Ki Tavo (Psalms)

Psalm 51: A Penitent’s Cry

From the onset of the month of Elul thoughts of remorse and of turning toward God, as well as the inner psychological and spiritual dynamic involved in teshuvah, begin to be felt in the heart of every serious Jew. But now, as we enter the last full week of the old year, preparations for Rosh Hashana and the Ten Days of Repentance go into “high gear” as we (i.e., Ashkenazim) add to the daily shofar blowing the recital each morning of pre-dawn Selihot prayers.

But there is a certain problem here. I’ve noticed recently that many people—even serious, devoted, devout Jews—feel a certain discomfort with the atmosphere of these days, with the sense of guilt and negative energy they inevitably seem to carry. There are those who try to give it a new twist, a more upbeat turn: as an opportunity for “intimacy with God,” the idea of Divine nearness (“the King is in the field”) or, among the Kabbalistically-oriented, as a celebration of the attribute of Binah, of insight and deeper understanding—rather than the traditional focus upon self-examination, remorse for sin’s committed, contrition, resolve to change, confession, and atonement. I recently even heard a rabbi deliver a public talk about the ambivalence he feels every year at this time: on the one hand, the sense of spiritual exaltation and intensified devekut; but on the other, the feeling of heaviness, of oppressive gloom—triggered, perhaps, by the memory of years of heavy, moralistic yeshiva sermons about penitence, and the emphasis on man’s meanness and faults, his inevitable sinfulness and failure. At times, one feels that the Rabbis are deliberately trying to make us feel guilty and depressed as a goal in itself, something like pre-modern Calvinists. (Wags used to say, regarding a certain branch of the Mussar movement which placed particular emphasis on a gloomy, negative picture of mankind, that “I don’t know if those who follow this path are guaranteed a place in the World to Come, but one thing is for certain—they will no longer take any pleasure from This World!”)

Is there an element of exaggeration in the way people approach teshuvah? Might there even be a sense of a perverse pleasure in “wallowing in the muck” of one’s sins? Is there a blowing up of minor peccadilloes, in order to feel more guilty, and thus needful of teshuvah, than one truly is? (One is reminded here of the title of Woody Allen’s film, “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” and the potential for confusion between the two.) Have not the great Hasidic teachers, as well as other teachers of healthy-minded Judaism, called upon us to avoid the depression and sadness, and particularly the sense of emotional paralysis that can result from an overwhelming sense of wrongdoing and worthlessness?

Our society doesn’t encourage feelings of guilt and shame and contrition; these seem to be out of fashion, and are often perceived as psychologically unhealthy. If people could only learn not to feel guilt—thus goes the implied argument—everyone could live happy, productive, joyous lives…. Certainly, there is such a thing as neurotic, unjustified, obsessive guilt; and we have recently learned much about the feelings of guilt and shame that may plague the victim, particularly in situations of child abuse or trauma—but that is not what we are talking about here.

The Psalter includes several psalms of penitence, of heartfelt pleas for forgiveness, the most powerful of which is doubtless Psalm 51. Its superscription connects this psalm with the grave sin committed by David—his adultery with Bath-sheba, followed by his arranging the murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite— and his subsequent contrition and genuine repentance.

The psalm takes us through a medley of emotions and feelings undergone by the penitent. Rather than describing the poetics of the psalm in terms of the sequence of verses or groups of verses, as we usually do, I will try to describe the various moods and feelings expressed by the author, which, by the nature of things, are intermingled with one another:

(1) Awareness of sin: “For I recognize my transgressions, and my sin is constantly before me” (v. 5)—coupled with a prayer for forgiveness, cleansing and erasure of the sin (vv. 3-4).

(2) Sense of existential sinfulness: “For I was born with iniquity, and with sin did my mother conceive me” (v. 7). This is an exceptionally problematic verse, particularly in light of Christian doctrines, both of Original Sin and of the innately sinful nature of sexuality—problems which we cannot explore here in depth (but see HY III: Tazria, for one treatment of this verse in midrash).

