For the sake of Your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, for it is great.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your name’s sake, Yahweh, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
- KJV For thy name’s sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.
- NKJV For Your name’s sake, O Lord, Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
- NASB For the sake of Your name, Lord, Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great.
- NLT For the honor of your name, O Lord, forgive my many, many sins.
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 pleads for pardon of his great iniquity for the sake of God's name. He appeals to God's honor as the ground of forgiveness.
Overview
Strikingly, David asks pardon precisely because his guilt is great, appealing not to the smallness of his sin but to God's name and reputation for mercy. Forgiveness magnifies the glory of God's grace. This anticipates the gospel, where God forgives even great sinners to display the riches of his mercy in Christ, for his own glory.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Ps 79:9Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; deliver us and atone for our sins, for the sake of Your name.
- 1 Jn 2:12I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven through His name.
- Isa 43:25I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.
- Ps 31:3For You are my rock and my fortress; lead me and guide me for the sake of Your name.
- Rom 5:20–21The law came in so that the trespass would increase; but where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
- Ezek 20:9But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the eyes of the nations among whom they were living, in whose sight I had revealed Myself to Israel by bringing them out of the land of Egypt.
- Isa 48:9For the sake of My name I will delay My wrath; for the sake of My praise I will restrain it, so that you will not be cut off.
- Ps 143:11For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me. In Your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble.
- Ps 109:21But You, O GOD, the Lord, deal kindly with me for the sake of Your name; deliver me by the goodness of Your loving devotion.
- Ezek 36:22Therefore tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord GOD says: It is not for your sake that I will act, O house of Israel, but for My holy name, which you profaned among the nations to which you went.
- Rom 5:15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many!
- Num 14:17–19So now I pray, may the power of my Lord be magnified, just as You have declared:
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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 25:11 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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