“He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.”
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.
Church Fathers on Psalms 103:10
1. ...“Bless the Lord, O my soul! And all that is within me, His holy Name” Psalm 102:1. I suppose that he speaks not of what is within the body; I do not suppose him to mean this, that our lungs and liver, and so forth, are to burst forth into the voice of blessing of the Lord. There are lungs in our breast indeed, like a kind of bellows, which send forth successive breathings, which breathing forth of the air inhaled is pressed out into voice and sound, when the words are…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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