Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 25:7
Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.
7. The word translated sins is derived from a root meaning to miss the mark or lose the way. It denotes primarily the failures, errors, lapses, of frailty; and so is naturally applied to the thoughtless offences of youth. The word for transgressions means literally rebellions, and denotes the deliberate offences of riper years.
according to thy mercy ] According to thy lovingkindness, as in Psa 25:6 ; Psa 25:10.
for thy goodness’ sake ] When Moses desired a revelation of God’s glory, he was granted a revelation of His goodness (Exo 33:19). Cp. Psa 27:13; Rom 2:4; Rom 11:22.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Remember not the sins of my youth – In strong contrast with God, the psalmist brings forward his own conduct and life. He could ask of God Psa 25:6 to remember His own acts – what He himself had done; but could not ask him to remember His conduct – His past life. He could only pray that this might be forgotten. He did not wish it to come into remembrance before God; he could not ask that God would deal with him according to that. He prays, therefore, that he might not be visited as he advanced in life with the fruits of his conduct in early years, but that all the offences of that period of his life might be forgiven and forgotten. Who is there that cannot with deep feeling join in this prayer? Who is there that has reached the period of middle or advanced life, who would be willing to have the follies of his youth, the plans, and thoughts, and wishes of his early years brought again to remembrance? Who would be willing to have recalled to his own mind, or made known to his friends, to society around him, or to assembled worlds, the thoughts, the purposes, the wishes, the imaginings of his youthful days? Who would dare to pray that he might be treated in advancing years as he treated God in his own early life? Nay, who would venture to pray that God would treat him in the day of judgment as he had treated the friends of his childhood, even the father who begat him, or the mother who bore him? Our hope in regard to the favor of God is that he will not summon up the thoughts and the purposes of our early years; that he will not treat us as if he remembered them; but that he will treat us as if they were forgotten.
Nor my transgressions – The sins of my early years.
According to thy mercy remember thou me – Deal with me, not according to strict justice, but according to mercy. Deal with me indeed according to thy nature and character; but let the attribute of mercy be that which will be the guide rather than the attribute of justice.
For thy goodness sake – In order that thy goodness or benevolence may be displayed and honored – not primarily and mainly that I may be saved, but that thy character may be seen to be good and merciful.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 25:7
Remember not the sins of my youth.
Youthful sins
The Psalm belongs to the later days of David. In youth we live in the present; in age we live in the past.
I. Youthful sins are remembered when the sinner attains to an advanced age. Generally speaking, the youthful sinner is a thoughtless sinner. He does not trouble about the sin or its consequences. There is a fallacy about, that the sins of youth are not actual sins. If youthful follies gradually developed themselves into manly virtues, then all hail, youthful follies! But if sin always remains sin, and wild oats sown will only grow up wild oats, then this is a fallacy indeed. There comes a time when youthful sins rise up to remembrance, both with the sinner and with the saint. The saint may know that his sins are forgiven, but that does not alter the grief with which he remembers them. How much more sadly true this is of the sinner, who does not know of sin forgiven. There comes a time when old iniquities, long forgotten, shall rise again from the dead, and like spectres haunt the man. There will come a time when the sins of the past will march before you and demand judgment; and what then?
II. When in advanced age the sins of youth are remembered, the cry of the soul is, O God forget what I must remember. David does not ask that he might forget his sins, but that God would forget them. It would not be well for us to forget them, even when they are forgiven. Arc your sins in Gods memory as well as in your own? There are those who have their sins in the memory of God, but not in their own. Others have their sins in their own memory and in the memory of God too. And others have their sins in their own memory, but not in Gods. (Archibald G. Brown.)
The sins of youth
We have no ground for supposing that the youth of David was sinful in the ordinary sense of the term, that he lived otherwise than soberly, righteously, and godly; or that he did not serve God purely, willingly, and lovingly. So far as we know, his offences against God in his youth were but the inevitable faults of his age–shortcomings, indeed, negligences and ignorances, and so things to be deplored and avoided; but there is nothing like any intimation of a vicious youth recorded against him in the Word of God. Nevertheless, there are always undeveloped tendencies towards evil lurking in every youthful heart, and on their encouragement or discouragement the tenor of the future life depends. The presumption is, that David was no longer young when this Psalm was composed. So we have this lesson, that his penitence and sorrow for sin were not things which, being once expressed, were thought of no more, but that they were ever before him, for years and years after his sins were committed. So must it be with those whose early years are stained with the defilements of sin. Either they will go on as they have begun, adding sin to sin, or they must be content to pass the remainder of their days as mourning penitents. As we sow we shall reap. If we have engaged in a course of sin we must be content to have a course of sorrow afterwards. Is a course of indulgence in any sin whatever worth the miseries into which sin inevitably leads? David is said to be a man after Gods own heart; but only because, when he fell, he did not continue in sin. He was not a man after Gods own heart with his sins, but without them, because of his readiness to cast them from him, and of his life-long, loving, trustful penitence afterwards. (F. E. Paget.)
