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Commentary on Psalms 19 verses 7–14
God's glory, (that is, his goodness to man) appears much in the works of creation, but much more in and by divine revelation. The holy scripture, as it is a rule both of our duty to God and of our expectation from him, is of much greater use and benefit to us than day or night, than the air we breathe in, or the light of the sun. The discoveries made of God by his works might have served if man had retained his integrity; but, to recover him out of his fallen state, another course must be taken; that must be done by the word of God. And here,
1.The psalmist gives an account of the excellent properties and uses of the word of God, in six sentences (Psa 19:7-9), in each of which the name Jehovah is repeated, and no vain repetition, for the law has its authority and all its excellency from the law-maker. Here are six several titles of the word of God, to take in the whole of divine revelation, precepts and promises, and especially the gospel. Here are several good properties of it, which proves its divine original, which recommend it to our affection, and which extol it above all other laws whatsoever. Here are several good effects of the law upon the minds of men, which show what it is designed for, what use we are to make of it, and how wonderful the efficacy of divine grace is, going along with it, and working by it. 1. The law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfectly free from all corruption, perfectly filled with all good, and perfectly fitted for the end for which it is designed; and it will make the man of God perfect, Ti2 3:17. Nothing is to be added to it nor taken from it. It is of use to convert the soul, to bring us back to ourselves, to our God, to our duty; for it shows us our sinfulness and misery in our departures from God and the indispensable necessity of our return to him. 2. The testimony of the Lord (which witnesses for him to us) is sure, incontestably and inviolably sure, what we may give credit to, may rely upon, and may be confident it will not deceive us. It is a sure discovery of the divine truth, a sure direction in the way of duty. It is a sure foundation of living comforts and a sure foundation of lasting hopes. It is of use to make us wise, wise to salvation, Ti2 3:15. It will give us an insight into things divine and a foresight of things to come. It will employ us in the best work and secure to us our true interests. It will make even the simple (poor contrivers as they may be for the present world) wise for their souls and eternity. Those that are humbly simple, sensible of their own folly and willing to be taught, shall be made wise by the word of God, Psa 25:9. 3. The statutes of the Lord (enacted by his authority, and binding on all wherever they come) are right, exactly agreeing with the eternal rules and principles of good and evil, that is, with the right reason of man and the right counsels of God. All God's precepts, concerning all things, are right (Psa 119:128), just as they should be; and they will set us to rights if we receive them and submit to them; and, because they are right, they rejoice the heart. The law, as we see it in the hands of Christ, gives cause for joy; and, when it is written in our hearts, it lays a foundation for everlasting joy, by restoring us to our right mind. 4. The commandment of the Lord is pure; it is clear, without darkness; it is clean, without dross and defilement. It is itself purified from all alloy, and is purifying to those that receive and embrace it. It is the ordinary means which the Spirit uses in enlightening the eyes; it brings us to a sight and sense of our sin and misery, and directs us in the way of duty. 5. The fear of the Lord (true religion and godliness prescribed in the word, reigning in the heart, and practised in the life) is clean, clean itself, and will make us clean (Joh 15:3); it will cleanse our way, Psa 119:9. And it endureth for ever; it is of perpetual obligation and can never be repealed. The ceremonial law is long since done away, but the law concerning the fear of God is ever the same. Time will not alter the nature of moral good and evil. 6. The judgments of the Lord (all his precepts, which are framed in infinite wisdom) are true; they are grounded upon the most sacred and unquestionable truths; they are righteous, all consonant to natural equity; and they are so altogether: there is no unrighteousness in any of them, but they are all of a piece.
II. He expresses the great value he had for the word of God, and the great advantage he had, and hoped to have, from it, Psa 19:10, Psa 19:11.
