Passage

Psalms 32.1

Book: Psalms · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

1. ^{A Psalm of David. Maschil.} Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile. 3. When I kept silence, my bones wasted away Through my groaning all the day long. (Psalms 32:1-3, ASV)

WEB

1. By David. A contemplative psalm. Blessed is he whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom Yahweh doesn’t impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3. When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. (Psalms 32:1-3, WEB)

KJV

1. A Psalm of David, Maschil. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. ^{A Psalm: or, A Psalm of David giving instruction}

Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. 3. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. (Psalms 32:1-3, KJV)

YLT

1. By David., An Instruction. O the happiness of him whose transgression [is] forgiven, Whose sin is covered.

O the happiness of a man, To whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3. When I have kept silence, become old have my bones, Through my roaring all the day. (Psalms 32:1-3, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: the psalmist; the superscription assigns the psalm to David
Audience: Israel gathered in worship; the Psalter is the congregation's book
Location: the sanctuary and its liturgy, rather than a narrative setting
Time period: the monarchy or later; individual psalms are difficult to date and the Psalter was compiled over centuries

Theological reading

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Paul quotes this verse and the next at Romans 4:6-8 as his second witness, after Abraham, that righteousness is reckoned apart from works. His argument turns on the passives: the man is blessed not for what he has done but for what has been done to him, and the psalm describes the blessing as non-imputation of iniquity.

Three words for sin appear in two verses, pesha rebellion, chata'ah missing the mark, and avon crookedness, each with a different verb of removal: lifted, covered, not reckoned. The accumulation is the point; the psalm is thorough about what is being dealt with.

What follows in the psalm is the experience of concealment, the bones wasting away and the hand heavy day and night, until the confession. The blessing described in verse 1 is reached through the acknowledgment described in verse 5.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

H6588 - pesha, pesha, Strong's H6588

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Biblical Forgiveness

Lexicon:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.