The purpose was the psalmist's probable intent or reason for writing this psalm. The Content is a concise summary of the whole psalm's content. The Message is the main idea the psalmist probably wanted the audience to remember upon or after hearing the psalm.
Purpose: The psalmist pleads for God to cleanse him of his sin and restore him.
Content: I have sinned against you, therefore wash me thoroughly and create a clean heart for me so that I will praise you. I intended to teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you, and so that you will delight in right sacrifices because you do good to Zion!
Message: God cleanses the contrite from sin and gives them new hearts to offer worship that is pleasing to God in Zion.
Cultural, historical, and contextual information that is important to know to understand this psalm
2 Sam 11-12 recounts David's affair with Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah), who became pregnant with David's child. David then ordered Uriah's death and married Bathsheba to cover up the affair. The prophet Nathan confronted David for his sin and prophesied the death of his child with Bathsheba and continuous strife within his household. In response to Nathan's rebuke, David confessed his sin (2 Sam 12:13). David and Bathsheba's son became very ill, and David desperately pleaded for his son's life. Nevertheless, the child died as Nathan had prophesied, and David then went and worshipped in the house of YHWH.
In 2 Sam 7, YHWH made a covenant with David to raise up a son in his place and to ensure an everlasting Davidic dynasty. Though David was not permitted to build a temple to YHWH in Jerusalem, he was permitted to aid the preparations for the building task that would be completed by his son Solomon (1 Chr 22).
Since the king is the representative of the people and is responsible for their well-being, David's individual restoration can lead to collective restoration.
A brief explanation of the "story behind" the psalm--what was going on in the psalmist's life, and/or Israel's history, that prompted the psalmist to pen this psalm? The colors in the boxes correspond to the participants in the psalm (see Participant Analysis).
These sections divide the content of the psalm into digestible pieces , and are determined based on information from many of our layers, including Semantics, Poetics, and Discourse.
The columns, left to right, contain: the verse numbers; the main title of the section; a brief summary of the content of that section (quote marks indicate the text is taken directly from the English text of the psalm (as per our Close-but-Clear translation)); and an icon to visually represent and remember the content.
The Overview video is a brief, concise explanation of the psalm, pulling all the most important information specific to this psalm from each of our analytical layers. The video begins with a high-level, birds-eye view of the content of the psalm, then explores and explains the psalm verse by verse. Relevant contextual information is also included. No Hebrew knowledge required--this video serves as an entry point for all users to all our other information about the psalm.
The Poetic Features video is intended to explain some of this psalm's most important and striking features of the poetry of the original Hebrew--though no Hebrew knowledge is required to understand the video. For each psalm, we've chosen what we've determined to be the three most powerful poetic features, each one not only providing beauty but also lending strongly to the meaning of the whole psalm. The aim of this video is to inform translators and poets of the meaning-packed beauty of the Hebrew poetry, so that they can attempt to match the FUNCTION (not FORM) of each Hebrew poetic feature in the target language. (For help on how to analyze and explore poetic features (and their functions) native to any given language, see our upcoming guide on Analyzing Local Arts.)
Video files
The script for the Overview video is available here.
The slides for the Overview video are available here.
Translation Aids
Recommended steps for translating the psalms
To translate poetry accurately and beautifully, a knowledge of both the source language's poetry and the target language's poetry is needed. So, here are the steps we recommend to follow when setting out to translate the psalms:
GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE TARGET LANGUAGE'S POETRY/ARTS. Research and analyze many examples from numerous genres of poetry, storytelling, and music in the target language and culture, and document findings. See our for help.
GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOURCE LANGUAGE'S (HEBREW) MEANING AND POETRY. The aim of all our materials is to provide exactly this for the translator, poet/musician/artist, and consultant: an understanding of what the psalm means, as well as its poetics.
TRANSLATE THE PSALM IN THE APPROPRIATE LOCAL ART/POETRY GENRE.
Translation and Performance Notes
TPNs are an at-a-glance reference for anyone involved with translating or checking a translation of the psalm. Specific words, phrases, and images that could be difficult to understand or to translate are highlighted, and then briefly discussed. Each note is intended to help the reader understand the meaning of the Hebrew word or phrase in its context, as well as provide a few translation options or suggestions, often pulling from existing translations. Where pertinent, our preferred translation option is given. NOTE: These notes are intended to supplement a robust internalization of the psalm, not replace it.
Translation Challenges for Psalm 51 not available yet.
