Passed Over
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7 NASB
Purify me – The key to correctly translating this word is hyssop. If we understand the history of hyssop, then we can comprehend David’s request. Otherwise we are left with a very odd verb, hata; a verb that means, “to miss the mark, to sin, to incur guilt.” How can David use a verb that describes sinning in a verse about cleansing? The answer is hyssop.
The Hebrew ‘ezob occurs ten times. The translation hyssop comes from the Greek, not the Hebrew. “The importance of hyssop stems from the Exodus. God told Moses to have each Israelite family slay a lamb, dip a bunch of hyssop in the blood in the basin and then smear some of the blood on the sides and top of the doorframe (Ex 12:22). When the Angel of the Lord passed by and saw the blood, he spared the firstborn son in that home. Thus, the hyssop functioned as a brush to apply the blood.”[1]
Hyssop is about avoiding death. David’s sins required capital punishment. But David pleads for cleansing with hyssop. David asks YHVH to pass over him, to recognize the blood on the doorposts and not take his life. His sin, het’, from the verb hata, must be purified with blood. He knows it. Hyssop is the only solution. So the opening word, tehateeni, “purge me,” is a word formed from the concept of sin but aimed at the goal of purification. And hyssop is the means by which the demands of justice can be set aside, at least for the moment. Something must die—eventually.
David’s use of ‘ezob indicates that he knows full well the severity of his sin. David neither minimizes nor excuses. He understands the consequences. This is why he must appeal to the mercy of the Lord, for as far as justice is concerned, he is already judged. If YHVH does not purify, if YHVH does not wash (and we already know this word from verse 2), then David will remain dirty, inside and out. He will be judged worthy of extinction. Hyssop is the means, mercy is the hope.
I wonder if we ever really consider the enormity of our transgressions. I wonder if we really come face-to-face with the audacity of our disobedience, the depths of our insult or the depravity of our excuses. If we did, would we not cry out for hyssop as a remedy for the blood demanded by the scales of justice. Would we not throw ourselves on His mercy, expecting nothing but annihilation but hoping for remission? How else can sin be purified?
Topical Index: hyssop, ‘ezob, sin, hata, blood, death, Psalm 51:7
[1] Wolf, H. (1999). 55 אֵזוֹב. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
This is a mystery. Yeshua died for me, but only if I die, too. When I sin, I raise up Self to the status of god, and Self as god must die. Repentance is the act of handing over the guilty criminal to be executed. The false god is then removed from the throne of my heart and the rightful One reinstalled. I cannot kill mySelf. I was created to nourish and cherish my flesh, and that is not wrong, but when I ELEVATE it, then that elevation must be leveled. Yeshua said He laid down His own life, and took it back up again. He has power over death and life. Paul said he died daily. Well, I tried for many years to figure out a way to destroy sin in my life on my own, and failed. When I made my peace with heaven, things got a whole lot easier. Now, I ask Him to destroy all in my life that exalts itself above my King. Repentance is where I bring my sin to the altar, but the innocent Lamb of God is Who dies in my place. Every day I ask Him to lay down His life for this sheep. (It is a mystery that I cannot understand, and so you can see I cannot explain it!)
Only with the bitterness of contrition can I hand over Self. David said he HATED his enemies. Hate is a part of bitterness (which starts out as unforgiveness, progresses through resentment, retaliation, then open anger, hatred, violence and murder). I must learn to hate sin the way heaven hates it: absolutely NO compromise or justification for fracture! Hyssop represents the bitterness of that fracture. Repentance is where I turn around and face the fracture; taste the bitterness of disaster. I must NOT let my enemy off the hook; I must NOT make an agreement with hell; I MUST taste the gall of my sin. But what if my enemy is Self, exalted above Him? How do I then get rid of my sin? Repentance is where I bring Self to the altar, and in the bitterness of contrition I raise the knife. In my heart, Self is dead, and only the act remains. I learned this in hunting. If you do not raise the gun or the knife, and the animal is already dead in your heart, you will miss or maim. (A Muslim taught me how to kill, incidentally. I was selling excess chickens at the flea market, and he came by and carefully bought only the ones I assured him were older than 6 months, then asked if I could help him kill them, as he lived in a subdivision, and the neighbors might object. So, I did, and he demonstrated kosher killing, including saying a prayer over the animal before he cut its throat. To do that, I took him over to what the locals there called the killing rock, as the Latinos were mostly the ones who came to buy goats and chickens; but they would kill them there, before they took them home, on this big rock to one side of the market. “OH!”, I thought, “that’s the key”. If you have to kill, do it right. Pray first. Then spill the blood. Slaughtering animals after that got much easier! Kosher killing is correct, I can testify, and that is where I learned it. But, I digress.) Self has to die. Daily. Prayer first. Then His blood. Sin that fractures is sin that kills. Someone is going to die. Every day, He hangs on the cross next to the thief of His Throne in the form of my Self, and every day we die together. Every day I get to be born again, too (some days it seems about every minute! LOL!).
