And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
Parallel translations
- WEB Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
- BSB Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.
- NKJV Do not enter into judgment with Your servant, For in Your sight no one living is righteous.
- NASB And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, For no person living is righteous in Your sight.
- NLT Don’t put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent before you.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
David asks God not to enter into judgment with him, for no living person is righteous before God. It confesses universal human sinfulness and need for grace.
Overview
David acknowledges that if God judged by strict justice, no one, including himself, could stand. This is a key Old Testament statement of human inability to be righteous before God. Paul builds on it to teach justification by faith, for righteousness comes not by law-keeping but through faith in Christ (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Eccl 7:20For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.
- Job 25:4How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?
- Rom 3:20Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
- Ps 130:3If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
- 1 Jn 1:10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
- Job 14:3And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee?
- Gal 2:16Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
- Job 15:14What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
- Job 4:17Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
- Exod 34:7Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
- 1 Kgs 8:46If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near;
- Job 9:2–3I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God?
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 143:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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