Psalm 51:12

Verse 12. Uphold ne with thy free spirit. A loving mother chooses a fitting place, and a fitting time, to let her little child fall; it is learning to walk, it is getting over confident, it may come to a dangerous place, and if possessed of all this confidence, may fall and destroy itself. So she permits it to fall at such a place, and in such a way as that it may be hurt, wholesomely hurt, but not dangerously so. It has now lost its confidence, and clings all the more fondly and trustingly to the strong hand that is able to hold up all its goings. So this David, this little child of the great God, has fallen; it is a sore fall, all his bones are broken, but it has been a precious and a profitable lesson to him; he has no confidence any longer in himself, his trust is not now in an arm of flesh. "Uphold me with thy free spirit." Thomas Alexander.

Verse 12. (last clause). Let a free spirit sustain me; that is, let me not be enslaved, as I have been, by my sinful passions. Henry Dimock, M.A., 1791.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 3-4,11-12,17.

Verse 12-13. A threefold desire.