Psalms 6:4

6:4 Relent, Lord, rescue me! ¹ 

Deliver me because of your faithfulness! ² 

Psalms 51:1

Psalm 51 ³ 

For the music director; a psalm of David, written when Nathan the prophet confronted him after David’s affair with Bathsheba. ⁴ 

51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, because of ⁵  your loyal love!

Because of ⁶  your great compassion, wipe away my rebellious acts! ⁷ 

Psalms 106:45

106:45 He remembered his covenant with them,

and relented ⁸  because of his great loyal love.

Daniel 9:9

9:9 Yet the Lord our God is compassionate and forgiving, ⁹  even though we have rebelled against him.

Daniel 9:18

9:18 Listen attentively, ¹⁰  my God, and hear! Open your eyes and look on our desolated ruins ¹¹  and the city called by your name. ¹²  For it is not because of our own righteous deeds that we are praying to you, ¹³  but because your compassion is abundant.

Romans 9:15

9:15 For he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ¹⁴ 

Romans 9:23

9:23 And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects ¹⁵  of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory –

Ephesians 1:6-7

1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace ¹⁶  that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son. ¹⁷  1:7 In him ¹⁸  we have redemption through his blood, ¹⁹  the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace

Ephesians 2:4-7

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ²⁰  – 2:6 and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 2:7 to demonstrate in the coming ages ²¹  the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward ²²  us in Christ Jesus.

¹ tn Heb “my being,” or “my life.” The suffixed form of נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “being”) is often equivalent to a pronoun in poetic texts.

² sn Deliver me because of your faithfulness. Though the psalmist is experiencing divine discipline, he realizes that God has made a commitment to him in the past, so he appeals to God’s faithfulness in his request for help.

³ sn Psalm 51. The psalmist confesses his sinfulness to God and begs for forgiveness and a transformation of his inner character. According to the psalm superscription, David offered this prayer when Nathan confronted him with his sin following the king’s affair with Bathsheba (see 2 Sam 11-12). However, the final two verses of the psalm hardly fit this situation, for they assume the walls of Jerusalem have been destroyed and that the sacrificial system has been temporarily suspended. These verses are probably an addition to the psalm made during the period of exile following the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c. The exiles could relate to David’s experience, for they, like him, and had been forced to confront their sin. They appropriated David’s ancient prayer and applied it to their own circumstances.

⁴ tn Heb “a psalm by David, when Nathan the prophet came to him when he had gone to Bathsheba.”

⁵ tn Or “according to.”

⁶ tn Or “according to.”

⁷ tn Traditionally “blot out my transgressions.” Because of the reference to washing and cleansing in the following verse, it is likely that the psalmist is comparing forgiveness to wiping an object clean (note the use of the verb מָחָה (makhah) in the sense of “wipe clean; dry” in 2 Kgs 21:13; Prov 30:20; Isa 25:8). Another option is that the psalmist is comparing forgiveness to erasing or blotting out names from a register (see Exod 32:32-33). In this case one might translate, “erase all record of my rebellious acts.”

⁸ tn The Niphal of נָחַם (nakham) refers here to God relenting from a punishment already underway.

⁹ tn Heb “to the Lord our God (belong) compassion and forgiveness.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “turn your ear.”

¹¹ tn Heb “desolations.” The term refers here to the ruined condition of Judah’s towns.

¹² tn Heb “over which your name is called.” Cf. v. 19. This expression implies that God is the owner of his city, Jerusalem. Note the use of the idiom in 2 Sam 12:28; Isa 4:1; Amos 9:12.

¹³ tn Heb “praying our supplications before you.”

¹⁴ sn A quotation from Exod 33:19.

¹⁵ tn Grk “vessels.” This is the same Greek word used in v. 21.

¹⁶ tn Or “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Many translations translate δόξης τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ (doxh" th" carito" autou, literally “of the glory of his grace”) with τῆς χάριτος as an attributed genitive (cf., e.g., NIV, NRSV, ESV). The translation above has retained a literal rendering in order to make clear the relationship of this phrase to the other two similar phrases in v. 12 and 14, which affect the way one divides the material in the passage.

¹⁷ tn Grk “the beloved.” The term ἠγαπημένῳ (hgaphmenw) means “beloved,” but often bears connotations of “only beloved” in an exclusive sense. “His dearly loved Son” picks up this connotation.

¹⁸ tn Grk “in whom” (the relative clause of v. 7 is subordinate to v. 6). The “him” refers to Christ.

¹⁹ sn In this context his blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, refers to the price paid for believers’ redemption, which is the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross.

²⁰ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

²¹ tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”

²² tn Or “upon.”