1.See how highly he prized the commandments of God. It is the character of all good people that they prefer their religion and the word of God, (1.) Far before all the wealth of the world. It is more desirable than gold, than fine gold, than much fine gold. Gold is of the earth, earthly; but grace is the image of the heavenly. Gold is only for the body and the concerns of time; but grace is for the soul and the concerns of eternity. (2.) Far before all pleasures and delights of sense. The word of God, received by faith, is sweet to the soul, sweeter than honey and the honey comb. The pleasures of sense are the delight of brutes, and therefore debase the great soul of man; the pleasures of religion are the delight of angels, and exalt the soul. The pleasures of sense are deceitful, will soon surfeit, and yet never satisfy; but those of religion are substantial and satisfying, and there is no danger of exceeding in them.
2.See what use he made of the precepts of God's word: By them is thy servant warned. The word of God is a word of warning to the children of men; it warns us of the duty we are to do, the dangers we are to avoid, and the deluge we are to prepare for, Eze 3:17; Eze 33:7. It warns the wicked not to go on in his wicked way, and warns the righteous not to turn from his good way. All that are indeed God's servants take this warning.
3.See what advantage he promised himself by his obedience to God's precepts: In keeping them there is great reward. Those who make conscience of their duty will not only be no losers by it, but unspeakable gainers. There is a reward, not only after keeping, but in keeping, God's commandments, a present great reward of obedience. Religion is health and honour; it is peace and pleasure; it will make our comforts sweet and our crosses easy, life truly valuable and death itself truly desirable.
III. He draws some good inferences from this pious meditation upon the excellency of the word of God. Such thoughts as these should excite in us devout affections, and they are to good purpose.
1.He takes occasion hence to make a penitent reflection upon his sins; for by the law is the knowledge of sin. "Is the commandment thus holy, just, and good? Then who can understand his errors? I cannot, whoever can." From the rectitude of the divine law he learns to call his sins his errors. If the commandment be true and righteous, every transgressions of the commandment is an error, as grounded upon a mistake; every wicked practice takes rise from some corrupt principle; it is a deviation from the rule we are to work by, the way we are to walk in. From the extent, the strictness, and spiritual nature, of the divine law he learns that his sins are so many that he cannot understand the number of them, and so exceedingly sinful that he cannot understand the heinousness and malignity of them. We are guilty of many sins which, through our carelessness and partiality to ourselves, we are not aware of; many we have been guilty of which we have forgotten; so that, when we have been ever so particular in the confession of sin, we must conclude with an et cetera - and such like; for God knows a great deal more evil of us than we do of ourselves. In many things we all offend, and who can tell how often he offends? It is well that we are under grace, and not under the law, else we were undone.
2.He takes occasion hence to pray against sin. All the discoveries of sin made to us by the law should drive us to the throne of grace, there to pray, as David does here, (1.) For mercy to pardon. Finding himself unable to specify all the particulars of his transgressions, he cries out, Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults; not secret to God, so none are, nor only such as were secret to the world, but such as were hidden from his own observation of himself. The best of men have reason to suspect themselves guilty of many secret faults, and to pray to God to cleanse them from that guilt and not to lay it to their charge; for even our sins of infirmity and inadvertency, and our secret sins, would be our ruin if God should deal with us according to the desert of them. Even secret faults are defiling, and render us unfit for communion with God; but, when they are pardoned, we are cleansed from them, Jo1 1:7. (2.) For grace to help in time of need. Having prayed that his sins of infirmity might be pardoned, he prays that presumptuous sins might be prevented, Psa 19:13. All that truly repent of their sins, and have them pardoned, are in care not to relapse into sin, nor to return again to folly, as appears by their prayers, which concur with David's here, where observe, [1.] His petition: "Keep me from ever being guilty of a wilful presumptuous sin." We ought to pray that we may be kept from sins of infirmity, but especially from presumptuous sins, which most offend God and wound conscience, which wither our comforts and shock our hopes. "However, let none such have dominion over me, let me not be at the command of any such sin, nor be enslaved by it." [2.] His plea: "So shall I be upright; I shall appear upright; I shall preserve the evidence and comfort of my uprightness; and I shall be innocent from the great transgression;" so he calls a presumptuous sin, because no sacrifice was accepted for it, Num 15:28-30. Note, First, Presumptuous sins are very heinous and dangerous. those that sin against the habitual convictions and actual admonitions of their consciences, in contempt and defiance of the law and its sanctions, that sin with a high hand, sin presumptuously, and it is a great transgression. Secondly, Even good men ought to be jealous of themselves, and afraid of sinning presumptuously, yea, though through the grace of God they have hitherto been kept from them. Let none be high-minded, but fear. Thirdly, Being so much exposed, we have great need to pray to God, when we are pushing forward towards a presumptuous sin, to keep us back from it, either by his providence preventing the temptation or by his grace giving us victory over it.
