Psalm 51:1-19 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness… They are unbounded, and they are "tender." Our mercy is not tender. What little mercy you find in man is often harsh and hard. It is a common saying among us, "I forgive, but I do not forget." There is often harshness, hardness, unkindness in the way in which our mercy is bestowed. And even when that is not so, but when man bestows his kindness and vouchsafes his mercy in his blandest way, you could never think of calling it "tender." But God forgives; and when He forgives He does it tenderly. There is no upbraiding. He blots out the trangression, and there is no more remembrance of it at all. He forgets as soon as He forgives. It is done in a gentle way. "Be of good. cheer; thy sins are forgiven thee." The sin is swept away; it is cast behind His, back into the depths of the sea. God's mercies are very tender. And then they are a multitude. Tender in their nature, they are a multitude in their number. They are numberless, measureless, endless. Like the stars, man cannot count them. Like the grains of sand that cushion yonder wave-beaten shore, no man knows how many they be. God's mercies, beginning with our birth, are heaped up around and upon us all day long, and all through our life journey. (T. Alexander, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.} Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. |
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