John Calvin Commentary Psalms 51:12

"Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; And uphold me with a willing spirit." — Psalms 51:12 (ASV)

Restore to me the joy of your salvation. He cannot dismiss his grief of mind until he has obtained peace with God. This he declares again and again, for David had no sympathy with those who can indulge themselves in ease when they are lying under the divine displeasure.

In the latter clause of the verse, he prays as in the verses preceding, that the Holy Spirit might not be taken away from him. There is a slight ambiguity in the words. Some take תסמכני, thismecheni, to be the third person of the verb, because רוח, ruach, is feminine, and translate, let the Spirit uphold me. The difference is immaterial, and does not affect the meaning of the passage.

There is more difficulty in fixing the sense of the epithet נדיבה , nedibah, which I have translated free. As the verb נדב, nadab, signifies to deal liberally, princes are in the Hebrew called, by way of eminence, נדיבים, nedibim, which has led several learned men to think that David speaks here of a princely or royal spirit; and the translators of the Septuagint rendered it accordingly ἡγεμονικον. The prayer, in this sense, would no doubt be a suitable one for David, who was a king, and required a heroic courage for the execution of his office. But it seems better to adopt the more extensive meaning, and to suppose that David, under a painful consciousness of the bondage to which he had been reduced by a sense of guilt, prays for a free and cheerful spirit. This invaluable attainment, he was aware, could only be recovered through divine grace.