Psa 51:1 | NETfull | STEP | Have mercy on me, O God, because of your loyal love! Because of your great compassion, wipe away my rebellious acts!

Psalms 51:1

1 Have mercy on me, O God, because of ^{▼▼ Or “according to.”} your loyal love!
Because of ^{▼▼ Or “according to.”} your great compassion, wipe away my rebellious acts! ^{▼▼ Traditionally “blot out my transgressions.” Because of the reference to washing and cleansing in the following verse, it is likely that the psalmist is comparing forgiveness to wiping an object clean (note the use of the verb מָחָה (makhah) in the sense of “wipe clean; dry” in 2 Kgs 21:13; Prov 30:20; Isa 25:8). Another option is that the psalmist is comparing forgiveness to erasing or blotting out names from a register (see Exod 32:32–33). In this case one might translate, “erase all record of my rebellious acts.”}