Psalm 51:14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, you God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Like enough that David at first beguiled himself with this, that inasmuch as Uriah was slain in the field, therefore he was clear; but now he saw this was but a poor shift; God, who was greater than his heart, had now raised up his heart to be a witness against him, and to charge him not only with desiring Uriah's death, but with devising which way closely to bring him to his end. And thus he was guilty of blood who shed no blood; and so may this be found true in many others. A magistrate may be guilty of the sins of the people by not punishing, or by too slight and easy punishing; a man of rule and reckoning in the world may be chargeable with the evils of his inferiors, because his example hath enboldened them. A minister may make himself a party in the enormities of his parish by not preaching against them, or by being too sparing, or too covert, or too gentle in reproving them. It may be I persuade not my people to be ignorant, to be superstitious, to be profaners of the Sabbath; yet, inasmuch as I labour not against these evils in them, my silence, my slighting over of these things, strengtheneth their hands and their hearts to a continuance therein; by this I become guilty before God. Men of ability may be guilty of others perishing, albeit they do to them no kind of actual violence; as by not inquiring into the necessities of those that want, by not making them partakers of their plenty. (S. Hieron.) Parallel Verses KJV: Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. |
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