Psalm 51

The Prophet Samuel quotes this whole Psalm in 2 Samuel chapter 11 NIV. 
I like the way in which Samuel sets the scene for the following verses. 
One evening when King David’s army was away fighting battles, he walked on the roof and saw a woman bathing. She was very beautiful. He sent a servant to find out who she was. When she was married to Uriah, she had never done this. Was she a temptress or had she fallen in love with him and wanted to marry him?  King David had seven wives and ten concubines with whom he only slept once. King David slept with  Bathsheba and they had broken the Levitical law that forbade sex during menstruation. She sent word to David, “I am pregnant!” David sent for Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband, and asked him how the war was going, and told him to go home and sent him a gift. In the morning David asked Uriah why he did not go home, and he replied, “Israel is at War!”  David asked him to dinner and made him drunk.  But he still did not go home, so David wrote to Joab, his army’s General and told him to put Uriah in the frontline so he would be killed.  Bathsheba  mourned for her husband - it was an act of sheer hypocrisy. And David married her, and she bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord and he sent Nathan the prophet to him who said, “Because you have shown contempt of the Lord, your son shall die.” 
In verse seven, we read of hyssop, a cleansing agent. It was used in Biblical contexts to denote extreme purity. It is a very pretty herb with a long stem, green leaves and topped by tiny blue flowers. My daughter grows it in her vegetable hatch. It has a bittersweet mint taste with floral overtone. It was used in Antiquity as a medicine. In JOHN 19:29-30 we read that a jar of wine vinegar was soaked on a sponge with a stalk of hyssop. Jesus Christ refused to drink it as he wanted to experience  the entirety of his punishment. 

In verse ten King David writes: “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.” He is remembering all his past sins and failures. Our sins are minor compared to King David’s, but are nevertheless present, because as the great Apostle Paul stated that his inner bad nature caused him to do things he would rather not do. 
 It is a prayer we can all pray, for we have all come short of, and fallen from God’s standards. 
May God bless all who read this blog. 
Merle