilities 
 with which it is burdened. The writer in the Encyclopcedia 
 rejects the anti-supernatural views prevalent in this school, but he 
 too nearly agrees with them in disregarding the old historic foun- 
 dations; and with this Psalm he takes the least tenable of all 
 positions, that it was written during the Exile. 
 
 Taking up the Psalm as if it bore no title, and as if we had no 
 clew to its history, what we find is this : Its circumstances and 
 sentiments are so peculiar and distinguishing, that they are not 
 known to have been combined in the history and character of any 
 man but one in the whole human race. They are such as probably 
 never were combined in any other, and as certainly could not have 
 been found in any Israelite during the desolation of the Temple. 
 One deeply cut feature stamps the Psalm as widely different from 
 every other, and places it quite alone in the Psalter. It is the 
 startling fact that the Psalm is The Confessio7i of a Murderer. To 
 such a confession nothing elsewhere in the Psalms bears the least 
 resemblance ; and a guilt so appalling must form the burden of 
 the prayer throughout, although it is late in the Psalm before the 
 supplicant has the courage to name the dreadful act, just as in the 
 opening sentence of his prayer he does not utter the word " trans- 
 gressions" till he has most touchingly appealed to God for pity in 
 every form, in His mercy, in His loving-kindness, in the multitude 
 of His tender mercies. While he laments inward sin, and ac- 
 knowledges not only one but many transgressions, the " sin that is 
 ever before him " must be most of all the dark red stain of murder ; 
 from wdiich at last expressly, and with intense earnestness, he 
 implores to be redeemed, and which in his petition he seems pur- 
 posely to brand with the strong Hebrew word for blood used for 
 the death of Abel. It is not a prayer for the purifying of the 
 heart, but a loud cry for deliverance, for rescue from guilt and 
 condemnation : (Erue me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae) 
 ^'Deliver me from Uood-giUltmess, God, thou God of my salvation." 
 
15 
 
 Springing out of this radical distinction, there is the entire and 
 very marked absence of a class of pleas for pity taken from the 
 side of the suppliant that are common in the other penitential 
 Psalms. There is the acknowledged transgression, the broken 
 heart, the closed lips ; but the penitent presents no plea on the 
 ground of the hatred of his enemies, or of his own sincerity, or 
 even from his calling, or trusting, or waiting on the Lord.-^ 
 
 The confession brings to light a very remarkable history, one 
 far out of the common current of daily events, and quite con- 
 trary to the long downward course of an ungodly man ending in 
 violence and bloodshed, and followed by dark remorse. The life 
 of the suppliant has been a course of the highest spiritual expe- 
 rience of which man is capable, in the sense of God's presence, in 
 the light of his face, in the indw^elling of his Spirit, and in the joy 
 of his salvation. This heavenward walk has been succeeded by a 
 terrible fall, by inward foolishness, by the losing of a clean heart, 
 by deviation from the truth, finally and fearfully by staining his 
 
 ^ Blood-guiltiness. — It has been attempted to attach a vaguer meaning to the 
 term "blood," and to take it for guilt and punishment. But Hengstenberg says 
 that the only passage on which stress has been laid is Isaiah, ch. iv. 4 ; and that its 
 literal meaning is clear from ch. i. 15-21. A more plausible idea would be to 
 attach to the expression the sense of natural pollution from Ezek. ch. xvi. 6, 9. 
 But it would be quite inadmissible to attach to so common an expression a sense 
 so rare and peculiar unless the context made it clear, as in Ezekiel ; and the 
 petition itself plainly disproves such a meaning, because it is not, as in the 
 prophet, "washing" from blood that is referred to by the Psalmist, but he 
 asks to be " delivered," to be "snatched or plucked from danger" (Gesen.), as 
 being under condemnation ; Sept. 'Fvaai /ue e'^ alixdrcov ; Vulg., Libera me a 
 sanguinibus ; Pagnin,, Erue me de sanguinibus; Cler., Libera me a caedis crimine. 
 
 Neither could the apostle Paul's use of the term, in the words "I am 
 pure from the blood of all men," however helpful in a secondary sense to all 
 who have charge over the souls of others, be its primary meaning here, without 
 the connection making it unmistakably clear; and the confession is evidently not 
 of mere neglect, but of the gravest actual transgression. 
 