The Close-but-clear translation (CBC) exists to provide a window into the Hebrew text according to how we understand its syntax and word-to-phrase-level semantics. It is not intended to be used as a stand-alone translation or base text, but as a supplement to Layer-by-Layer materials to help users make full use of these resources.
1. For the music director. A psalm. By David.
2. When Nathan the prophet came to him,
when he had had sexual intercourse with Bathsheba.
3. Show mercy to me, God, according to your loyalty;
according to your abundant compassion wipe away my transgressions.
4. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin,
5. because I am [continually] aware of my transgressions,
and my sin is constantly in front of me.
6. Against you alone I have sinned,
and I have done what is evil in your eyes,
such that you are in the right whenever you speak,
[and such that] you are faultless whenever you judge.
7. Look, I was born in iniquity,
and in guilt my mother conceived me.
8. Look, you desire truth in the covered places,
and you make me know wisdom in the closed-off place.
9. [Would you please] purify me with hyssop, so that I will be clean;
[would you please] wash me, so that I will be whiter than snow.
10. [Would you please] make me hear gladness and joy;
[so that] the bones that you have crushed might rejoice.
11. Hide your face from my sins,
and wipe away all my iniquities.
12. Create a clean heart for me, God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
13. Do not cast me away from before you,
and do not take your holy spirit away from me.
14. Restore to me the gladness that results from your salvation,
and [would you please] support me with a willing spirit.
15. I intend to teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you.
16. Deliver me from bloodshed, God,
the God who saves me,
[so that] my tongue will shout for joy about your righteousness.
17. Lord, [would you please] open my lips,
so that my mouth will report praise concerning you.
18. For you do not delight in sacrifice[s],
or else I would give [them];
you are not pleased with burnt offering[s].
19. The sacrifices [acceptable to] God are broken spirit[s];
a broken and crushed heart,
God, you do not despise.
20. Do good to Zion in accord with what pleases you;
[would you please] build the walls of Jerusalem.
21. Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offering[s] and whole offering[s];
The Hebrew of the psalms can be difficult to understand at times. In this section, you can explore (in either video or text format) what we've deemed to be the three most important difficulties in the Hebrew, and follow our reasoning as we do a deep dive in scholarly work and explain our conclusions.
Lexical semantics is the study of word meanings. It examines semantic range (=possible meanings of a word), the relationship between words (e.g. synonymy, hyponymy), as well as the relationship between words and larger concepts (conceptual domains). One component of our approach involves not only the study of the Hebrew word meaning, but also of our own assumptions about word meaning in modern languages. Because the researcher necessarily starts with their own cultural assumptions (in our case, those of Western-trained scholars), this part of the analysis should ideally be done afresh for every culture.
Phrase-level semantics analyses the meaning of syntactic units which are larger than the level of the word and smaller than the level of the clause. Specifically, this layer analyses the meaning of prepositional phrases , construct phrases (a special type of construction in Hebrew), phrases formed by a coordinating waw conjunction, and noun phrases which consist of a noun plus a determiner (such as "the") or a quantifier (such as "all").
Verbal Semantics focuses on the relationship between verbs, time and modality, and gives details about each verb in the psalm. This is important for interpretation and translation, and how one analyses a verb can have a significant effect on how it is rendered.
The Story Behind triangle tells the "story" (reading from left to right, beginning at the bottom left corner) of what might have prompted the psalmist to write this psalm. The events and ideas on the triangle are taken from the Propositions and Assumptions table below.
Propositional content is the part of the meaning of a clause or sentence that is constant, despite changes in such things as voice, illocutionary force, tense/aspect/mode, person/gender/number, etc. It refers to “the kind of situation or event described by the underlying proposition.”
Once we have identified the propositional content, we ask, “what would the world have to be like for this [proposition] to be true?” That is, what does this proposition presuppose about the world? What does it entail? What might be implied? In what kind of situation does this make sense? In other words, what assumptions are bound up with this proposition? We distinguish three kinds of assumptions:
Common-ground assumptions
Local-ground assumptions
Playground assumptions
See the Legend accompanying the chart for more details on the types of assumptions.
Understanding the assumptions involved will help translators understand the implicit information present in the text, so that they can decide which of these to make explicit in the translation or biblical helps for their audience to understand the text's larger meaning.
This layer examines each participant in the psalm, whether they have speaking roles in the psalm, or are just referenced in the poem. Often, the relationships and interactions among participants sheds much light on the understanding and translation of a psalm. The summary visuals give a view of the participants in the psalm as a whole, while the tables list the participant information for each clause.
