Purge Me With Hyssop

Psalm 51 opens with an introduction: “To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” Bible readers too often overlook these introductions to the Psalms. The Psalm introductions explain the circumstances surrounding a given psalm. What is this incident involving David, Bathsheba and Nathan? David was king of Israel. One spring afternoon, from his palace roof, he looked down and spied a beautiful woman bathing. Her name was Bathsheba. She was married, and her husband was away fighting in the war. King David went to her in secret and committed adultery with her. One sin led to another. David wanted Bathsheba for his own. So he ordered his general Joab to send Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, into the hottest part of the battle with the Ammonites, where he would certainly be killed. And in fact Uriah, a godly man, did get killed. When Joab informed David about it, he proceeded to take Bathsheba as his wife. On this Second Sunday in Lent, let’s probe the first seven verses of Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is the fourth of the seven penitential Psalms appropriate for Lent. You can find the other six penitential Psalms on page XV of your Prayer Book.

God sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke the king for what he had done. Nathan told David about a rich man who owned a huge flock of sheep. This rich man stole the only lamb of a poor man to barbecue it for his guests. King David was outraged. “Who did it?” The man who has done this shall surely die!” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:7). It would hav been interesting to see the expression on David’s face. Sometimes guilt will come upon a person immediately after sin. Other times it takes days or years to sink in. The Holy Spirit convicts one of sin. Sometimes the guilt is mild and a person can hide it, or brush it aside. Other times the remorse gradually grows and becomes all consuming, creating a knot in the stomach, triggering tears, anguish, self-loathing, desperation. Shakespeare captured the feeling in Macbeth. The queen had also murdered. She slowly descended into madness. Hour after hour she rubs her hands together, trying to wash them, muttering “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” This queen wouldn’t repent. David did.

“So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13). David was a composer, a psalmist, and a harpist. But he had neglected to compose Psalms while indulging in sin. Once the remorse hit him, he took up his harp and poured out this song of tears “to the Chief Musician.” In Latin, the first word of this Psalm is: “Miserere!” “Have mercy!” Let’s read Psalm 51:1-2. [Read them.]

David’s sins cannot be excused, but the historical context should be kept in mind. Many of the kings and pharaohs of David’s age would have felt little compunction in doing what he did. Rulers typically treated their subjects poorly, arbitrarily doing as they pleased. Taking another man’s wife, and dispatching the husband would have been a mere peccadillo. Some rulers did a hundred times worse. David would have known about the practices of the other kings of his era, and this possibly caused him to think, “My colleagues do it and get away with it. I’ll try it too.”

Lust is mindless. If the conscience starts to bother a man, Satan makes him think that his situation is the exception. The adulterer reasons with himself, “Yes, God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” but my feeling for this person is unique. I think about her all the time. Our relationship feels right; it must be right. She makes me happy. So what if she has a husband and I have a wife. Our case is exceptional.” And so, the devil lulls one into rationalizing a terrible sin, oblivious to the repercussions. Nathan’s accusation to David, “You are the man!” startled him out of his moral slumber. He saw himself condemned before the Dreadful Judge, guilty of the crime, and deserving of punishment. It was only God’s grace that saved David from capital punishment.

David’s repentance is deep and sincere. He utters not one word of excuse for the sins he committed. Neither does he attempt to tone down the gravity of his offences or to blame others for what he has done. David saw himself as a sinner to be forgiven, not a patient to be healed. The fault is all his own: “Have mercy upon me, O God… Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.” A similar sentiment comes out in our Holy Communion liturgy. The Kyrie has us say, “Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us.” (p. 87) In his helplessness, David casts himself upon the mercy and the loving-kindness of God who only can blot out his transgressions by washing him thoroughly from his iniquity and cleansing him from his sin.

In verse three David complains, “My sin is always before me.” There are those whose sins are ever before them unforgiven, producing in them terror and remorse, but not penitence. In Crime and Punishment, the main character Raskolnikov plots the perfect murder. He is poor, an atheist, and a genius. He knows a greedy old lady who hoards money. The hag lives by herself in a dingy apartment on the third floor of a squalid building. She is no better than a cockroach. He will kill her, take her money, and nobody will be the worse. Well, he pulls off the murder and gets the money without anybody finding out. But there was one problem that he had not anticipated: guilt. Raskolnikov had worked out his plan beforehand. Logically, there should be no guilt. This woman was worthless. He was worthy. Life should have gone back to normal. It didn’t. The murder of the old woman tormented him, the guilt ate at his soul. The detective, Porfiry, seemed to guess his state of mind, and eventually Raskolnikov cracked. Like David, like the queen in Macbeth, like you and me, Raskolnikov suffered from a horrible condition, an inescapable condition, the condition of, “My sin is always before me.”

“Against You, You only, have I sinned.” This is from verse four. It is true that David had sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, against his family and nation, but first and foremost, he had offended the love and law of God. David did not forget how deeply he had hurt his neighbor by his lust, adultery and murder. He had done horrendous injury against several people. David did not avoid this facet of his sin, but he realized that all sin is against God: “Against You, You only, have I sinned.” This is a lesson for us. Every sin we commit, every violation of God’s law, is ultimately a sin against God, for men and women are created in God’s image.

