Let us read through this psalm diligently, and let us lament with a repentant heart. For what should be meditated on with greater eagerness than that in which our sins are forgiven by the voice of such a great Judge? This psalm is something special and contains something unique. There are other psalms of the repentant that rejoice at their conclusion in remorse prompted by God. But in this psalm, the Lord himself, to whom the psalmist makes his appeal with great longing, promises mercy and joy.

This psalm looks forward to the grace of the New Testament.

This is a psalm about God’s grace and about our being justified by no merits whatever on our own part but only by the mercy of the Lord our God. . . . The title of the psalm is For David himself, for understanding, so this is a psalm that promotes understanding. The first stage of understanding is to recognize that you are a sinner. The second stage of understanding is that when, having received the gift of faith, you begin to do good by choosing to love, you attribute this not to your own powers but to the grace of God.

[Blessed David] teaches people, even if they are righteous, that they ought not trust in the merit of their actions nor attribute to themselves any good work. Rather, whatever good work they perform they should ascribe to divine grace and confess that God’s mercy is necessary for them, and [they] should believe themselves blessed if they deserve to have God well disposed toward them.

I class as enviable and blessed those who by the Lord’s lovingkindness receive forgiveness of sins apart from their works. To them, in fact, he exercises such generosity as not only to forgive them but also cover over their sins so that no trace of them remains.

The expression pardoning sins applies to their forgiveness, for he takes them away altogether, and what he remembers not are as though they did not exist.

May God at length grant you to see that night when darkness is turned into day, of which it was said the darkness hides not from you, but the night shall shine as the day.^[1] Then let the gate of paradise be opened to each man and each woman among you. Then may you enjoy waters that bear Christ and have his sweet savor. Then may you receive his name of Christian, and the capacity for heavenly things. And even now, I pray you, lift up the eyes of your mind: take thought now of angelic choirs, and God the master of the universe enthroned, with his only-begotten Son sitting on his right hand, and his Spirit with him, while thrones and dominations do him service, and likewise each man and woman of you as being in a state of salvation. Even now imagine that your ears catch those lovely strains wherewith the angels acclaim you saved. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered when, as stars of the church, you enter paradise with glorious body and radiant soul.

Although he is a sinner, he does not proclaim that he is entirely holy; sin is a sickness by which humanity is grievously afflicted, but instead he acknowledges his transgressions and constantly perseveres in humble satisfaction. For the one who is not pleasing to himself is pleasing to the Lord. For when we find the fault in ourselves, the truth is spoken, but when we desire to praise ourselves, we speak what is false.

The person of God is one of that number of the blessed of whom it was foretold: Blessed is the one to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, and in whose mouth is no guile. For he confesses even sins of the just, asserting that they rather put their hope in the mercy of God than trust in their own justice, and therefore there is no guile in his mouth, or, indeed, in the mouths of all those to whose truthful humility or humble truth he bears witness.

Let no one think that something that he hides away in the innermost parts of his conscience can be hidden from the Lord.

Strong spirits do not wax old from continual shouting to God, but they are renewed from day to day. From silence they wax old, entangling people who are corrupted through false desires.

The hand that applies the lashes is oppressive to the sinner, and the hand that avenges is heavy. Day and night indicate continuous time so that the hand which did not draw back from punishment was rightly felt to be heavy. He would not have experienced this type of humiliation with such a happy demeanor unless it had been the hand of the Godhead that had pressed upon him.

Fools . . . think that God is unable to know what they are doing. In contrast, those who know that all things are known to him get down on their knees for humble confession and vows of repentance so that they may not experience a hostile Judge when they are able to have a merciful Advocate.

A righteous person accuses himself at the beginning of his speech.^[1]

God created me with free will; if I have sinned, it is I myself who have sinned, so my business is not simply to declare my unrighteousness to the Lord but to declare it against myself . . . . Why this emphasis, I myself? It would have been enough to write I said. But the emphasis is deliberate: I said it myself.

Pray first to receive tears, so that through compunction you may be able to mollify the wildness that is in your soul, and, having confessed against yourself your transgression to the Lord, you may obtain forgiveness from him.

