Psalm 51
There was a small plant in the land where King David lived, which was found in very dry, rocky places. It needed so little earth or water that it could grow even in the cracks between the stones of the walls. We cannot describe its leaf or stem but it was well known there and was called, the hyssop.
This low plant grew also in Egypt, and when the destroying angel was to pass through, God said the men of Israel should take the blood of a lamb in a basin and dip a bunch of the hyssop in the blood and sprinkle it over and at the sides of their doors. Some one might think a bigger plant would sprinkle more quickly, but all who believed God would use just what He said, and their children were kept safe.
Afterward God told those people to use hyssop to sprinkle a leper when cleansed from his dreadful disease, and also to sprinkle with a special water any who sinned or had done something which made them unfit to praise God. So David spoke of the hyssop in this psalm, for it was a prayer confessing his sins to God; he said:
“Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall he whiter than snow” (Verse 7).
“Purge” means to clean thoroughly.
David loved the Lord, yet he had been so careless of His words that he had greatly sinned. He knew that to dip the little plant and be sprinkled would not wash away his sins; for all sins come from had thoughts within the person, and no outside sprinkling can make one clean.
When you do what you know is wrong, have you not had a guilty feeling within you, instead of being happy? Whatever wrong we do is against the Lord most of all because He has told us the right ways and only He, can take away our guilt.
The sprinklings with the little hyssop showed those people that they were to be sorry and humble, not proud and careless of sin, and God would forgive them.
That little plant growing in the dry bare places teaches us the same, and even more: the Lord Jesus came to this earth a poor, humble man; there was little to help or keep Him, and He was spoken of “as tender plant, as a root out of a dry ground” (Isaiah 53:22For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)). You see His life on earth was like the little hyssop.
If we believe this One who came so lowly, and gave His blood to save from God’s judgment against sin, then we “take”, or accept Him, as God’s Way, as simply as those people took the bunch of hyssop, and did as God said. We are to confess every sin to God as David did, and He will forgive because the blood of the Lord Jesus has been shed.
There is nothing on earth whiter than snow, how good that we too can say. “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow!” Then there will be joy to praise the Lord and to tell others of Him.
The hyssop for the leper (Levitiets 14:6, 7).
The hyssop for those who sinned. (Numbers 19;6-9, 18).
ML 10/13/1940