Psalm 51:5 says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me” (v. 5) Here David is trying to get beyond his sins to his sin. He wants to get to the source of his wickedness. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” This does not mean of course that the processes of conception and birth are in themselves sinful. Rather, it points to “original sin.” “I was brought forth in iniquity; in sin my mother conceived me.” In other words, our human nature from its first beginnings has been infected with sin. As we inherit it from our parents, it is twisted with self-centeredness. David came to recognize his “original sin” when his passions of lust and cruelty overthrew him.

Let’s jump to verse seven and spend some time thinking about hyssop. David sings in agony, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (v. 7). Hyssop is a small aromatic plant common in Judea and Egypt. It is a bushy herb that grows to a height of 12 or 18 inches. Its thick, hairy leaves and branches can be made into a bunch, and holds liquids like a paintbrush. Once you attach a hyssop to a rod it can serve as a sponge for daubing, or as an instrument for sprinkling. When Jesus hanged on the cross, He said, “I thirst!” John tells us what the soldiers did in response: “Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” and bowing His head, He gave up His spirit” (John 19:29).

David cries to the Lord, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” At first glance, there seems to be no connection between the hyssop of David’s plea, and the hyssop of Christ’s passion. 950 years after David begged, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean” the Roman soldiers took hyssop and touched the lips of the Greater David at the moment He was shedding His blood on the cross; the blood that washes away sin. Rev. 1:5 says that Jesus, “washed us from our sins in his own blood.” The Prayer of Humble Access states something similar: “That our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood” David’s request for moral cleanness is answered on the cross. So it goes for you and me. Christ’s death on the cross, and your faith in Jesus and what He accomplished is the only solution that will blot out the spots of your sins, take away your guilt, and make you just before a holy God.

The Old Testament mentions of hyssop are worth exploring. Hyssop was used on three occasions. A bunch of hyssop was used for the sprinkling of the blood of the Passover lamb on the lintel and the doorposts. This occurred on the eve of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. The destroying angel passed over the homes where the thresholds had been daubed with the blood of the Passover Lamb, the blood that had been daubed with hyssop. The houses lacking the hyssop blood markings lost their first-born sons. Passover was the first use of hyssop in the Old Testament.

Second, the priest used a bunch of hyssop to cleanse a leper. The leper was pronounced clean after being sprinkled seven times with water from on a hyssop stick.

Third, a bunch of hyssop was used for the sprinkling of the water of separation mixed with the ashes of the red heifer. This sprinkling made one ceremonially clean after touching a dead body (Ex. 12:22; Lev. 14:1-7; Num. 19:6-9).

So which one of these rituals was David referring to when he prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”? It could have been the ceremony in which the ashes of the red heifer were mixed with water and sprinkled on the person, because Numbers 19:9 says that such an ablution “purified one from sin,” and purity was exactly what David sought.

David also may have been thinking of the ritual for leprosy. The laws of leprosy had some strange details. We studied them in Sunday School recently. If the white splotches of the leprous person disappeared, the priest examined the person, gave him a passing grade, took the hyssop, dipped it in water, sprinkled him seven times, and pronounced him clean. Here is the strange part: if the leprous individual became completely covered with leprosy, if leprosy spread over his body everywhere, turning his flesh entirely white, the priest must pronounce him clean as well (Lev. 13:13). Once the priest sprinkled the leper seven times with the hyssop branch, the clean man regained access to the worship of the tabernacle. Before then, he was quarantined. He was separated from the covenant community, separated from the feasts and sacrifices. He was forced to live outside the walls of the city with the dogs. When non-leprous individuals approached he must yell, “Unclean! Unclean!” His life of isolation was a symbol of the separation of the sheep and the goats at the end of time (Rev. 22:14-15), the separation between heaven and hell.

David longed for his sins to be as white as snow. He deserved to be condemned outside the city, barred from the temple, and cast away from the presence of the Lord. Black stains of murder and adultery defiled him. He cried to heaven, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Lord, have mercy. Take the hyssop and perform the priestly function. Sprinkle clean water upon me, a spiritual leper, and pronounce me clean. O Lord, do it “thoroughly.” [For some of these thoughts see Leviticus by Gary North. pp. 168-9.]

Psalm 51 is the prayer of a murderer and adulterer, and yet God has used it for the good of many. The Church asks you to use David’s words numerous times in the Prayer Book. It is amazing how central this psalm is to the historical liturgies of the church. St. Augustine said, “O most blessed sin of David! So gloriously atoned for! O most happy fault, which has brought so many wandering sheep to the Good Shepherd!” The Eastern Orthodox liturgy has the priest recite this Psalm every time he celebrates the Holy Communion. Many of the monastic orders of the West made their monks and nuns repeat it seven times a day in the daily office. Thomas Cranmer lifted phrases from it and inserted them into the Prayer Book at half a dozen places. After all is said and done, David was a man after God’s own heart. David’s sincere repentance is one of the reasons. During this season of lent, learn from Psalm 51. Read all seven of the penitential Psalms. Psalm 51 can teach you a profound sorrow for sin, a deep and unfeigned repentance, a contrite heart, a desire for renewal, and a trust in the forgiving love of God.

Let us pray.