The registry gate
The true significance of the present is not revealed in the present. The present usually tells us only half truths, and sometimes falsehoods. Only the lapse of years makes us dispassionate judges of our earlier selves. Hence the past comes into our maturer life as an clement of pain and reproach. The text is the utterance of a rich and ripe experience–of a man about whom the shadows have begun to lengthen, and who is letting a sorrowful and faultful past come home to his matured judgment, to be tried by its higher standards and by its clearer discrimination. In view of what we know of Davids youth, why does he so earnestly plead that the sins of his youth be not remembered by God? The answer is found in the standpoint from which David contemplated his life; for while the cool retrospect of a life brings disappointment and disgust to every thoughtful man, the nature and degree of this disgust are regulated according to the standard of judgment which is applied. The majority of men come, sooner or later, to think of themselves as fools in their earlier years, but they do not likewise come to think of themselves as sinners. When one begins to review his life from the standpoint of his moral relation to God, he sees through a glass which greatly enlarges the range of his retrospect, thoughts as well as deeds, intention as well as performance, motive no less than act–enter into his review. Secret faults come under inspection, with presumptuous sins; what he is not as well as what he is. The truth assumed in these words is one which concerns the character of God, which gives tone to this whole prayer of David, and which it very much concerns us to see as plainly as he did–the truth, that God cannot be passive in any moral relation. Sin cannot come to the notice of God without setting something in motion against itself, any more than the poles of a battery can be brought together, without starting an electric current. God cannot let sin alone. As a Lawgiver, He must take cognisance of violated law. As a Father, He must strive to restore an erring son. As an Administrator, He must anticipate the far-reaching consequences of a violation of moral order. Here men make a vital mistake. They are deceived, and mock God by thinking that He can, by any possibility, be false to His own pure Being. They measure Him by their own standards, and think that their own good-natured tolerance of sin is measured in Him. If a man will once deliberately consider the out-branchings and consequences of a single sin, even in the light of the familiar laws of cause and effect, he will readily see what a stupendous problem is that of forgiveness, and will echo the scribes question,–Who can forgive sins but God only? We are not to expect God will literally shut our sins out of His remembrance: Nor that He will change His attitude towards sin. While Gods relation to sin remains fixed, His relation to the sinner may be changed. How, in answer to such a prayer as Davids, will man stand related to the follies and sins of his past life? He will not be entirely rid of their consequences, especially of their physical consequences. Nor will God cease to use the faultful past in the new mans education. But He will never taunt him with the past. He wants to use the past only as a help, not as a sting. And into the heart there will come a tranquil rest, a deep peace, founded not upon hone of retrieving the past, for there may be little time left; but simply upon the conviction that God has taken the whole sadly confused and stained life into His own hands. And there will come a turning with fresh zest to redeem the time which remains. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)
Youth should be given to God
The first born should be sacrificed to God, the first fruits should be offered to Him, yea, the firstlings of beasts if they had not been redeemed, their necks behoved to have been broken. Think ye not that God hath more respect of the first fruits of our life than He hath of the first fruits or firstlings of bullocks? Thou shouldst consecrate thy beginnings to God with Josiah, who in the morning of his life, even early, began to seek the Lord. (Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. Remember not the sins of my youth] Those which I have committed through inconsiderateness, and heat of passion.
According to thy mercy] As it is worthy of thy mercy to act according to the measure, the greatness, and general practice of thy mercy; so give me an abundant pardon, a plentiful salvation.
For thy goodness’ sake] Goodness is the nature of God; mercy flows from that goodness.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Remember not, so as to lay to my charge, the sins committed in my young and tender years, Ecc 11:9,10 which God frequently puntsbeth in riper age, Job 13:26; Jer 3:25, and therefore he now prays that God would not deal so with him.
