Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities.
Parallel translations
- WEB Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquities.
- KJV Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
- BSB Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
- NASB Hide Your face from my sins And wipe out all my guilty deeds.
- NLT Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt.
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 to turn His face from his sins and blot out all his iniquities. He pleads for full and final forgiveness.
Overview
David wants God to look away from his sins—not ignoring them, but no longer holding them against him—and to erase them entirely. The plea for God to 'blot out' his iniquities returns to the language of verse 1. Such complete pardon is what God grants in the gospel, where He remembers our sins no more.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 5
- Jer 16:17For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my face, neither is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.
- Mic 7:18–19Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes over the disobedience of the remnant of his heritage? He doesn’t retain his anger forever, because he delights in loving kindness.
- Isa 38:17Behold, for peace I had great anguish, but you have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for you have cast all my sins behind your back.
- Col 2:14wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
- Ps 51:1For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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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 51:9 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
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.