26:6 I maintain a pure lifestyle, 1
so I can appear before your altar, 2 O Lord,
51:2 Wash away my wrongdoing! 3
Cleanse me of my sin! 4
51:7 Sprinkle me 5 with water 6 and I will be pure; 7
wash me 8 and I will be whiter than snow. 9
4:14 “Oh people of Jerusalem, purify your hearts from evil 10
so that you may yet be delivered.
How long will you continue to harbor up
wicked schemes within you?
27:24 When 11 Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but that instead a riot was starting, he took some water, washed his hands before the crowd and said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. You take care of it yourselves!” 12
10:1 For the law possesses a shadow of the good things to come but not the reality itself, and is therefore completely unable, by the same sacrifices offered continually, year after year, to perfect those who come to worship. 15
3:1 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, 16 partners in a heavenly calling, take note of Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess, 17
1 tn Heb “I wash my hands in innocence.” The psalmist uses an image from cultic ritual to picture his moral lifestyle. The imperfect verbal emphasizes that this is his habit.
2 tn Heb “so I can go around your altar” (probably in ritual procession). Following the imperfect of the preceding line, the cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates purpose or result.
3 tn Heb “Thoroughly wash me from my wrongdoing.”
4 sn In vv. 1b-2 the psalmist uses three different words to emphasize the multifaceted character and degree of his sin. Whatever one wants to call it (“rebellious acts,” “wrongdoing,” “sin”), he has done it and stands morally polluted in God’s sight. The same three words appear in Exod 34:7, which emphasizes that God is willing to forgive sin in all of its many dimensions. In v. 2 the psalmist compares forgiveness and restoration to physical cleansing. Perhaps he likens spiritual cleansing to the purification rites of priestly law.
5 tn The imperfect verbal form is used here to express the psalmist’s wish or request.
6 tn Heb “cleanse me with hyssop.” “Hyssop” was a small plant (see 1 Kgs 4:33) used to apply water (or blood) in purification rites (see Exod 12:22; Lev 14:4-6, 49-52; Num 19:6-18. The psalmist uses the language and imagery of such rites to describe spiritual cleansing through forgiveness.
7 tn After the preceding imperfect, the imperfect with vav (ו) conjunctive indicates result.
8 tn The imperfect verbal form is used here to express the psalmist’s wish or request.
9 sn I will be whiter than snow. Whiteness here symbolizes the moral purity resulting from forgiveness (see Isa 1:18).
10 tn Heb “Oh, Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil.”
11 tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.
12 sn You take care of it yourselves! Compare the response of the chief priests and elders to Judas in 27:4. The expression is identical except that in 27:4 it is singular and here it is plural.
13 tn Grk “in assurance of faith.”
14 sn The phrase our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience combines the OT imagery of the sprinkling with blood to give ritual purity with the emphasis on the interior cleansing provided by the new covenant: It is the heart that is cleansed and the conscience made perfect (cf. Heb 8:10; 9:9, 14; 10:2, 16).
15 tn Grk “those who approach.”
16 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 2:11.
17 tn Grk “of our confession.”