onceived as foul stains upon himself, needing for their
removal hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some
commentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"--the
technical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring
him clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaic
symbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop." There is a pathetic
appropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had
become defiled by contact with a dead body, were thus purified; and on
whom did the taint of corruption cleave as on the murderer of Uriah? The
prayer, too, is even more remarkable in the original, which employs a
verb formed from the word for "sin;" "and if in our language that were a
word in use, it might be translated, 'Thou shalt un-sin me.'"[W]

[W] Donne's Sermons, quoted in Perowne, _in. loc._

In the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon there
comes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restoration
to "joy and gladness"--an indication surely of more than ordinary
confidence in the full mercy of God, which would efface all the
consequences of his sin.

And following upon them are petitions for sanctifying, reiterated and
many-sided, like those that have preceded. Three pairs of clauses
contain these, in each of which the second member of the clause asks for
the infusion into his spirit of some grace from God--that he may possess
a "steadfast spirit," "Thy Holy Spirit," "a willing spirit." It is
perhaps not an accident that the central petition of the three is the
one which most clearly expresses the thought which all imply--that the
human spirit can only be renewed and hallowed by the entrance into it of
the Divine. We are not to commit the theological anachronism which has
been applied with such evil effect to the whole Old Testament, and
suppose that David meant by that central clause in his prayer for
renewal all that we mean by it; but he meant, at least, that his
spiritual nature could be made to love righteousness and hate iniquity
by none other power than God's breathing on it. If we may venture to
regard this as the heart of the series, the other two on either side of
it may be conceived as its consequences. It will then be "a right
spirit," or, as the word means, a steadfast spirit, strong to resist,
not swept away by surges of passion, nor shaken by terrors of remorse,
but calm, tenacious, and resolved, p