People had evil thoughts. They were revealed to bring them into the open and destroy them. Once they had been killed and are dead, they would cease to exist. He who died for us would kill them. For, as long as such thoughts were hidden and not brought out into the open, it was quite impossible to kill them. Thus, if we ourselves have sinned, we ought to say, I made my sin known to you, and I have not hidden my iniquity. I said, Against myself shall I proclaim my injustice to the Lord.’

Just as we can never be without the wounds of sins, so we should never lack the remedy of confession. God wants us to confess our sins, not because he himself cannot know them but because the devil longs to find something to charge us with before the tribunal of the eternal Judge and wants us to defend rather than to acknowledge our sins. Our God, on the contrary, because he is good and merciful, wants us to confess them in this world so we will not be confounded by them later on in the world to come. If we confess our sins, he spares us; if we acknowledge them, he forgives.

He suddenly absolved his sins, for he judges the devoted prayer as if the work were already carried out. The penitent resolved in his heart that what he had done not be kept silent from the Lord. And then as if he had already made all of his sins known, he received forgiveness for everything that he wanted to confess. And rightly so, for the will alone either brings someone absolution or punishment.

I will pronounce, means, I will confess publicly in order that my pious and faithful confession may draw others to imitate this action. From this self-accusation follows the saving remedy, since the Judge spares the defendant when he does not spare himself.

Just as I sinned and was punished, so I acknowledged it and was saved. . . . He wishes to bring out also the promptness of God’s lovingkindness, saying, I shall confess, that is, I resolved to confess the fault to the Lord, and your pardon anticipated my confession.

When David said, I have sinned against the Lord, Nathan replied, The Lord has put away your sin, you will not die.^[1] He did, however, threaten to fill his house with calamities of all kinds; here too likewise, You put away the impiety of my sin: immediately after perpetrating such things, he is saying, I should have been consigned to death according to the law, but you applied your lovingkindness and did not so consign me, keeping my treatment to moderate censure.

One who is no stranger to sin ought to immerse himself in prayers of supplication. O saving medicine! To counteract the diseases of all sinners, various remedies are offered to the ill. But this is a single remedy; if it is taken with a pure mind, the poisons of all transgressions are overcome.

Immediately after the sin is a fitting time for confession . . . since a sin that lingers is entrenched.

No one must assume that when the end comes suddenly, as it did in Noah’s day, an opportunity will remain for the confession by which we may draw near to God.

The many waters are the variety of doctrines. God’s doctrine is one. There are not many waters but one single water, whether we think of the water of baptism or the water of salutary doctrine. . . . The many other waters are the many teachings that pollute human souls. . . . Swimmers in this flood of many waters do not draw near to God. . . . What is the real water, the water that wells up from the most secret inner spring, from the pure channel of truth? Yes, what is that water, my brothers and sisters? It is the water that teaches us to confess the Lord. . . . This is the water that urges us to confess our sins, the water that humbles our hearts, the water of a way of life that leads to salvation, of those who abase themselves, do not presume on themselves at all and refuse any proud attribution of their achievements to their own strength. You will not find this water in any of the books of the pagans, whether Epicurean, Stoic, Manichean or Platonist. You will find throughout those books excellent precepts of morality and self-improvement, but nowhere humility like this. The way of humility comes from no other source; it comes only from Christ. It is the way originated by him who, though most high, came in humility. What else did he teach us by humbling himself and becoming obedient even to death, even to the death of the cross?^[1] What else did he teach us by paying a debt he did not owe, to release us from debt? What else did he teach us, he who was baptized though sinless, and crucified though innocent? What else did he teach us, but this same humility? He had every right to say, I am the way, and the truth and the life.^[2] By this humility, then, we draw near to God, because the Lord is close to those who have bruised their hearts; but amid the flood of many waters, amid the torrent of those who exalt themselves in opposition to God and peddle proud blasphemies, no one will draw near to him.

Let those others take refuge with their gods, or with their demons, or in their own strength or in defending their sins. As for me, I have no refuge in this flood except yourself, my refuge from the distress that besets me.

A refuge is a place to which one flees so that dangers may be avoided. But this man did not take flight to remote and solitary places, to the fortifications of the camps or to the help provided by men, but to God who was able to scatter the spiritual enemies encircling him.

He caused a light to shine at the prayer of the psalmist, who said, My Joy, deliver me from those who surround me; this being indeed true rejoicing, this being a true feast, even deliverance from wickedness, to which a person attains by thoroughly adopting an upright conversation and being approved in his mind of godly submission toward God.