Nor my transgressions; my succeeding or other sins, which either have been acted by me, or may be imputed to me. Being a sinner, I have nothing to plead for myself but thy free mercy and goodness, which I now implore.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Remember not the sins of my youth,…. Original sin, in which he was born, and the breakings forth of corrupt nature in infancy, he brought into the world with him, together with all the youthful lusts and vanities to which that age is addicted; and sometimes the sins of youth are in some persons remembered by God, and punished in old age; and if not, they are brought to remembrance through the dispensations of Providence: and the people of God are chastised for them then, and are ready to fear it is in a way of wrath; see Job 13:26; which the psalmist here deprecates; for this is not said in order to extenuate his sins, they being but youthful follies, imprudencies, and inadvertencies, sins committed through ignorance, when he had not the knowledge of things he now had; nor as if he had lived so holy a life, that there were no sins of his to be taken notice of but what he had committed in his younger days; but rather this is to be considered as a confession of his having sinned from his youth upwards unto that time, as in Jer 3:25; and therefore entreat, that God would not remember his sins, so as to correct him for them in wrath and hot displeasure; neither the sins he had formerly been guilty of, nor those of a later date; which he next mentions;
nor my transgressions; his more notorious and glaring ones; such as murder and adultery, in the case of Uriah and Bathsheba, and which now stared him in the face; and on account of these, and as a chastening for them, this unnatural rebellion of his son’s, which was now raised against him, was suffered to befall him, as had been foretold to him,
2Sa 12:11;
according to thy mercy remember thou me, for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord; he pleads no merit nor goodness of his own, but casts himself upon the mercy, grace, and goodness of God; in which he was certainly right; and on that account prayed and hoped for deliverance from his present troubles, and for discoveries of the pardon of his sins unto him, which is what he means by remembering him.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
May Jahve not remember the faults of his youth ( ), into which lust and thoughtlessness have precipitated him, nor the transgressions ( ), by which even in maturer and more thoughtful years he has turned the grace of God into licentiousness and broken off his fellowship with Him ( , of defection); but may He, on the contrary, turn His remembrance to him ( as in Psa 136:23) in accordance with His grace or loving-kindness, which challenges as being the form of self-attestation most closely corresponding to the nature of God. Memor esto quidem mei, observes Augustine, non secundum iram, qua ego dignus sum, sed secundum misericordiam tuam, quae te digna est . For God is , which is really equivalent to saying, He is . The next distich shows that is intended here of God’s goodness, and not, as e.g., in Neh 9:35, of His abundance of possessions.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
7. Remember not the sins of my youth. As our sins are like a wall between us and God, which prevents him from hearing our prayers, or stretching forth his hand to help us, David now removes this obstruction. It is indeed true, in general, that men pray in a wrong way, and in vain, unless they begin by seeking the forgiveness of their sins. There is no hope of obtaining any favor from God unless he is reconciled to us. How shall he love us unless he first freely reconcile us to himself? The right and proper order of prayer therefore is, as I have said, to ask, at the very outset, that God would pardon our sins. David here acknowledges, in explicit terms, that he cannot in any other way become a partaker of the grace of God than by having his sins blotted out. In order, therefore, that God may be mindful of his mercy towards us, it is necessary that he forget our sins, the very sight of which turns away his favor from us. In the meantime, the Psalmist confirms by this more clearly what I have already said, that although the wicked acted towards him with cruelty, and persecuted him unjustly, yet he ascribed to his own sins all the misery which he endured. For why should he ask the forgiveness of his sins, by having recourse to the mercy of God, but because he acknowledged, that by the cruel treatment he received from his enemies, he only suffered the punishment which he justly merited? He has, therefore, acted wisely in turning his thoughts to the first cause of his misery, that he may find out the true remedy; and thus he teaches us by his example, that when any outward affliction presses upon us, we must entreat God not only to deliver us from it, but also to blot out our sins, by which we have provoked his displeasure, and subjected ourselves to his chastening rod. If we act otherwise, we shall follow the example of unskilful physicians, who, overlooking the cause of the disease, only seek to alleviate the pain, and apply merely adventitious remedies for the cure. Moreover, David makes confession not only of some slight offenses, as hypocrites are wont to do, who, by confessing their guilt in a general and perfunctory manner, either seek some subterfuge, or else extenuate the enormity of their sin; but he traces back his sins even to his very childhood, and considers in how many ways he had provoked the wrath of God against him. When he makes mention of the sins which he had committed in his youth, he does not mean by this that he had no remembrance of any of the sins which he had committed in his later years; but it is rather to show that he considered himself worthy of so much the greater condemnation. (556) In the first place, considering that he had not begun only of late to commit sin, but that he had for a long time heaped up sin upon sin, he bows himself, if we may so speak, under the accumulated load; and, in the second place, he intimates, that if God should deal with him according to the rigour of law, not only the sins of yesterday, or of a few days, would come into judgment against him, but all the instances in which he had offended, even from his infancy, might now with justice be laid to his charge. As often, therefore, as God terrifies us by his judgments and the tokens of his wrath, let us call to our remembrance, not only the sins which we have lately committed, but also all the transgressions of our past life, proving to us the ground of renewed shame and renewed lamentation. Besides, in order to express more fully that he supplicates a free pardon, he pleads before God only on the ground of his mere good pleasure; and therefore he says, According to thy compassion do thou remember me When God casts our sins into oblivion, this leads him to behold us with fatherly regard. David can discover no other cause by which to account for this paternal regard of God, but that he is good, and hence it follows that there is nothing to induce God to receive us into his favor but his own good pleasure. When God is said to remember us according to his mercy, we are tacitly given to understand that there are two ways of remembering which are entirely opposite; the one when he visits sinners in his wrath, and the other when he again manifests his favor to those of whom he seemed for a time to take no account.