Repentance is a gift. The taste of gall is not a taste my flesh would ever seek out, so I must ask for that, too. My taste buds have been corrupted, and sin tastes sweet. I cannot depend on my own tastes; I must ask for the tastes of heaven. I need a taste bud transplant! I do not purify myself. The bitterness of contrition is something I ask for; something that I need done TO me. My flesh (the criminal) has never been sorry! Therefore, my flesh gets left out of the trial. The saving deal cuts out the flesh entirely. Righteousness is a total implant job, from contrition to sanctification. Yeshua gifts me with it all. This is the righteousness of Christ. He does not do it for me: He does it THROUGH me, but only if I ask and let Him! I pray at the killing Rock with David: “purify me; wash me; forgive me; and impute through me YOUR right relating, as I have none of my own, and then I will be clean. Amen.” Halleluah!
How do you repent of sin you really like?
You stop doing it. Repentance isn’t sorrow or regret or cognitive admission. In Hebrew, repentance is teshuvah, you turn around. Sometimes without a word. You just go the other direction. And as my son Michael said to me, “You know, Dad, the more I go in the opposite direction, the easier it is.”
Well, of course you turn around. But it isn’t exactly like just pouring the liquor down the sink, is it? Like the classic AA line says, “it’s easy to quit: quitting’s not the problem; why, I do it several times a day!”
It seems to me that the problem with the Christian idea of repentance is 1) I am supposed to feel bad about the sin – that is, I am supposed to have some kind of inner guilty experience powerful enough to make me want to stop and 2) the repentance is in the same vein, that is, internal, cognitive or emotional, but PRIVATE! Since there is no longer a priest to confess my sin to, and therefore declare its sinfulness, since Luther and the priesthood of the believer, I have no one to whom I acknowledge my sin. It is mine alone and the consequences are not public shame, loss of reputation or revealed error. This allows the yetzer ha’ra to continue to operate in the secret places, and usually results in a return to the vomit.
Hebrew repentance, as we see with David, is PUBLIC acknowledgement and loss of reputation. This is powerful and because it is so emotionally damaging, it acts as a future deterrent in ways that private repentance cannot. Twelve Step people know that the power is in the secret, and even in the group it is difficult to admit you have failed. So every step must be taken to make public character the battleground and refuse to allow the yetzer ha’ra to control the inner world of private experience.
Actually, Skip, i don’t see it that way.
As a person i can see sin as a cold hard fact, when what i’m doing and saying doesn’t line up w/Scripture and what i know as pleasing to YHVH. When i make the choice to walk w/YHVH, the first piece of weaponery is my desire to please him.
Even in my hard heartedness i can break agreement w/my actions and thoughts, and can do so repeatedly.
I don’t have to feel bad to know i’m wrong. To him that believes it is sin, it is sin. When i decide to line up my thinking and my heart by verbal confession, even in private, (meaning no one hears but me) YHVH is faithful and just to hear me out.
It’s a start.
I have, in the past, been remarkably open and candid w/other that i believed were competent to hear my repentance, only to have it plastered on the bathroom walls. I’m not so free w/it any more. Hence my cautionary statement.
Well ( if you were asking me), for what its worth, all sin I really like, I have found, is something that still looks like love to me, which is to say there is something about it that is still convincing me that I am connected in some way, or am being COMPENSATED for a lack of connection in some way. It is a place that I believe, for whatever reason, is still working for me. If I did not believe that, I would be looking to change already.
To repent for sin, I am going to have to see the lie. To see the lie, I am going to have to become willing to face whatever it is in my life that is causing me to want to believe that that lie is true. There is going to be some break with reality; with trust; some place that I am not actually connecting on some level with God, myself or others. Some place that I am attempting to wing it, and it is going to be because I am believing some lie about love in that place: either that I am not lovable, or that I cannot love others there, or that I do not actually NEED love there. And, it will be a lie. There is going to be a tradeoff, though: either one I am already painfully aware of, or it is going to be numbing me out to the pain, or I am not going to be seeing what it is costing me. That tradeoff is going to be sucking the life out of me, literally, and that loss of vitality is the real cost to me. To see the truth of sin, I have to be able to count the real cost. That takes eyesalve from heaven, because sin comes in a package, I have found. Typically, with a carrot (a promise of love), a stick (a threat of loss of love if you do not do it), and an anesthetic ( some way to numb out to the consequences, and blind out to the truth – in that place, the truth gets replaced by a lie, but you lose the ability to see it.) To replace a lie with the truth is an exercise in re-choosing to trust the Truth Sayer in that place. When I choose to believe the truth there; then, and only then, so many times, can I see the lie.