3.He takes occasion humbly to beg the divine acceptance of those his pious thoughts and affections, Psa 19:14. Observe the connexion of this with what goes before. He prays to God to keep him from sin, and then begs he would accept his performances; for, if we favour our sins, we cannot expect God should favour us or our services, Psa 66:18. Observe, (1.) What his services were - the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart, his holy affections offered up to God. The pious meditations of the heart must not be smothered, but expressed in the words of our mouth, for God's glory and the edification of others; and the words of our mouth in prayer and praise must not be formal, but arising from the meditation of the heart, Psa 45:1. (2.) What was his care concerning these services - that they might be acceptable with God; for, if our services be not acceptable to God, what do they avail us? Gracious souls must have all they aim at if they be accepted of God, for that is their bliss. (3.) What encouragement he had to hope for this, because God was his strength and his redeemer. If we seek assistance from God as our strength in our religious duties, we may hope to find acceptance with God in the discharge of our duties; for by his strength we have power with him.
In singing this we should get our hearts much affected with the excellency of the word of God and delivered into it, we should be much affected with the evil of sin, the danger we are in of it and the danger we are in by it, and we should fetch in help from heaven against it.
Having given instruction in regard to devotion, at this point he proceeds to speak of the sins in respect of human beings and puts people on the alert so as to realize what is an involuntary sin and what voluntary, and how they differ from each other, and further into how many types involuntary sin is divided. He employs an admirable division, first dividing sin into two, voluntary and involuntary. After this he divides the involuntary sin into three, since for example we fall when compelled, or through weakness or when mislead; or we do something when an incident occurs that is more influential than good intentions, or we prove too weak to overcome the power of lust and fall into sin, or in many cases we make a judgment with the best of intentions but by some deception we are inveigled into doing the opposite.
So wicked and hard to cure and strong are those things possessed in the depths of our souls that it is not possible to rub them out and to remove them through human efforts and virtue alone unless through prayer we take the power of the Spirit as an ally and, in this way, conquer the evil that is playing the tyrant within us, as the Spirit teaches us through the voice of David: “Cleanse me from my unknown faults.”
It is not my will to conceive sin; I do not want to entertain bad thoughts, and yet I do; I do not want to entertain evil, and, like a captive against my will, I am drawn into evil reflections. Because it is not in my power either to think or not to think evil, that is why I declare, “Surely they are wanton sins that come into my heart,” but since I cannot seem to avoid them, I plead, “Cleanse me from my unknown faults.” Unprovoked they come, but because I harbor them, I beg the Lord, “From wanton sin especially restrain your servant.” Why am I saying all this? Because the prophet said, “I shall please the Lord”; not “I please” but “I shall please,” for no matter how much I strive here, I cannot be a perfect man, a just man. Consequently, the apostle also says, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part,” and “We see now through a mirror in an obscure manner.”
"Who understands sins?" [Psalm 19:12.] But what sort of sweetness can there be in sins, where there is no understanding? For who can understand sins, which close the very eye, to which truth is pleasant, to which the judgments of God are desirable and sweet? Yea, as darkness closes the eye, so do sins the mind, and suffer it not to see either the light, or itself.