 As a prayer for more general use, the nearly literal confession of blood-guilti- 
 ness, along with prayer for the divine righteousness, would come home to thou- 
 sands of Jews at Pentecost ; it will yet be oflFered by the children of those who 
 cried, " His blood be on us and on our children ; " and is now very intelligible to 
 the man who is looking on Him whom he has pierced by sin and by unbelief. 
 
IG 
 
 hands with innocent blood. His sin against man is of a rarely 
 parallelled guilt, yet he speaks of it as committed against God 
 alone, and says that he will accept of His judgment as just if He 
 shall condemn him, indicating that there is no man above him in 
 the commonwealth to call him to account for his crime. To God 
 he makes his deeply ashamed and most humbly penitent confes- 
 sion, yet not with the remorse of unbelieving guilt, but with the faith 
 and hope of a child craving restoration to a Father's favour, and 
 with intense desire for the omnipotent creation within him of truth, 
 of wisdom, and of holiness ; for there is a constant and beautiful 
 mingling through the Psalm of prayer for pardon and for purity. 
 Along with his confession he would present a sacrifice in the 
 sanctuary, but the Holy One desires it not at his hands, or, as it 
 has been translated, would not accept it ; and no priest dare offer 
 a sacrifice for the sin of murder. This present exclusion from 
 the altar shuts him up to two distinct sacrifices of another kind. 
 One is the spiritual sacrifice of his own broken heart ; the 
 other is the atoning cleansing of his conscience, as if with the 
 hyssop dipped in blood ordained for the cleansing of the leper, 
 and the prayer, " Wash me throughly," may refer to the sevenfold 
 sprinkling of the leper with blood ; but the cleansing he asks is 
 not by human hands, but by a directly divine washing that will 
 make him whiter than snow. 
 
 To Christians there are two deep mysteries in the Psalm, not in 
 its words, as shone upon to us in the New Testament, but as they 
 were breathed from the heart, and uttered by the lips of a Jew : 
 the prayer just quoted, " Purge me with hyssop," and the corre- 
 sponding purpose, " I will sing aloud of thy righteousness." In 
 the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience by the blood of Christ, 
 and in Christ made of God unto us righteousness, both expressions 
 are clear and full to us ; but what did they mean in the mind of 
 the Jew whose prayer, given him by the Holy Spirit, fits us so 
 much better than any we could frame for ourselves? Undoubtedly 
 the two expressions are quite kindred in meaning : " I was shapen 
 
17 
 
 in iniquity, purge me with hyssop and I shall be whiter than 
 snow : I acknowledge my transgression, deliver me from blood- 
 guiltiness, and I will sing aloud of thy righteousness." The ac- 
 quittal of a murderer is mercy, not justice; but as it is elsewhere, 
 " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity," so 
 it must be here, " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth 
 righteousness." The not imputing of his own iniquity, and the 
 imputing of divine righteousness must here be the sulgect of his 
 song ; and it is emphatically righteousness without works, for it is 
 righteousness counted to a self-condemned and broken-hearted 
 murderer. Whatever we now find in the words that he could not 
 discern, he seems to have seen with an eye almost clearer than 
 ours that the divine sprinkling would make his crimson stain 
 whiter than snow ; and he knew not doubtfully, but assuredly, that 
 God's righteousness freely made his own would so acquit him from 
 the guilt of blood, that he would not merely celebrate his mercy, 
 but extol his righteousness, and that with no faltering voice, but 
 with his loudest song of praise. 
 
 In the closing petition of this deeply personal repentance, the 
 suppliant seems to intimate that he holds a public and represen- 
 tative position, that his sin might therefore be expected to injure 
 the community, and he appends an earnest prayer for the welfare 
 of Israel. He also looks forward in faith to a season when Israel 
 would offer abundant and acceptable sacrifices, from which he had 
 himself been excluded for a time ; and although he would not offer 
 a personal sacrifice for a crime for which there was no expiation 
 under the law, yet after that shall have been on other grounds for- 
 given he will join with Israel in their sacrifices, both of expiation 
 and of thanksgiving. One of the most noteworthy features in the 
 whole case remains to be added in the singular fact that this 
 penitential song, containing a confession of the darkest crime of 
 which man can be guilty, is publicly received, and embodied in 
 the songs of the sanctuary. 
 