(3) The need for purification, and to overcome the sense of alienation from God that comes in the wake of sin: “Purge me with hyssop and I will be pure; cleanse me, and I shall be whiter than snow… Create in me a new heart, and steadfast spirit place within me” (vv. 9, 12)

(4) Together with that, and closely linked to it: the sense that sin has somehow destroyed his sense of natural joy in life. There is an interesting paradox here: most sins are committed in the expectation of pleasure, whether sexual pleasure (illicit sex is seen by Hazal as the paradigm for sin, and is even known simply as aveirah, “transgression”); the pleasure to be derived from money or goods stolen or wrongfully taken from others; the thrill and excitement felt in committing a violent act, combined with the advantage derived from, say, the murder of a long-time rival or enemy. Instead, the pleasure proves to be short-lived, and once the person realizes what he has done, his whole life turns sour; every waking moment is filled with the knowledge that of the heinous act he has done (see Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and E. A. Poe’s Tale of a Telltale Heart for two masterful examples of this theme in literature). He is preoccupied with his own evil, and prays that he may once again feel experience the goodness of God’s world that he felt before he became alienated from God. “Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed sing out… Restore me the joy of Your salvation , and sustain me with a vigorous spirit” (vv. 10, 14, cf. 16)

(5) The wish to teach others the correct path, and to speak God’s praise: “I will teach transgressors your path, and sinners will return to you… Open my lips, and my mouth shall speak your praise” (vv. 15, 17).

(6) The realization that sacrifices and other ritual acts are secondary to the true “sacrifice”—a broken-heart: “True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit, God will not despise a broken and contrite heart” (v. 19). Various rituals, whether, as in olden Temple days, animal sacrifices; or, in our day, fasting, confession, giving alms, are all external acting out of teshuvah, but not its essence, which is that state of mind best described as “a broken heart” (lev nishbar).

To begin at the end: there is a profound paradox in the attempt to cast teshuvah in halakhic terms, as an act to be performed at a certain time, hovat hayom, a kind of “duty of the day,” that can be conjured up at will, like eating matzah and telling the story of the Exodus on Passover, or lighting candles on Hanukkah. In fact, teshuvah cannot really be described as a mitzvah at all, because one can hardly say that a person does teshuvah in a volitional way. One can create an atmosphere of soul-searching to elicit the desire for teshuvah; after teshuvah is accomplished there can be ritual forms—confession, sacrificial offerings in temple times, fasting (self-appointed; I don’t refer here to the statutory fast of Yom Kippur), alms-giving, etc., as expressions of remorse and penitence. But the act itself happens spontaneously.

At its core, teshuvah is a sudden turning in one’s self-knowledge, a consciousness of wrongdoing and guilt that emerges from within. It means awareness of the contradiction between what one wishes to be, one’s better self or one’s ideal self-image, and what one is or has been in reality. At a certain time in the past one committed a sin, a wrongful act, but one somehow told oneself that it was OK, or at least suppressed whatever pangs of conscience one might have had. Later on, one suddenly says to oneself: that wasn’t right; I feel bad about this; I don’t want to do it again. That moment of awareness, of remorse, of resolve, is the quintessential moment of teshuvah.

To avoid misunderstanding: there is another kind of teshuvah, which is perhaps that with which most of us need to deal most of the time: the attempt to uproot long-standing, deeply rooted character faults or just plain bad habits: gossip, meanness towards others, gluttony, laziness, wasting time on trivia, etc. If the sins involved are not as serious as those of a David or a Cain, in a certain sense the process of repentance is far more difficult, and rarely if ever accomplished completely. No one wakes up one morning with a sudden flash of remorseful insight, “reborn” and shedding his bad character traits forever. It is for such things, more than for the “big sins,” that we have the Days of Teshuvah: to awaken people to introspection, to actively engage in self-scrutiny, to review one’s behavior, one’s relationships with others, and to attempt to rectify them. But that is not our subject today.

