Ps. 51.8 (ears and bones)

Cause me / to hear / joy and gladness
let the bones / you have crushed / rejoice

With the confession summarized, David now turns to the major theme of the second portion of the psalm: restoration and recreation. The major focus on how these twin objectives are carried out is primarily portrayed through physical images: hearing, bones, heart, spirit, tongue and lips. When David sees his sin removed, it is a decidedly bodily form of restoration and recreation.

It is not, of course, merely bodily. The first object of healing is David's ability to hear. To return to "joy and gladness" is likely a reference to David's ability to re-enter the festal and liturgical praise of the community, something, due to his rebellion, in which he has been unable to participate. And this ability to 'hear' is just as rooted in God as is God's ability to "blot out" and "wash away" his rebellion. This dynamic will, however, be transformed in a subtle manner later on when we see the only actions that David sees as initiating from himself: teaching (vs. 13) and singing (vs. 14). This would seem to indicate any important point: that rebellion imprisons David but, once the gates of his jail have been opened by God, he is then freed to act again in a type of covenantal communion. We have seen this many times before: rebellion blinds one to the freedom inherent within the covenantal bond. In a state of rebellion God's face often appears in the form of rebuke and monologue. In a state of covenantal communion, there is liturgical praise and a mutual turning toward the other between God and man (and creation).

As to the bones, it is difficult to know exactly what David is referring to. 'Bones' in many other psalms refer to healing from sickness. So it may be that David is drawing on the this standard image and seeing in this guilt a form of crushing sickness. I wonder, however, if there might be another meaning: that it refers to David's ability to enter into a form of liturgical dancing. We know David engaged in it, rather exuberantly when the arc was returned. I like this interpretation as it coheres with other themes of David psalms: this abandon and joy in the presence of God (even, or especially, from a king and 'son of God' Ps. 2).