 All this agrees minutely with the history of David, of his high 
 
18 
 
 place in the divine favour, of his deep fall, and of his Psalms 
 holding the first rank in the service of God notwithstandinoj his 
 great transgression. Such a history will fit no other known man 
 that ever lived, and no unknown exile in Babylon. If the penitent's 
 prayer for building the walls of Jerusalem (not, however, for re- 
 building them) must be taken in the letter, and must on that 
 account be held to prove him to be an exile, his prayer for cleans- 
 ing with hyssop must likewise be interpreted literally, and when 
 so taken it will prove, on the contrary, that he could not have been 
 absent from the land of accepted sacrifice. But the writer of the 
 Psalm was a murderer, and if he had been one of the exiles he 
 would have forfeited his life by his crime ; or if he had contrived 
 to escape the just penalty of the law, he would have been fain to 
 keep silence both about his former grace and his recent guilt. If, 
 on the one hand, this private criminal had read his confession openly, 
 it would have been nailed to the tree on which himself was hung. 
 And if, on the other hand, while still a fugitive from justice, he 
 had written an unsigned confession, full of professions of piety, is 
 it conceivable that it would have been allotted a place in the holy 
 songs of God's sanctuary ? Most men who have once had to do 
 with a murderer's religious utterances are apt to be careful how 
 they confide in them a second time. Our trust, indeed, is secured 
 by Scriptural authority in the case of the penitent thief; but his 
 brief petition is very different from a whole Psalm, and it came not 
 from the pen of a hidden fugitive, but from the lips of one who 
 died in the sight of all men, with his name and his crime written 
 over his cross. This example gives no warrant whatever for sup- 
 posing that such a place in the Church as belongs to the writer of 
 this Psalm either has been, or ever could be, allotted to an unknown 
 criminal. It is accorded to David only for his singularly high 
 position in Israel, in providence, in grace, and in prophetic inspira- 
 tion. All his liistory, previous and subsequent, is thoroughly 
 known to us ; this divinely imparted knowledge is essential to 
 secure our confidence in his penitential confession ; and as the 
 
19 
 
 fruit of it, all generations have had the fullest reliance on the 
 truth of every line of his matchless prayer. 
 
 But, further, it is hard to see what meaning can be attached 
 in the exile theory to the words, " else would I give it ; " because 
 when taken along with the last verse of the Psalm, their only 
 natural meaning in the lips of an exile is that he can offer no 
 acceptable sacrifice while the temple is in ruins. But if he has 
 been guilty of bloodshed his words are hypocritical, because he 
 knows that although the altar had stood, it would have rejected 
 any sacrifice for his heinous crime. 
 
 IV. — Objections to the Davidic origin of the Psalm. 
 
 To the view now given of the Psalm it is objected that its 
 confession of sin as against God alone may mean that to God 
 alone is every sinner finally responsible, and that by Him alone 
 can his sin be forgiven. This sense we earnestly hold to be included; 
 but that the Psalmist was likewise outwardly responsible to no 
 man, we take to be the full and natural meaning. As regards God 
 not desiring or accepting sacrifice, it is contended that the reference, 
 as in the Fortieth Psalm, is to the inef&cacy of the sacrificial blood 
 of beasts ; but it seems quite impossible to bring this interpreta- 
 tion into harmony with the concluding joyful commendation of 
 prospective sacrifices, not of another, but of the very same kind ; 
 which is quite consistent with the view we have taken of the 
 Psalmist's present exclusion from the altar. It is also pleaded that 
 if he referred to such exclusion he would have written " sin-offer- 
 ing ; " but " sacrifice " is a general term for an offering with blood, 
 and may surely include the sin-offering. There seems, however, 
 no cause for the royal penitent specifying either the sin or the 
 trespass- offering, as if he could conceive that his offences might 
 possibly, but did not really, come under the special provisions for 
 such sacrifices. His double transgression of adultery and murder 
 twice demanded, not the blood of beasts, but his own blood ; the 
 
20 
 
 murderer was to be dragged even from God's altar and slain ; and 
 as in presenting the sin-offering the priest was made cognisant of 
 the nature of the offence, it was scarcely necessary to state that he 
 would not accept it. But every sacrifice, and very markedly the 
 burnt-offering which he names, made expiation for the sins of the 
 offerer, who transferred them to the victim by laying his hand on 
 its head, that it might make atonement for him. There had been 
 no public declaration of David's guilt, and if without a confession 
 before man the king had approached the altar like any other 
 Israelite with a burnt-offering, the priest considering his position 
 would certainly not have refused to present his sacrifice ; and to 
 God alone he would have acknowledged the sins for which he sought 
 expiation. But David knew that in expiation for his double crime 
 God would accept of no sacrifice that he could bring to the altar, 
 and that nothing but a higher sprinkling could make atonement 
 for him, although after his reconciliation he would be accepted in 
 joining with Israel in their righteous offerings. 
 