All this, from the seeing the sin, to the wanting to deal with it, to the ability to deal with it, to the actual dealing with it, to the REPLACING it so it does not tempt again with a lie and return, all comes from beyond me. My part is to choose all the above, but the POWER to do it comes from beyond me. Yes, choice has power, but it is the power to license heaven to move in my behalf. Sin takes my power. At that point, I have nothing to work with. I cannot get out of the ditch on my own, but that does not excuse me IN that ditch. Time to throw in the towel and yelp for help!
Thanks. It’s hard to see the lie. Denial. Want to work through this before Wednesday. Being my own god is not fun. Too much reality 1.
Fall out of agreement w/it.
Prayer can be simple as “YHVH, i see that this doesn’t please you and i am no longer in agreement w/it in any way, not in thought, not in action. I repent for doing it, even for thinking about it, whether i enjoyed it or not. Please forgive me.”
That’s just an example, not a formula. Every time it comes up, in any fashion, call it out and lay it out, lay it down, in prayer. Forcing yourself to acknowledge it in prayer and as sin … will help stand it down.
PS: repentance is a gift not available for non believers. It is the children’s bread.
And if that doesn’t work, say it again and CALL SOMEONE to say it with you!
Yes, a witness is never a bad thing.
Except when it is. be ever so careful who you confess to/with. Personal experience speaking here. Not everyone walks w/respect.
That is surely because the most important part of repentance is being sorry for hurting and disobeying Him. It is that sorrow that provides the power that keeps us from doing it again. He cannot remove it and throw it into the depths of the sea unless I am sorry TO HIM. (I cannot throw it into that sea. In other words, if I try to just stop, it always will return.) Just stopping because I want to is not the same thing… I cannot stand evil down, which is what sin is, in my own power. If I could, all those New Year’s resolutions would have worked! Cross not necessary!
Amen. Public action. Yes. Part of that public is the Throne, too, but, you are right: we have this private little area that we think is ‘just us’, and there is no accountability. Sin is never private, and so you have to include those larger relationships in that repentance. Gotta have accountability in all directions!
Really interesting dialog going here. Helpful stuff.
This sin David is addressing is HUGE! I can easily see why it is devastating to him and others affected by it.
What about all the “little” sins that violate the 613 laws? Shouldn’t we feel equally bad about them?
When I share with others my concern for my breaking of the dietary laws, no one understands. Even Christians don’t give this a thought and think I am nuts for doing so! I know it matters to Y-H because He speaks to it. This is the most difficult one for me-to attempt to be kosher. I have failed many times over.
Not really looking for answers, just sharing and I refuse to believe I am all alone in this. Am I?
I think some of this problem is because everyone can agree that murder is very wrong. Most would agree about adultery too.
However, no one gives much thought to what they eat and cannot see any harm in eating say shrimp, catfish, pork or making a soup or gravy using milk with the meat. These just don’t impact folks in general like murder or adultery.
Maybe I am overthinking this. Sigh
Dawn,
When i first felt the press to be kosher, among many of the hurdles i faced was the fact that i realized that actually LIKED the taste of pork. In almost any form. Bacon has reached almost idol proportions in the US.
It was like i was being pulled to pork (pun intended).
It was so devastating to me, to want to give it up and still crave it to the point of distraction. Shellfish? not even an issue. Everyone freaking over shrimp and lobster, for some reason i made the connection of shellfish to roaches (ever compared roaches and shrimp, shocking resemblance) but it didn’t matter to me that pigs were the garbage disposal of the world, i liked the taste, the smell.
Finally i went to YHVH and confessed the reality of my struggle.
Seems like the *very next time* i tried pork, not sure what it was, maybe a ham and swiss on rye, something i always enjoyed, but i took a bite out of it and all i experienced was how extremely slimy and revolting it tasted.
Haven’t touched it since. In fact, when i pick something up that has pork in it that i didn’t realize had it, i always catch the ‘slime’ factor. can’t even chew it.
Just my story.
Hey bp Wade!
Thank you for your story. I am hopeful my day will come as well.
Seems I am always struggling with something and I take this as a good thing. Y-H is alive and well and actually being my Father! I truly love Him more for it. Whoever said walking with Him is easy obviously was walking alone!! LOL
I take a lot of solace in the fact that He alone truly knows my heart. He has placed me where I am for a reason.
Are you somewhere in the states? No real reason I ask other than just curiosity.
Yes, I am in the states. You?
Yup. Just moved from NE Ohio to NW Missouri this past April. Loving it out here in all the peace and quiet.
heh. i grew up in lima and live in Kansas now. I find OH to be a great place to be FROM!
That is a good way to look at it!! Kansas is about 2 hours from me. Did you make the meeting at St Jo with Skip? I was there for Friday evening but could not stay for Saturday.
hmmm..simple me….I just thought David used the metaphor of hyssop b/c it is such an effective laxative and he wanted to be clean as a whistle on the INSIDE, as well as “washed” on the outside!
🙂