What Does Psalm 25:11 Mean?
For the sake of your nature, LORD, release my crookedness, for it is great.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For thy name’s sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.THE KEY
“Thy name” means the LORD’s nature: the speaker asks for release from great crookedness on the ground of who God is.
THE MEANING
The reader names the crookedness as great and still asks the LORD to release them from its claim. The plea rests on the LORD’s nature, not on making the wrong seem small.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that serious wrongdoing places a person beyond the reach of release.
THE ROOT
וְסָלַחְתָּ
vesalaḥta
GROWS FROM
סלח
salaḥ: to pardon, forgive.
The verb names the act the speaker seeks: pardon. The crookedness remains great in the plea; release is asked for on the ground of the LORD’s nature, not by shrinking the wrong.
ALSO GROWS
wenislaḥ: and it shall be forgiven
וְנִסְלַח
This form from the same root describes the state that follows the pardon sought here.
selichah: forgiveness, pardon
סְלִיחָה
The noun carries the same root into the name of the act itself, showing the request belongs to a wider language of pardon.
THE PATTERN
Release of wrongdoing is grounded in the nature of God and carries the wrong away from the person.
As far as the east is from the west, so far he puts our rebellions from us.Who is a God like you, who lifts away crookedness and passes over the rebellion of the remnant of his inheritance? He does not grip his anger for the ages, for he delights in faithful love.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
For you, Lord, are good, and ready to release, and abounding in faithful love to all who call out to you.Psalm 86 uses the same Hebrew root, סלח (salaḥ, “pardon”), in describing the LORD as ready to forgive. That shared root makes the plea in Psalm 25 an appeal to the nature named in the verse, even while the crookedness is called great.
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