Five-minute study · Day 279 · Psalms 32
Psalm 32:1
A word worth stopping on: forgiven נָשָ֢ nasa
'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.' The word translated 'forgiven' is nasa. Lifted. Carried away. Taken off. The same verb appears in Numbers 14:18, where God is described as 'bearing away' (nasa) iniquity. The word is physical. When you nasa something, you pick it up and remove it from where it was. A porter nasa a load onto his shoulders. A river nasa debris downstream. David wrote Psalm 32 after the Bathsheba episode. The guilt of adultery and murder had been sitting on him like a stone. 'When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer' (32:3-4). His body was breaking under the weight. Then confession. Then nasa. The guilt was picked up off his chest and carried somewhere else.
Word study: forgiven
- Hebrew
- נָשָ֢
- Pronounced
- nasa
- Strong's
- H5375
- Definition
- To lift, to carry, to bear, to take away. A verb of physical action: picking something up, bearing a load, removing an object from one location to another. Used for carrying burdens, lifting the face, bearing guilt, and forgiving sin (lifting sin away from the sinner).
Nasa appears over 650 times in the Hebrew Bible, making it one of the most common Hebrew verbs. BDB identifies a broad semantic range: to lift, to carry, to bear, to take. The word is concrete and physical in its base meaning. You nasa a stone when you pick it up. You nasa a child when you carry her. You nasa a burden when you shoulder it. The theological application to forgiveness follows the physical logic: to forgive is to nasa sin, to lift it off the one who committed it and carry it away.
Goldingay's commentary on Psalms 1-41 identifies Psalm 32 as a wisdom psalm with autobiographical elements. The superscription attributes it to David, and the content fits the aftermath of the Bathsheba incident recorded in 2 Samuel 11-12. David committed adultery with Bathsheba, arranged the death of her husband Uriah, and maintained silence about the sin until the prophet Nathan confronted him (2 Samuel 12:1-15). Psalm 32:3-4 describes the physical cost of that silence: bones aging, groaning all day, God's hand heavy on him, vitality draining like moisture in summer heat. Verse 5: 'I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.' The verb in 'thou forgavest' is nasa. God lifted the sin away.
Goldingay notes the three synonyms for sin in verse 1-2: pesha (transgression, rebellion), chata'ah (sin, missing the mark), and avon (iniquity, crookedness). Each word describes a different dimension of wrongdoing. Pesha is active rebellion against authority. Chata'ah is failure to hit the target. Avon is the warping or twisting of what should be straight. David uses all three because his failure had all three dimensions: he rebelled against God's law, he missed the mark of his calling as king, and he twisted the institutions of justice to cover his crime. The three words for sin are matched by three actions of forgiveness: nasa (lifted away), kasah (covered), and lo chashav (not counted). The forgiveness is as comprehensive as the failure.
The physical dimension of nasa is important. Goldingay observes that David experienced his guilt as a physical sensation: heaviness, dryness, aging, groaning. The forgiveness is described in equally physical terms. The guilt is lifted, removed, carried away. The relief is bodily. The weight comes off. The bones stop aching. The moisture returns. Nasa connects forgiveness to the experience of having a crushing load removed from your back.
Historical context · David's reign in Jerusalem approximately 1005-965 BCE; the Bathsheba incident recorded in 2 Samuel 11-12; Nathan's confrontation and David's repentance; the composition of penitential psalms in the aftermath
David, Bathsheba, and the Weight of Concealed Sin
The Bathsheba episode is the central moral crisis of David's kingship. 2 Samuel 11 narrates the sequence: David, remaining in Jerusalem while his army besieged Rabbah (the Ammonite capital, modern Amman, Jordan), saw Bathsheba bathing from his rooftop, sent for her, slept with her, and learned she was pregnant. To conceal the adultery, he recalled her husband Uriah from the battlefield and tried to send him home to Bathsheba. Uriah refused to go home while his comrades were in the field (2 Samuel 11:11). David then sent Uriah back to the front with a letter to Joab ordering that Uriah be placed in the heaviest fighting and then abandoned. Uriah died in battle. David married Bathsheba.
The narrative in 2 Samuel 11 is remarkable for what it does not say. There is no editorial comment, no prophetic interruption, no divine voice. The chapter simply records the events in sequence, one decision leading to the next, each more destructive than the last. The silence breaks in 2 Samuel 12, when Nathan the prophet arrives and tells David the parable of the rich man who stole a poor man's only lamb. David, furious, pronounces judgment on the rich man. Nathan responds: 'Thou art the man' (12:7).
Goldingay connects Psalm 32 to the period between the sin and the confession. Verses 3-4 describe the physical experience of carrying unconfessed guilt. The language is somatic: bones aging (the skeletal system deteriorating), groaning all day (vocal distress), God's hand heavy (pressure on the body), moisture turning to drought (dehydration, the loss of vitality). Psychosomatic research has documented the physical effects of unresolved guilt and shame: elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, suppressed immune function, chronic muscle tension. David's description, written three thousand years ago, anticipates what clinical psychology would later confirm: concealed guilt lives in the body.
The relief described in verses 1-2 and 5 is equally physical. Nasa, the lifting away of transgression, corresponds to the removal of a physical burden. The word 'blessed' (ashre) that opens the psalm means 'happy, fortunate, in a state of well-being.' Goldingay notes that ashre is an experiential word. It describes how the forgiven person feels, not just their legal status. The transgression has been nasa, lifted. The body recovers. The groaning stops. The moisture returns.
For reflection
Nasa. Lifted. Carried away. Taken off. David wrote this psalm after the worst chapter of his life: adultery, murder, a year of silence, and a body breaking under the weight of what he had done. His bones aged. His vitality drained like water in a desert summer. Then he confessed. And the weight was nasa, physically lifted off him. The three words for sin in verses 1-2 (rebellion, missing the mark, crookedness) are matched by three words for forgiveness (lifted, covered, not counted). The coverage is total. Is there something you have been carrying that you have not yet named aloud? David's psalm makes the sequence clear: silence is heavy, confession is the hinge, and nasa is what happens on the other side. The weight lifts.
Nasa: to lift, carry, bear, take away. Over 650 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible. BDB traces it from physical carrying to theological forgiveness. Goldingay notes David's somatic language: the guilt was experienced bodily, and the forgiveness (nasa, lifting) was equally physical.
Sources: BDB; Goldingay, 'Psalms 1-41'