David and Bat-Sheva

To better understand both this psalm, and the archetype of teshuvah generally, let us examine the story of David and Bat-sheva a bit more closely. (It is recommended that one read the story in 2 Samuel 11-12).

David sees a beautiful woman bathing on the roof of a nearby building; he desires her, he sends his servants to bring her to him, he sleeps with her, and she returns home. The Bible doesn’t tell us what she thought or felt. Was it rape or a seduction? Did she desire him? Love him? Was his own desire mixed with love? Was she (like other women of her day?) trained to unquestioning obedience of the king? Or was she perhaps dazzled by the wealth and splendor of the royal palace? Hazal say nashim da’atan kalot—meaning, not that they are weak in intellect in the sense of analytic power, skills, memory, or learning capacity, but that they are easily seduced, that their will power is not strong? (These questions are interesting, given that they eventually married, and that she became an important and respected figure. But they are the questions of a modern reader, not the questions that either the Bible or Hazal ask.)

In any event, the second part of the story tells of his attempt to cover-up the sin. Bat-sheva in due course informs David that she is pregnant—almost certainly from him, as her husband Uriah had been away at war, all this happening “at the turning of the year, when the kings go out to war.” (But we are pointedly told that David, no longer a brave young buck full of sap, stays at home, enjoying the good life). He initially tries to conceal his guilt by ordering for Uriah to come home for a few days, assuming that he will sleep with his wife and thus have cause to plausibly believe that he is the father. But Uriah is too chivalrous and noble, too strongly imbued with esprit de corps, with the sense of solidarity with his comrades, to do so: “all Israel and the ark are in booths, and Joab my master are camping in the field ; shall I go home to eat and drink and lie with my wife?!” (2 Sam 11:11). On the second night David invites him to dine with him so as to get him drunk—but again he refused to go home.

At this point he is left with no “alternative” but to engineer Uriah’s death. He sends Uriah to the front bearing a letter to his commanding officer instructing him to place him in the front of the forces, virtually guaranteeing that he will be killed—and sure enough, a few days later the messenger returns, carrying news of a general rout, and of Uriah’s death. He is secretly pleased, responding to the messenger in cold, almost philosophical terms: “Do not be troubled; for such-and-such are devoured by the sword” (11:25)—that is to say: such is life, we just have to accept it. He sends for Bath-sheba and makes her his wife, and in due time she bears a son.

Thus far, we see a portrait of a powerful, cynical man, confident of his own right to have whatever he wants, and manipulating others to achieve his own ends. That he knows that what he is doing is wrong is shown by the lengths to which he is willing to go to cover up his actions, using cold, formal, quasi-military language and valuations to conceal the brutal reality of his acts. (Does this sound familiar?)

The turning point comes at the beginning of Chapter 12, when Nathan the prophet, a kind of personal spiritual advisor to David, brings him to task. He tells him a parable about a poor man, whose only joy in life was a little sheep whom he raised “like a daughter”; but a wealthy neighbor, who wanted to entertain a visitor, took and slaughtered the poor man’s sheep. David, on hearing this story, spontaneously exclaims, “this man deserves to die!” (v. 5). Nathan turns around and says just two words, bringing the message home: atah ha-ish, “you are the man.” (True, these are followed by a rather long-winded speech, but he’s said all he needs to in those two words.) David responds by confessing, also in two small words: hatati la-Shem, “I have sinned before God.”