However great a person’s righteousness may be, he ought to reflect and think, lest there should be found something blameworthy that has escaped indeed his own notice, when that righteous King shall sit on his throne, whose cognizance no sins can possibly escape, not even those of which it is said, “Who understands his transgressions?” “When, therefore, the righteous King shall sit on his throne, who will boast that he has a pure heart? Or who will boldly say that he is pure from sin?” Except perhaps those who wish to boast of their own righteousness and not glory in the mercy of the Judge.
You must know then, dearly beloved, that God’s testing is not aimed at his getting to know something he was ignorant of before but at bringing to light what was hidden in a person, by means of a test, which is a kind of interrogation. People are not as well known to themselves as they are to their Creator, nor do the sick know themselves as well as the doctor does. A person is sick; he is suffering, the doctor is not suffering, and the patient is waiting to hear what he is suffering from from the one who is not suffering. That is why a man cries out in a psalm, “From my hidden ones cleanse me, O Lord.” There are things in a person that are hidden from the person in whom they are. And they will not come out, or be opened up or discovered, except through tests and trials and temptations. If God stops testing, it means the master has stopped teaching.
Although in any time there are many who lead an innocent life, and very many commend themselves to God by their habitual performance of good deeds, we should not however trust in the integrity of our conscience to such a point that we think that human weakness, living among scandals and temptations, can meet nothing that will harm it. The chief of prophets says, “Who will boast that they have pure hearts or that they are cleansed from sin?” [Here in this psalm] he says, “From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord, and from dangerous ones spare your servant.”
Very often sins creep up on us through thoughts or desires or speech or action, as the result of necessity, through weakness or out of forgetfulness. If a person thinks only of serious sins and strives to resist only these but has little or no care about small sins, he incurs no less danger than if he committed more serious offenses. Therefore let us not think little of our sins because they are slight, but let us fear them because they are many. Drops of rain are small, but because they are very many, they fill rivers and submerge houses, and sometimes by their force they even carry off mountains. Concerning these it is written: “He who scorns little things will fall little by little”; and again: “Who can detect failings?” Who is there who guards his heart with such great vigilance that no idle word ever proceeds from his lips? However, an account must be rendered for this on the day of judgment. Who is there who does not lie?… Who is there from whose mouth an evil word does not sometimes issue?… Who could even count the sins that we consider small or almost nonexistent, even though sacred Scripture testifies that we are going to be severely punished for them? For this reason, with God’s help and in accord with the text of Solomon, [“The just person falls seven times in a day and rises again,”] let us keep our hearts with all watchfulness.
Although there are three ways to transgress through human errors—by thought, word and deed, by condensing that boundless sea of transgressions into an abbreviated form—he testifies that transgression flows from two sources. Hidden sin is what is termed “original,” in which we are conceived, born and sin with a secret desire. This happens when we covet the property of our neighbor, or desire to carry out vengeance on our enemies, or want to become more prominent than others, or seek more palatable food or similar desires which swell and steal on us in such a way that they escape the notice of many people before they take effect. If these sins do not become known to anyone, … we must still realize that there are many sins of which we are completely unaware, whose origins and deceptions we are not able to perceive. Therefore the text ought to be understood to refer to all sins when it says “Who can understand his sins?”