You see here that sinners do not possess understanding except when the gracious Lord grants it to the converted, for understanding implies doing the right thing and directing one’s prayers to the Lord’s commands. This is the understanding which the psalm’s heading indicates and that the Lord’s power pours out in mercy on the penitent.

People have special need of [understanding], for when they have lost it, they become like horses and mules. Thus he says: I was turned to misery when thorns were thrust in me—that is, the sin that tormented him. On that account he says to God: I have shown you my sin, and my lawlessness I did not hide from you; and you removed my wickedness. The first duty of repentance is for a person to confess his sin, according to [the saying]: God will have mercy on him who confesses his sins and abandons them.

The person with understanding and reason perceives the sin, whereas the one without understanding does not perceive it, not wanting to.

He calls the irrational movement of spirit horse and mule. Intellect is rational thinking and judgment.

Why do you dishonor yourself by surrendering to the allurements of the body, a slave to the whims of appetite? Why do you deprive yourself of the intelligence with which the Creator has endowed you? Why do you put yourself on the level of the beasts? To dissociate yourself from these was the will of God, when he said, Do not become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.

To have a soul and not to have an understanding, that is, not to use it or to live according to it, is a beast’s life. For there is in us something bestial by which we live in the flesh, but it must be ruled by the understanding. For the understanding rules from above the impulses of the soul when it moves itself according to the flesh and desires to pour itself out immoderately into carnal delights.

Our Lord admonishes us through the prophet: Be not senseless like horses or mules.. . . As the ass or mule is tied to a grindstone with his bodily eyes weakened or closed with rages, so the dissipated soul has the eyes of its mind put out by the filth of its life, and through the errors of its thoughts is guided, as it were, around the turning millstone through laborious compassion, without its own sight and working with that of another. [A dissipated person] stands on the road of sinners, fettered with the bonds of his passions. He is his own prison, filled with the darkness of his error, stiff with the squalor of his conscience, enduring within himself the imprisonment of a mill. He turns the rock of his heart, which has been hardened by perseverance in iniquity, like a grindstone, making flour for his enemy out of the corrupt grain of his soul.

He gives instruction to us, and thus he teaches us on the way by which we walk so that he may fix his eyes upon us and so that we do not become as a horse or a mule. Those reluctant to draw near will have their jaws restrained with a rein of tribulation and a curb of judgment.

The one who was God pursued the nations who pursued gods that were not gods at all. And [using] words like bridles, he turned them away from many gods [and brought them] to one.

We need not wonder if after the bit has been inserted the whip is also used. The sinner wanted to be like an unbroken animal and so must be subdued with bit and whip; and let us hope that he or she can be broken in. The fear is that such persons may resist so obstinately that they deserve to be left in their unbroken state and allowed to go their own sweet way. . . . May such people, when the whip catches them, be corrected and subdued, as the psalmist tells us he too was tamed.

Fools are not free. . . . Many blows are necessary that their wickedness be controlled. Training, not harshness, exacts this. Besides, he who spares the rod hates his son,^[1] since each one is punished more heavily for his sins. The weight of sin is heavy, the stripes for crimes are heavy; they weigh like a heavy burden; they leave scars on the soul and make the wounds of the mind fester.^[2]

Many are the punishments of sinners, but those who hope in the Lord, he will surround with his mercy.

Even if there are many scourges of the sinner, yet mercy will surround one who trusts in the Lord, and the just will rejoice because their boast is in the Lord.

Those who refuse to confess their sins to God and want to be their own rulers find plenty to scourge them. . . . Those who trust in the Lord and submit themselves to his rule find his mercy all around them.

All people, even if adorned with the works of virtue, stand in need of divine grace; hence the divine apostle also shouts aloud, By grace you are saved through faith; this is not of your doing—it is God’s gift.^[1]

So let no one rejoice in his or her own achievements but rather exult in God and find satisfaction in that. This is in keeping with the apostolic statements, Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.^[1]

The just should be glad in the Lord, not in themselves, for one who rejoices in himself is deceived by a false presumption . . . but one who finds joy in the Lord enjoys perpetual delight.

You of good will come to the Lord. Rejoice and exalt in the Lord, you righteous ones, and glorify our Lord Jesus Christ in a right heart.