2 Samuel 24:10

24:10 David felt guilty ¹  after he had numbered the army. David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly by doing this! Now, O Lord, please remove the guilt of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.”

Job 7:20

7:20 If ²  I have sinned – what have I done to you, ³ 

O watcher of men? ⁴ 

Why have you set me as your target? ⁵ 

Have I become a burden to you? ⁶ 

Job 42:6

42:6 Therefore I despise myself, ⁷ 

and I repent in dust and ashes!

Psalms 51:2-5

51:2 Wash away my wrongdoing! ⁸ 

Cleanse me of my sin! ⁹ 

51:3 For I am aware of ¹⁰  my rebellious acts;

I am forever conscious of my sin. ¹¹ 

51:4 Against you – you above all ¹²  – I have sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

So ¹³  you are just when you confront me; ¹⁴ 

you are right when you condemn me. ¹⁵ 

51:5 Look, I was guilty of sin from birth,

a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. ¹⁶ 

Isaiah 6:5

6:5 I said, “Too bad for me! I am destroyed, ¹⁷  for my lips are contaminated by sin, ¹⁸  and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin. ¹⁹  My eyes have seen the king, the Lord who commands armies.” ²⁰ 

[24:10]  ¹ tn Heb “and the heart of David struck him.”

[7:20]  ² tn The simple perfect verb can be used in a conditional sentence without a conditional particle present (see GKC 494 §159.h).

[7:20]  ³ sn Job is not here saying that he has sinned; rather, he is posing the hypothetical condition – if he had sinned, what would that do to God? In other words, he has not really injured God.

[7:20]  ⁴ sn In the Bible God is often described as watching over people to protect them from danger (see Deut 32:10; Ps 31:23). However, here it is a hostile sense, for God may detect sin and bring it to judgment.

[7:20]  ⁵ tn This word is a hapax legomenon from the verb פָּגָע (paga’, “meet, encounter”); it would describe what is hit or struck (as nouns of this pattern can indicate the place of the action) – the target.

[7:20]  ⁶ tn In the prepositional phrase עָלַי (’alay) the results of a scribal change is found (these changes were called tiqqune sopherim, “corrections of the scribes” made to avoid using improper language about God). The prepositional phrase would have been עָלֶךָ (’alekha, “to you,” as in the LXX). But it offended the Jews to think of Job’s being burdensome to God. Job’s sin could have repercussions on him, but not on God.

[42:6]  ⁷ tn Or “despise what I said.” There is no object on the verb; Job could be despising himself or the things he said (see L. J. Kuyper, “Repentance of Job,” VT 9 [1959]: 91-94).

[51:2]  ⁸ tn Heb “Thoroughly wash me from my wrongdoing.”

[51:2]  ⁹ 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.

[51:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “know.”

[51:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and my sin [is] in front of me continually.”

[51:4]  ¹² tn Heb “only you,” as if the psalmist had sinned exclusively against God and no other. Since the Hebrew verb חָטָא (hata’, “to sin”) is used elsewhere of sinful acts against people (see BDB 306 s.v. 2.a) and David (the presumed author) certainly sinned when he murdered Uriah (2 Sam 12:9), it is likely that the psalmist is overstating the case to suggest that the attack on Uriah was ultimately an attack on God himself. To clarify the point of the hyperbole, the translation uses “especially,” rather than the potentially confusing “only.”

[51:4]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term לְמַעַן (lÿma’an) normally indicates purpose (“in order that”), but here it introduces a logical consequence of the preceding statement. (Taking the clause as indicating purpose here would yield a theologically preposterous idea – the psalmist purposely sinned so that God’s justice might be vindicated!) For other examples of לְמַעַן indicating result, see 2 Kgs 22:17; Jer 27:15; Amos 2:7, as well as IBHS 638-40 §38.3.

[51:4]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “when you speak.” In this context the psalmist refers to God’s word of condemnation against his sin delivered through Nathan (cf. 2 Sam 12:7-12).

[51:4]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “when you judge.”

[51:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Look, in wrongdoing I was brought forth, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The prefixed verbal form in the second line is probably a preterite (without vav [ו] consecutive), stating a simple historical fact. The psalmist is not suggesting that he was conceived through an inappropriate sexual relationship (although the verse has sometimes been understood to mean that, or even that all sexual relationships are sinful). The psalmist’s point is that he has been a sinner from the very moment his personal existence began. By going back beyond the time of birth to the moment of conception, the psalmist makes his point more emphatically in the second line than in the first.

[6:5]  ¹⁷ tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”

[6:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.

[6:5]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”

[6:5]  ²⁰ tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.