Psalm 69:27

Psalm 69:27, in plain English

Add more guilt to what they already carry, and keep them from ever experiencing Your grace or being counted among the righteous.

Why it's here

This is harsh language, but understand what he's asking: don't forgive them. Let their sin accumulate instead of being washed away. Keep them from ever being restored to right standing with God. It's the opposite of mercy—it's asking God to withdraw all possibility of redemption.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, at the peak of his petition for judgment, asking for permanent separation from God's favor.

Where it sits in the story

This reflects the serious biblical truth that rejecting God and persecuting His people has consequences that can become permanent. It echoes later teachings about hardening your heart until restoration becomes impossible.

The scholarly reading

The psalmist asks God to compound the enemies' guilt and exclude them from the righteousness and blessing He offers.

Language and setting

The Hebrew עָוֹן (avon, 'iniquity' or 'guilt') carries not merely moral connotation but ontological weight—it represents a state of separation from God's order. To 'add iniquity to their iniquity' is to petition God to allow their guilt to accumulate, to intensify their alienation from His righteousness (צְדָקָה, tsedaqah). This is not vindictive in the personal sense; rather, it reflects the conviction that those who oppose God's anointed inevitably accumulate judgment. The exclusion from righteousness is, in Hebrew thought, exclusion from the covenantal relationship itself.

Voice

The psalmist, articulating his petition for the enemies' spiritual exclusion.

Significance

This language prefigures New Testament concepts of hardening and judicial blindness—Romans 1:26-28, where Paul describes God 'giving over' those who reject Him. The accumulation of guilt suggests an irreversible trajectory, a theme that becomes central to Christian understanding of judgment and the possibility of ultimate separation from God.

25May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents.

26For they persecute the one You struck and recount the pain of those You wounded.

27Add iniquity to their iniquity; let them not share in Your righteousness.

28May they be blotted out of the Book of Life and not listed with the righteous.

29But I am in pain and distress; let Your salvation protect me, O God.

Read all of Psalm 69 — David is drowning — literally and figuratively. The waters have come up to my neck. A psalm of desperation that Jesus made His own.