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I. HERE IS A PRAYER WHICH IS UNIVERSAL, AND YET PERSONAL. Like some great battle-plain at nightfall, where the wild hosts have contended, leaving the shade to cover the dying and the dead, the whole world is vocal with wailings and desperation and pain and hopeless agony. Pierced and bleeding, souls suffer and cry, and each one says "me" and "my" with a dreadful sense of ownership, and yet all seem to say the same.

II. THIS PRAYER IS INTENSELY SPECIAL, AND YET THOROUGHLY INCLUSIVE.

III. THIS IS A PRAYER WHICH IS CHARACTERIZED BY UTTER DESPERATION, COUPLED WITH A SUPREMELY CONFIDENT HOPE. When the guilt-burdened penitent prays, "Wash me," he is certain that he has reached a point at which he cannot wash himself. He lets go of all dependences he had previously tried to lean upon, precisely as Naaman did when he gave up his pleading for the rivers of Damascus, and started for the Jordan, commanded to bathe there and be clean. He accepts help on the helper's terms.

IV. THIS PRAYER IS UNUSUALLY EXTRAVAGANT IN UTTERANCE, AND YET ENTIRELY LEGITIMATE IN ITS MEANING.

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

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KJV: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

WEB: Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.