Psalms 51:9

51:9 Hide your face ¹  from my sins!

Wipe away ²  all my guilt!

Nehemiah 4:5

4:5 Do not cover their iniquity, and do not wipe out their sin from before them. For they have bitterly offended ³  the builders! ⁴ 

Isaiah 43:25

43:25 I, I am the one who blots out your rebellious deeds for my sake;

your sins I do not remember.

Isaiah 44:22

44:22 I remove the guilt of your rebellious deeds as if they were a cloud,

the guilt of your sins as if they were a cloud. ⁵ 

Come back to me, for I protect ⁶  you.”

Jeremiah 18:23

18:23 But you, Lord, know

all their plots to kill me.

Do not pardon their crimes!

Do not ignore their sins as though you had erased them! ⁷ 

Let them be brought down in defeat before you!

Deal with them while you are still angry! ⁸ 

Acts 3:19

3:19 Therefore repent and turn back so that your sins may be wiped out,

Colossians 2:14

2:14 He has destroyed ⁹  what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness ¹⁰  expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

¹ sn In this context Hide your face from my sins means “Do not hold me accountable for my sins.”

² tn See the note on the similar expression “wipe away my rebellious acts” in v. 1.

³ tn The Hiphil stem of כָּעַס (ka’as) may mean: (1) “to provoke to anger”; (2) “to bitterly offend”; or (3) “to grieve” (BDB 495 s.v. Hiph.; HALOT 491 s.v. כעס hif). The Hebrew lexicons suggest that “bitterly offend” is the most appropriate nuance here.

⁴ tn Heb “before the builders.” The preposition נֶגֶד (neged, “before”) here connotes “in the sight of” or “in the view of” (BDB 617 s.v. 1.a; HALOT 666 s.v. 1.a).

⁵ tn Heb “I blot out like a cloud your rebellious deeds, and like a cloud your sins.” “Rebellious deeds” and “sins” stand by metonymy for the guilt they produce. Both עָב (’av) and עָנָן (’anan) refer to the clouds in the sky. It is tempting for stylistic purposes to translate the second with “fog” or “mist” (cf. NAB, NRSV “cloud…mist”; NIV “cloud…morning mist”; NLT “morning mists…clouds”), but this distinction between the synonyms is unwarranted here. The point of the simile seems to be this: The Lord forgives their sins, causing them to vanish just as clouds disappear from the sky (see Job 7:9; 30:15).

⁶ tn Heb “redeem.” See the note at 41:14.

⁷ sn Heb “Do not blot out their sins from before you.” For this anthropomorphic figure which looks at God’s actions as though connected with record books, i.e., a book of wrongdoings to be punished, and a book of life for those who are to live, see e.g., Exod 32:32, 33, Ps 51:1 (51:3 HT); 69:28 (69:29 HT).

⁸ tn Heb “in the time of your anger.”

⁹ tn The participle ἐξαλείψας (exaleiyas) is a temporal adverbial participle of contemporaneous time related to the previous verb συνεζωοποίησεν (sunezwopoihsen), but has been translated as a finite verb because of the complexity of the Greek sentence and the tendency of contemporary English to use shorter sentences. For the meaning “destroy” see BDAG 344-45 s.v. ἐξαλείφω 2.

¹⁰ tn On the translation of χειρόγραφον (ceirografon), see BDAG 1083 s.v. which refers to it as “a certificate of indebtedness.”