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SUMMARY
Psalms 19:12 marks a profound shift in the psalmist's meditation, moving from the majestic revelation of God's glory in creation and the perfection of His divine law to a deeply personal confession and plea for purification. After contemplating the flawless and life-giving nature of God's commandments, the psalmist is led to a humble self-examination, recognizing the pervasive and often unseen nature of his own shortcomings and the insidious presence of sin, even those faults hidden from his own awareness. This verse encapsulates a crucial aspect of spiritual maturity: the more one understands God's holy standard, the more acutely one perceives one's own need for divine cleansing.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Psalms 19:12 employs several potent literary devices. The opening phrase, "Who can understand [his] errors?", is a classic example of a Rhetorical Question. This device is not meant to elicit an answer but to emphasize a point; in this case, the profound human inability to fully grasp the extent of one's own unintentional sins. It highlights the limitations of human self-awareness in the face of God's perfect law. Following this, the verse presents a direct Supplication or plea: "cleanse thou me from secret [faults]." This shift from contemplation to fervent prayer underscores the personal and practical impact of God's revelation. There is also an implicit Contrast between the perfection of God's law (described in verses 7-11) and the imperfection and hidden sinfulness of humanity (expressed in verse 12). This contrast serves to magnify God's holiness and the human need for His grace. The concept of "secret faults" itself can be seen as a form of Metaphor, representing sins that are hidden from the conscious mind, like something concealed beneath a surface, requiring divine light to expose and remove.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Psalms 19:12 stands as a profound theological statement on the nature of sin, the omniscience of God, and the necessity of divine grace for human sanctification. It moves beyond a superficial understanding of sin as merely overt acts of rebellion, delving into the deeper, often unconscious, dimensions of human fallenness. The psalmist's plea recognizes that true purity requires God's intervention to cleanse even those hidden imperfections that escape human detection. This verse beautifully illustrates the principle that proximity to God's holiness (as revealed in His creation and law) naturally exposes the depth of one's own sinfulness, leading to humility and a desperate cry for cleansing that only God can provide. It foreshadows the New Testament emphasis on the heart's condition and the need for inner transformation.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Psalms 19:12 serves as a powerful invitation to profound spiritual introspection and humility. In a world often focused on outward appearances and self-justification, this verse calls us to a deeper level of self-awareness, acknowledging that our sinfulness extends beyond what we consciously know or admit. It encourages us to cultivate a posture of continual dependence on God, regularly inviting Him to search our hearts and reveal any "secret faults" that might hinder our walk with Him. This is not meant to foster a spirit of morbid introspection but rather a healthy recognition of our need for God's ongoing sanctifying work. True spiritual growth involves not only confessing known sins but also humbly praying for cleansing from those hidden areas that only God can perceive and purify. It reminds us that our pursuit of holiness is a lifelong journey, empowered by divine grace, leading to a more authentic and intimate relationship with our perfectly holy God.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
What are "secret faults" in Psalms 19:12?
Answer: "Secret faults" (Hebrew: נִסְתָּרוֹת, nistārôt) refer to sins that are hidden or concealed. This can mean sins hidden from other people, but more profoundly, it refers to sins that are hidden even from the individual's own awareness. These are not necessarily deliberate acts of rebellion but can include unintentional mistakes, deeply ingrained habits, unconscious biases, subtle attitudes, or patterns of thought that are contrary to God's holy character. The psalmist recognizes that human self-knowledge is limited and that the pervasive nature of sin means it can operate below the surface of our consciousness, requiring divine revelation and cleansing. This concept is echoed in other scriptures that speak of the deceitfulness of the human heart.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Psalms 19:12 finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who is the perfect revelation of God's glory and the embodiment of His perfect law. While the psalmist laments his inability to understand his own errors and pleads for cleansing from secret faults, Jesus Christ lived a life entirely free from sin, both known and unknown, intentional and unintentional. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, bearing the full weight of humanity's sin—including those hidden and unconscious transgressions—on the cross. Through His atoning sacrifice, Christ provides the complete and perfect cleansing that the psalmist yearns for. The believer, united with Christ, is not only forgiven of known sins but is also progressively sanctified by the Holy Spirit, who illuminates the heart and reveals areas needing purification. As Hebrews 4:13 declares, "nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight," and it is through Christ that we can approach God's throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need, enabling us to walk in the purity that the psalmist longed for, a purity made possible by the blood of Jesus Christ.