 Some critics have objected that David had already received the 
 divine pardon through the lips of the prophet Nathan, and had 
 therefore no need to ask it, as is done in this Psalm. But that 
 was only the formal assurance of forgiveness through a messenger, 
 and could never have satisfied David's soul. He must receive the 
 divine pardon directly from God himself, with the light of his coun- 
 tenance, and the inward seal and sense of reconciliation in his 
 own heart. 
 
 The great central feature of the Psalm remains unassailable, and 
 not open to dispute, the confession of murder. This acknowledg- 
 ment can neither be set aside nor explained away ; and the confes- 
 sion of a crime that inexorably demanded the life of the criminal 
 has been proved to be quite incompatible with the publicly ac- 
 cepted Psalm of an exile. 
 
 As regards the public petitions in the last two verses, it was 
 most natural for David in his prayer to think of Israel whom he 
 had so dishonoured and so endangered by his crime. His own 
 
21 
 
 death by the hand either of God or of an avenger of blood would 
 have been a great calamity to the nation; and the sword threat- 
 ened by Nathan the prophet against his house could not but involve 
 serious evil to all Israel. He asks therefore that the Lord may 
 do good to Zion, and that he will build the walls of Jerusalem. 
 When, at a later period, the angel of the Lord threatens " to 
 destroy Jerusalem," his intellect is not so material as to suggest 
 the thought that the destruction of the city means the overthrow 
 of its stone and lime ; but he sees only his people's danger, and 
 pleads for them, "These sheep, what have they done?" So here, 
 if it were necessary, the second petition, " Build thou the walls of 
 Jerusalem," might most naturally be taken as only another form 
 of the first, " Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion." 
 
 At the same time, although it has sometimes been unaccountably 
 overlooked, it is quite certain that the walls, both of Jerusalem and 
 of Zion, were still unfinished at David's death, and the breaches in 
 both at the date of his confession must often have engaged his 
 earnest thoughts. As soon as David occupied Jerusalem he gave 
 himself assiduously to the building of its walls ; and Josephus 
 assigns it as a chief reason of the vast strength of those walls, that 
 " David and Solomon and the kings following were very zealous 
 about this work." Selecting his own dwelling in the citadel of 
 Zion, " he built round about from Millo and. inward ; he built the 
 city round about, even from Millo round about," and under him 
 " Joab repaired the rest of the city," 2 Sam. v. 9 ; 1 Chron, xi. i^. 
 Millo is understood to have been part of the citadel of Zion, and 
 to Zion also the site of the temple on Moriah was reckoned to 
 belong. But none of tliese great works were completed till the 
 reign of Solomon, who " closed the breaches of the city of David, 
 built Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem round about," 1 Kings iii. 1 ; 
 ix. 15; xi. 27. And with the still open breaches of Zion before 
 his eyes, and the unfinished walls of Jerusalem, and his own 
 accumulations of gold, silver, brass, iron, and marble for the temple, 
 it was the most natural of all prayei'S on the lips of David, " Do 
 
22 
 
 good in thy good pleasure unto Zion, build? thou the walls 
 of Jerusalem, then shalt thou be pleased with sacrifices of 
 righteousness." 
 
 On another account it was most fit that in asking the forgive- 
 ness of liis sin he should also entreat that God would build His 
 own house in Jerusalem ; for he could not but reflect that if the 
 blood of righteous war had before unfitted him for erecting an 
 habitation for the God of peace, the dark stain of innocent blood 
 had now made him much more unmeet for such an honour, and he 
 would therefore the more earnestly ask that God would build a 
 house for himself. And when from these closing verses the desola- 
 tion of the Temple is so confidently assigned for the Psalm, it is 
 to be noted that there was no time before the exile when prayer 
 could have been offered for the building of the temple, except 
 during the latter period of David's reign. Ten years earlier it had not 
 been contemplated, but at the time of his great transgression the 
 Temple, though not in ruins, might almost be said to be lying 
 unbuilt. During the period of his unconfessed guilt the outward 
 work might have either been interrupted, or else, for the quieting 
 of his troubled conscience, might have been prosecuted with the 
 greater diligence ; but now, when the soul is returning to its God, 
 his personal confession is sure to be followed by the springing 
 up of a renewed and intense desire for the accomplishment of the 
 great work which had long been the chief object of his life. 
 