(556) “ Redevable de tant plus grande condemnation.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
7. Sins of my youth This cannot apply to the early life of David, which was proverbial for its innocence and piety. The psalmist speaks for the nation here. See the introduction. But a law of nature and of providence is here disclosed: the sins of early life will reach over to old age, for corrective chastisement, and, if not forgiven, will reappear in the final judgment.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 25:7 Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.
Ver. 7. Remember not the sins of my youth ] Which, though long since committed, must not be remembered without remorse; since for them God often punisheth men in their age, Job 13:26 Jer 3:25 . It is not the last sand that emptieth the hour glass, nor the last blow that throweth down the oak. Sin may sleep a long time, like a sleeping debt, not called for of many years; as Saul’s sin in slaying the Gibeonites, not punished till forty years after; as Joab’s killing of Abner slept all David’s days, &c. It is not safe to be at odds with the Ancient of days. This David knew, and, therefore, was willing to clear all old scores, to get pardon for youthful lusts, lest they should put a sting into his present sufferings. And that being thoroughly done, as he could expect mercy and direction from God, so if any should maliciously upbraid him with his bygone iniquities he could answer, as Austin did in like case, Quae tu reprehendis, ego damnavi, What thou reprehendest in me I have long since condemned in myself. And as reverend Beza, when a spiteful Papist hit him in the teeth with his wanton poems set forth in his youth, and long before repented of, Hic homo invidet mihi gratiam Christi, This fellow, said he, envieth me the grace of Jesus Christ.
Nor my transgressions
According to thy mercy remember thou me, for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord] Do all of free grace, not for any motive or merit of mine. Lorinus, a Jesuit, here bringeth in sundry passages (as well he may), Psa 6:8 ; Psa 51:3 ; Psa 69:14 ; Psa 86:5 ; Psa 86:15 ; Psa 106:45 ; Psa 119:156 ; Psa 136:7 ; Dan 9:18 ; Isa 55:7 , to prove that all is of mercy, and not of merits.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
sins. Hebrew. chdta’. App-44.
transgressions. Hebrew. pasha’. App-44.
mercy = grace. Hebrew. hasad. Not the same word as in verses: Psa 25:6, Psa 25:16.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Remember: Psa 79:8, Psa 109:14, Psa 109:16, Isa 38:17, Isa 43:25, Isa 64:9, Heb 8:12, Heb 10:16-18
the sins: Job 13:26, Job 20:11, Pro 5:7-14, Jer 3:25, Joh 5:5, Joh 5:14
according: Psa 51:1, Psa 109:26, Psa 119:124
for thy: Psa 6:4, Psa 31:16, Eph 1:6, Eph 1:7, Eph 2:4-8
Reciprocal: Gen 19:29 – that God 1Sa 1:19 – and the Lord 2Ki 20:3 – remember Neh 5:19 – Think Neh 13:22 – spare me Neh 13:31 – Remember Job 10:2 – Do not Job 10:9 – Remember Psa 106:4 – Remember Psa 115:12 – hath Psa 119:9 – shall Psa 132:1 – remember Ecc 11:10 – remove Jer 31:19 – I did Eze 18:22 – his transgressions Eze 29:16 – bringeth Hos 7:2 – I remember Luk 18:13 – God Jam 5:11 – the Lord is
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
25:7 Remember not the {e} sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.
(e) He confesses that his many sins were the reason that his enemies persecuted him, desiring that the cause of the evil may be taken away, so that the effect may cease.