The teacher serves here as the catalyst for David’s teshuvah, translating the sin into objective, down-to-earth terms, enabling him to realize what he has done. But, I would claim, the teacher—the rabbi preaching a sermon, the author of a Mussar tract, the itinerant preacher who specializes in “making ba’alei teshuvah”—is no more than a catalyst. If David didn’t have, somewhere deep inside himself, the innate decency, the moral compass enabling him to tell right from wrong, the inner understanding on some level that his cynical manipulation of others for his own gratification was evil, he could not have been moved to change. The proof of this is found in a very similar but very different story, also involving a prophet, a king, a sin of murder and taking that which was not his: namely, King Ahab’s theft of Navot’s vineyard (1 Kings 21), involving the frame-up and execution of an innocent man so that he could have what he coveted. Elijah approaches him, tells him, again, in terse terms, that he has committed a grave sin: haratzahta vegam yarashta, “Shall you kill and also inherit?!” Ahab momentarily goes through certain motions of contrition, but he soon returns to his old ways; he was evil through and through.

Indeed, the catalyst for teshuvah need not be a preacher, or any official religious functionary. It can be an ordinary person—even a prostitute whose bed the sinner is sharing. Such was the case in perhaps the most famous teshuvah story in the Talmud, that of Eleazar ben Durdai, who underwent a drastic, life-changing transformation triggered by a casual remark by a “lady of the night” (Avodah Zarah 17a). In the other famous prostitute-teshuvah story, that of the student of Rabbi Meir who visited a classy and expensive courtesan in one of the “great cities by the sea” (Menahot 44a), it was the sight of tzitzit, which strike him in the face while in the process of disrobing, that return him to the straight and narrow—and the lady is so impressed by the power of religious commitment that she converts to Judaism, gives most of her money to charity, and marries him. In the would-be seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife, his father’s image appears to him in a vision at the crucial moment (Sotah 36b). In all these stories, the catalyst awakens within the sinner or would-be sinner a certain level of conscience, of higher values, that had been submerged and forgotten deep in his subconscious for a long time, but that ultimately enable him to turn away from sin.

To return to David and Bath-sheba: after David repents, Nathan assures him that God will not make him die for this sin, but that the infant child of their illicit mating will bear the punishment for its parent’s sin and not live beyond infancy. Here, too, something interesting happens: while the child is ill David fasts and weeps, is disheveled and lies on the floor. After the child dies he gets up, washes his face, dresses in regular clothes, and eats, to the astonishment of his retinue. He explains that, so long as the child was alive, he still had hope that prayer and propitiatory rituals might change God’s verdict; once he died, there was no further point to them. Waxing philosophic, he remarks, “I will go to him, and he will not return to me” (12:23) The road leading towards death, which all human beings walk, is one from which there is no return, whether the end comes in infancy, in old age, or at any point in between.

After this David goes to his wife and comforts her. This time, the child born of their union not only lives to manhood, but becomes the heir to the throne, the great King Shlomo (Solomon) who, unlike his father, merits to build the Temple. We are even told here that he is “beloved of God”; hence, his additional name, Yedidyah (12:25). It is interesting that Hazal don’t object to David marrying his paramour. Shabbat 56a offers an elaborate explanation to justify this, noting that Uriah, like every soldier in those days, had written her a conditional divorce before setting out to battle, to avoid possible complications should there be uncertainty as to his fate—but this is a technical explanation, which to my mind hardly mitigates the brutality, cynicism, and manipulative nature of David’s act. Also interesting is that she later enjoyed an honored and dignified position, first as David’s chief wife, and later, after Solomon becomes king, as queen dowager. Note the royal matronly role she plays in 1 Kings 1 in David’s old age re Adoniyahu’s rebellion, as well as the final scene in which she appears (2:13-22), where she sits on the throne at the right hand of her son Solomon—although there it is to makes a rather foolish request on behalf of Adoniyahu, revealing her utter failure to understand the machinations of royal politics.

From this point on (so it seems to me), we begin to see a change in David: from a brave, confident, somewhat arrogant, self-made man, a warrior and leader, we see him as a worried father, whose children, much like those of the patriarch Jacob, are a quarrelsome, nay, murderous and scheming bunch. The trouble begins with the very next chapter, with Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar, and continues through most of 2 Samuel—a book filled with Eros and Thanatos, sex-lust and murderous blood-lust—showing the chaos at the heart of sin.