The statement 'He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities' articulates the paradox at the heart of the grace: God does not treat the guilty according to desert. The use of 'us' (lanu) shifts from royal or individual address to collective acknowledgment; all humanity is implicated in this mercy. The parallelism of 'sins' (chatayim) and 'iniquities' (avonot) suggests a comprehensive acknowledgment of human guilt; the point is not that humans are not sinful but that God's response to sin is mercy rather than retribution. The verb 'repay' (gamal) echoes the language of retributive justice; the point is that God could justly execute such retribution but chooses not to do so. This verse expresses the essential content of grace: being spared the consequences one deserves. The absence of conditional language ('because we repent') emphasizes that this mercy is not earned or conditional but flows from God's character alone.

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