Psalm 51:1-17

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)

Bernhard W. Anderson calls Psalm 51 “one of the pearls of the Psalter.”1Among the seven penitential psalms,2this one, in Weiser’s estimation, is the most important because it “demonstrates the essence of true penitence.”3This psalm falls generally under the classification of the individual lament, and more specifically, to use Kraus’s subcategory, “Songs of the Sick and Anguished.”4As a confession of sin, it is unparalleled in the Psalter, with only a few brief comparisons in Psalms 32:5; 38:18; 41:4; 69:5; and 130:1–8. Both Psalms 50 and 51 have an eye on the sacrificial system, but the focus is different. Psalm 50 raises no objections to sacrifices, even though God does not need them (50:8–15), while Psalm 51 insists that God takes no pleasure in sacrifices, but he has great regard for “a broken and contrite heart” (51:17). Despite the ostensible contradiction, they may in effect be complementary (see below).

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