“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
The final affirmation that God will not despise a broken and contrite heart offers the ultimate comfort: the very brokenness that seems to disqualify one from God's favor actually becomes the condition on which God's mercy is assured. The juxtaposition of the broken spirit as what God will not despise with the earlier affirmation of what God delights in (truth in the secret heart) suggests that brokenness itself, when genuine, reflects the truth of the human condition. This verse concludes the psalm with an inversion of worldly values: weakness becomes strength, brokenness becomes wholeness, and the admission of utter dependence on God's mercy becomes the foundation of hope. The theology here is radical: the worst state (contrite brokenness) is precisely the state that awakens God's most reliable mercies.
Church Fathers on Psalms 51:17
1. Neither must this multitude's throng be defrauded, nor their infirmity burthened. Silence we ask, and quiet, in order that our voice, after yesterday's labour, be able with some little vigour to last out. It must be believed, that your love has met together in greater numbers today for nothing else, but that you may pray for those whom an alien and perverse inclination does keep away. For we are speaking neither of heathens nor of Jews, but of Christians: nor of those that…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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