Two in One
Hide Your face from my sins and wipe out all my guilty deeds. Psalm 51:9 NASB
Hide/ wipe out – Two actions are needed before we find relief from past mistakes. The first involves re-establishing a right relationship with God. For that to occur, God must take the initiative. Since He knows everything about us, He must decide not to let our past continue to disrupt fellowship. We can plead. We can repent. We can determine a new course of action. But only God can let it go. David begs God to “hide His face” from sins, in other words, turn away from that accumulated horror and look again on someone who needs forgiveness. If God so chooses, the relationship can be recovered. If God chooses . . . and He is the only One Who can make this choice. It is of monumental importance that He promises to do just that, to look the other way. In Hebrew, sātar, “to hide,” but with “The subordinate thought of protection involved in the root . . .”[1] “Perhaps its most significant use is in the idiom to ‘hide the face,’ symbolizing broken communion, such as between God and sinful Israel (Isa 59:2).”[2]
But this isn’t the end of the story. There is another verb in play here: māḥâ, a very important word in Hebrew theology:
Almost all of the thirty-three occurrences of this verb are theologically significant. It is first found in the flood narrative. Every living thing on the face of the earth that breathed was blotted out (Gen 7:22–23) including all human beings, except eight. māḥâ figures prominently in the prayer in which Moses begged God to forgive the sin Israel incurred when they worshiped the golden calf. “If not, blot me out of your book,” prays Moses (Ex 32:32–33). It had been God’s intention to blot out Israel’s name from under heaven (Deut 9:14), as repeated in Deut 29:20 [H 19] (see also Ps 69:28 [H 29]). Whether he regards it thus as a stain (as in Ps 51:3, 11) or a debt in a ledger (as in Col 2:14) is not known with certainty.[3]
The sinner prays as David did that God will blot out, i.e. erase his transgressions and iniquities (Ps 51:1 [H 3], 9 [H 11]). God does so for his own sake and remembers those sins no longer (Isa 43:25). Thus sins which loomed as a thick cloud were blotted out (Isa 44:22). While God is omniscient, these sins he deliberately remembers against us no longer.[4]
Have you ever tried erasing some scribble from a piece of paper? What happened? Usually there’s evidence left behind. A smudge. A wrinkle. Something that tells another, “Someone tried to erase something here.” That isn’t māḥâ. māḥâ is washing away. It’s the “Tide stick” of Scripture. Leaves no trace. As if it never happened. David needs this just as much as he needs God to look away from his transgressions. Forgiveness isn’t just God’s smile. It’s also human recovery. It’s fixing things. Wiping away the stain. But since human beings remember, David will need God to do the cleaning. Human beings have this tendency to recall past sins when someone needs to be chastised again, shamed again. Certainly David knows this—all too well. So, he doesn’t ask God to erase what human beings remember. He asks God to not be human, and look the other way—as only God can.
Maybe “to be in God’s image” might mean that we should also “look the other way.”
Topical Index: hide, wipe out, erase, sātar, māḥâ, Psalm 51:9
[1] Patterson, R. D. (1999). 1551 סָתַר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 636). Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1178 מָחָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 498). Moody Press.
[4] Ibid.