 The writer in the Encyclopccdia, with apparent reference to this 
 portion of his article, speaks elsewhere of the "new results of 
 scholarly criticism affecting the authorship of a favourite Psalm." 
 But the subject requires the exercise of judgment rather than of 
 scholarship, because the theory is very apt to present itself to the 
 mind of any reader ; and the results of the German criticism, even 
 of one cast, scarcely appear to be so entirely in favour of his view 
 as his remark may seem to imply. In our own country Davidson, 
 and some others before him, take the exile theory of the Psalm, 
 wliich will occur at first sight to all who are prepared to set aside 
 
23 
 
 the title ; not a few German critics are of the same mind ; and 
 Kiienen is not prepared to ascribe any of the Psahns to David. 
 On the other hand, the accordance of the older commentators in 
 ascribing the Psalm to David needs no proof. But it may be 
 mentioned that Le Clerc takes, in substance, the view already given 
 of the connection between the divine rejection of sacrifices in the 
 sixteenth verse, and their acceptance in the nineteenth ; on which 
 he says that a careful study of the Psalm will lead to the conclu- 
 sion that God, having sanctioned no legal expiation of any kind for 
 the sins of adultery and murder, would utterly refuse a burnt- 
 offering presented with that view, but that after he had, on quite 
 other than legal grounds, granted a full pardon for those offences, 
 he would then accept David along with Israel in bringing sacrifices 
 both of atonement and of thank-offering. Amongst recent critics, 
 Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, and Kiel maintain the truth of the historic 
 title of the Psalm, and their orthodoxy is no good reason for setting 
 aside their criticism. But Bleek, whose criticism is often destruc- 
 tive enough, has no hesitation whatever in assigning the Psalm to 
 David, with the exception of the last two verses, which he sup- 
 poses to have been added afterwards to render it more suitable for 
 the sanctuary service ; a needless supposition, and unsupported by 
 any historical proof, but infinitely more probable than the ascrip- 
 tion of the Psalm to a Babylonian captive. And (as cited by 
 Hengstenberg) Ewald, for whom no theory is too bold, while not 
 allowing the Psalm to be David's, holds that it was composed 
 before the captivity, and must have been written by a king ; and 
 if so keen an eye fails to see its exile origin, it cannot be said to be 
 " obvious." 'No supposed authorship of the Psalm agrees with its 
 contents, except the old one founded on its historic title, and in 
 harmony with every line throughout. 
 
 The Psalms of David have for many generations been loved 
 and honoured in Scotland more than in any other land on earth, 
 and it will be sad indeed if w^e shall rob him now of the brightest 
 jewel in his crown ; if we shall still attach credit to the darkest 
 
24 
 
 passage in his history, but leave his memory stained with his sin 
 by snatching from him the penitential song given him by his God 
 in tenderest love to accompany and turn into richest fruit the story 
 of his crime. Over against his bitter sorrow, in which he must 
 often have wished that his right hand had forgot her cunning ere he 
 wrote and sent by the hands of his faithful soldier the blackest letter 
 in all history, '' Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, 
 and retire ye from him that he may be smitten and die ; " the God 
 whom he loved so ardently put into his hand the pen of a ready 
 writer to record this wondrous prayer as a song of saving health 
 for all nations ; and shall we degrade his open and sublime repen- 
 tance into the anonymous, and therefore hollow, confession of a 
 hidden criminal ? 
 
 Let us turn from the crude imagination to the noblest spectacle 
 ever seen among the ransomed sons of men, to the royal penitent 
 laying aside his robes to humble himself in sackcloth before his 
 people and his God, and delivering to the "Chief Musician" this 
 song of a broken spirit reaching ahke into the depths of sin in the 
 heart of man, and the depth of mercy in the heart of God. Let us 
 love and admire tlie man who, when his throne has become a pillory 
 at w^hich the arrows of envenomed scorn are shot from a thousand 
 blaspheming tongues, rises above all his shame before men, in the 
 grief of his shame before his beloved and dishonoured God, forgets 
 every eye that looks on him, save One, and smiting on his breast, 
 prays aloud, before all his people, " Hide Thy face from my sin." 
 
 PHINTKI) liY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HEH MA.IRsiTY, 
 AT THE KDINBUHOH UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
ill 
 
XfMS1%^ 
 
 m . ^^ 
 
 VA 
 
 BS1450.51 S92 
 
 The fifty-first Psalm and the 
 
 ^ Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00051 7047 r 
 
 k 
 
 '^, 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 ^P 
 
 m 
 
 s 
 
 ■■A/M