On the Jewish calendar, the period from the first day of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur is known as the Ten Days of Repentance, traditionally a time of introspection and heightened religious devotion. Judith Bleich examines one of the oldest and most foundational Jewish texts on the subject of repentance, or t’shuvah: Psalm 51. She looks specifically at the final two verses: “Do good in Your favor unto Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will desire the sacrifices of righteousness, burnt-offering and whole-offering; then will bullocks go up upon Your altar.”
Many non-traditional scholars find these final remarks a puzzling and even incongruous conclusion. They underscore the somewhat contradictory references to sacrifices and claim that the closing comments are anticlimactic following as they do a verse extolling “a heart broken and humbled.”
Perhaps . . . one may offer an alternative resolution to the question of the choice of these sentences as the finale of the psalm. . . . There is [a] teaching regarding repentance emphasized by Maimonides: “All the prophets, all of them, commanded regarding t’shuvah, and Israel will only be redeemed by t’shuvah. And the Torah has promised that ultimately Israel will repent at the end of the exile and immediately they will be redeemed. When each of the individuals who collectively constitute [the Jewish people] will engage in introspection and be spurred to wholehearted repentance, society will be transformed and we will merit redemption.”
In this psalm, King David reinforces the various lessons of t’shuvah and the manner in which we should engage in the repentance process with contrition, sincerity, and humbled hearts. Then, he concludes, will the final teaching of t’shuvah also become a manifest reality: “Do good in Your favor unto Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem.”
More about: Judaism, Psalms, Repentance