The Penitent Suppliant
Psalm 6:1-10
O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure.…


Though God will be no example of upbraiding or reproaching repented sins, when God hath so far expressed His love as to bring that sinner to that repentance, and so to mercy, yet, that He may perfect His own care, He exercises that repentant sinner with such medicinal corrections as may enable him to stand upright for the future.

I. THE PERSON UPON WHOM DAVID TURNED FOR SUCCOUR. His first access is to God only. It is to God by name, not to any universal God. That name in which he comes to Him here is the name Jehovah, His radical, fundamental, primary, essential name.

II. FOR WHAT HE SUPPLICATES. His prayer is but deprecatory; he does but pray that God would forbear him. He pretends no error, he enterprises no reversing of judgment; at first he dares not sue for pardon, he only desires a reprieve, a respite of execution, and that not absolutely either; but he would not be executed in hot blood, not in God's anger, not in His hot displeasure. To be rebuked was but to be chidden, to be chastened, to be beaten; and yet David was heartily afraid of the first, of the least of them, when it was done to him in anger. "Rebuke" here means reprove, convince by way of argument and disputation. What David deprecates is not the disputing, impleading, correcting, but that anger which might change the nature of all and make the physic poison. When there was no anger in the case David was a forward scholar to hearken to God's reasoning. Both these words "chasten" and "hot displeasure" are words of a heavy, vehement significance. David foresees that if God rebuke in anger it will come to chastening in hot displeasure.

(John Donne.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: {To the chief Musician on Neginoth upon Sheminith, A Psalm of David.} O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.

WEB: Yahweh, don't rebuke me in your anger, neither discipline me in your wrath.




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