"Against Thee and Thee only have I sinned." We kind of jumped over that last time. (1) Let's not misunderstand that. David was identifying the real victim of his sin. God's law was transgressed and the other "injuries" were something like collateral damage. Not that they did not suffer real pain and even death, but they were not the primary object of the damage. David recognized that his relationship with the Lord was damaged, or worse, destroyed, and he needed to get right.
The pain and suffering caused to other people is to remind us that sin is never a unilateral event. A popular, though very erroneous label used today is "victimless crime." There is no victimless crime. Someone, somehow, somewhere is always affected. David is not minimizing the damage that he did, nor will he avoid confession, asking for forgiveness, and restitution where possible. Sin, in the long run, is never attractive nor cheap.
In verse 6 David begins the process of correcting the damage that he inflicted.
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
David begins with his "innermost being." Truth is a "hot" topic today, but that is nothing new. We have always struggled with truth and error, truth and lies, even right and wrong.. The first recorded words of Satan were a lie. (Genesis 3) And he has maintained that posture of falsehood ever since. So David's first purge is that of falsehood. Whatever lie or lies he told himself are banished.
And it seems that his days of overt disobedience were over. (He did number the people which was unwise, but it is not clear that he deliberately disobeyed in that.) He was remarkably "tolerant" maybe even permissive with his sons. It is quite reasonable to conclude that he felt that it would be hypocritical to be too strict in light of his own behavior. But his days of overt rebellion seem to be over.
Do not overlook his final statement. "You will make me know wisdom." That is probably one attribute that was conspicuously absent in David. He was energetic and impulsive, but not often marked by deliberative reflection. A lot of us need a little more "inner wisdom."
We might trace his reversal of direction to verse 7:
Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
As we saw before, this is not a physical washing, but a spiritual one. We are sneaking up on verse 10, (2) which is where we started. Hyssop was symbolically used for many cleaning and purifying rituals, from the Passover on. David was not blaming his environment or a momentary lapse in judgment. He was filthy inside and it started with falsehood. When we lie to ourselves, we are setting things up for a big fall. Things will get very "dirty."
The phrase, "whiter than snow," is quite catchy. Hey, we should write a little song about that. But I digress. David probably did not know how snow was formed. Ice crystals freeze from vapor directly to the solid state on a crystallization source. This is often a speck of dust. So the center of every snow flake is "dirt." So "whiter than snow" is both picturesque and scientifically accurate. It is also uncannily reflective of our personal situation. We might even be pretty good looking on the outside, but the central core is not so attractive.
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. 7 Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
We trade what we know about ourselves (v. 5) for truth and honesty in our innermost being. We can be wise, clean, and white. What a deal.
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