Psalm 32:1-7 Commentary

Psalm 32 has multiple voices.  In this commentary I will comment on the entire Psalm despite the RCL’s cutting it off at verse 7.  But the four remaining verses are important to get the upshot and meaning of the entire poem.

The psalm begins with the first voice with a double beatitude pronounced by an unknown narrator.  Such beatitudes are not uncommon in the Hebrew Psalter (the whole Psalter begins with one in Psalm 1) and are definitely forerunners to Jesus’s very famous Beatitudes at the head of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6.  A blessing is declared on the person whose sins get forgiven by God and a secondary echo of this in verse 2 blesses those who have no deceit in their hearts.  Probably the sense of “deceit” is the idea that a person tried to believe that they have no sins to confess to begin with.  Anyone who tries to fool themselves where the presence of sin in their lives is concerned is deceitful, first and foremost with their own selves but also before the God who sees all and so who knows better.

Then we get the voice of the psalmist in verses 3-7.  We get a kind of autobiographical look back at a time when the psalmist refused to confess his sins.  Maybe it was a deceitful attempt at self-deception (“No sin here!”) or maybe it was a repression of unpleasant facts.  We have perhaps all had such an experience.  There is something we don’t want to talk about, that we don’t want to disclose perhaps to even someone as close as a spouse.  Maybe it’s not a sin we are hiding but it is some kind of secret, perhaps something we find to be simply embarrassing to admit.  And so we don’t.  We keep it hidden and tucked away.  But it plagues you, especially if you are in a relationship that is founded on honesty.  And very often the breaking point comes when you spill the beans and many of us know from personal experience that when that happens, the tears often flow freely too.

This was the experience of the psalmist before God.  He did not come clean.  But it was agonizing for him.  He couldn’t sleep.  He couldn’t get the matter off his mind and heart.  It is amazing how a tortured mind and soul results in physical manifestations.  When the psalmist testified to wasted bones and a sapping of energy and strength, this was likely no metaphor.

So then it all came out in a huge penitential gush.  Sins were confessed.  Apologies were made.  Mercy was begged for.  And the mercy came in a gush from God even greater than the confessional gush itself.  And this leads to the logical “Therefore” that comes in verse 6 as the psalmist calls for others to follow his example because the blessing of peace that comes following God’s forgiveness of us is even more sweet and lyric than the pain and agony of his silence had been.

This is where the RCL would have us stop but we need to keep going as in verse 8 we get yet another voice in Psalm 32 and this appears to be the voice of God.  Theologically it is instructive to note that God follows up his forgiving of the psalmist not by saying, “I’m glad you feel better!  It was a pleasure to forgive you.”  No, God says that going forward, forgiveness is followed up by instruction.  This ought to be a welcome word for us.  After all, the grace of God that cleanses us of our sins is also supposed to point us in the direction of renewal, of renewed determination to lead a better life going forward.  So the idea that we need to stay closer to God’s instructions for our lives and work harder to stay in the middle of the paths of discipleship down which our God in Christ is leading us by the Holy Spirit makes sense.

The psalm also has God saying that we ought not be like a horse or donkey who cannot get along without a bridle in its mouth.  I actually think that we could all use a divine bridle in our mouths!  In a sense, the leading of God’s Spirit and the Spirit’s enabling us to follow God’s instructions is rather similar to how we keep a horse moving where we want it to go.  And it’s not a bad thing.  God then concludes by noting the many woes of the wicked but the joy of those who know God’s chesed—that catch-all gorgeous Hebrew word meaning grace, mercy, lovingkindness, and faithfulness—is the best thing ever.  We lean into all of that because it is our very life.

The psalm then concludes in the same narrator’s voice we got in verses 1 and 2 and the beatitudes there as we are all called to rejoice and sing because of all the wonderful truths Psalm 32 set before our hearts.

Illustration Idea

Someone once noted that people in especially the United States—but this may be true of people all over the world and across history—pride themselves on being “self-made individuals.”  We laud the entrepreneurs who figure out how to build the proverbial better mouse trap and then become fabulously wealthy as a result.  Many people look down on charity, on welfare, on being dependent in any sense.  As the late Colin Powell once said in a speech he delivered years ago in my hometown, “No one ever gave me anything.  I earned everything I have.”  Independence.  Self-reliance.  A free spirit.  Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.  Rags to riches.  These are the narratives that fuel our culture and shape our imaginations and sensibilities.

Psalm 32 steps in to remind us that everything and everyone is actually more interconnected and dependent than that.  No one operates or lives in a vacuum.  No one can escape the gaze of God and no one can outrun their own sins and their own sinfulness generally.  We are utterly dependent on the grace of God every moment of our lives and this is a good thing even if we’d much rather declare our independence.  No, we need all the help we can get in life and from our God in Christ.  We need the cleansing and the renewal of baptism.  We need the Spirit to instruct and guide us at every step along the way.  And as Psalm 32 shows us, when we accept that and lean into that and let that shape our imaginations and sensibilities, the end is joy.  Eternal joy.