The superscription of Psalm 51 links that most famous and gut-wrenching of repentance Psalms directly to David’s sin concerning Bathsheba and Uriah. Verses 1–17 are relentlessly first-person singular, with one English translation containing thirty-two instances of I, me, my, and so forth. Verse 4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight” — a stumbling block for contemporary readers, who are here inclined to wonder, “Hasn’t David sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, too?” — represents a radical narrowing of focus such that David’s sin is, at least for the moment of this Psalm, entirely viewed from within a single I-Thou relation. David reflects that God “will not be delighted in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.” Rather, “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (He has learned well the lesson which his predecessor failed to grasp.)

Then the Psalm concludes on a completely different note, seemingly in a completely different voice: “Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.” What is the deal?

I am not usually one for speculative text-critical historical reconstructions, but in this case these last two verses (18–19 in ETs) sure seem like a later supplementation to an originally shorter text. And if that is the case, it must be said that the editors have not tried very hard to disguise the addition. There is no attempt to inhabit David’s point of view, or even make many explicit verbal links. Indeed, the underlying plot of the appendix seems quite different than the underlying plot of the main Psalm. So one wonders if the discontinuity is, in fact, the point. The “seam” in the text draws the attentive reader’s eye, and sets him or her thinking on how one tragic situation — David’s adultery with (and abuse of power over) Bathsheba, compounded by his murder of Uriah — may illustrate, elucidate, or analogize the situation of Israel’s idolatry and subsequent destruction. One might hear, in the plea to “build up the walls of Jerusalem,” an echo of the post-exilic situation of Ezra and Nehemiah, in which right sacrifices have long ceased because the Temple and the walls have been destroyed. I imagine there are many fruitful connections to draw.

This leads me to one further point of canonical interest. Many of the Prophets (Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in particular) develop the metaphor of Israel as God’s unfaithful wife, with the exile coming as long-overdue punishment for her adultery. If I am right that in the appendix to Psalm 51 we are to hear a correlation with the exile, with David standing for sinful and punished Israel, this is one of the only examples I can think of in which the Biblical commentary on the exile flips that gendered dynamic. Instead of a (variously) promiscuous or easily-seduced woman, Israel is here cast as — in the person of David — an abusive, murderous man.