Psalm 130 is one of the most familiar and frequently recited psalms. According to the Malbim, its entire focus is a single prayer: a plea to the Holy One, blessed be He, to forgive and remove iniquity. The Radak adds that the psalm compares exile to the depths of water - like a person sinking and drowning in an abyss. From this place, from the lowest of the low, King David begins with a cry.
שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהֹוָה׃ - A song of ascents: Out of the depths I have called to You, Hashem.
The Malbim examines the precise wording of "depths" (ma'amakim). There is an exalted place and there is a deep place. In the parable, this refers to a poor person who does not sit in the heights of the city, but in a lowly place: poor, weak, an exile - all of these are called depths. Yet this is only the physical aspect. There are also depths of the soul: when a person's soul is in a low state, when one has drifted far from the Holy One, blessed be He, and is steeped in sadness and distress - even if materially he sits in the heights, spiritually and emotionally he is in the depths. He is mired in the mud of desires, of physical indulgence, of worldly pursuits, and of distance from Him, blessed be He.
Therefore, it does not say, "From a depth I called to You," but "From the depths," in the plural. I cry out to You from two depths at once - both from the depths of the body, for my physical being is brought low, and from the depths of the soul, feeling mired in sin and in a low spiritual state.
אֲדֹנָי שִׁמְעָה בְקוֹלִי תִּהְיֶינָה אָזְנֶיךָ קַשֻּׁבוֹת לְקוֹל תַּחֲנוּנָי׃ - My Lord, hear my voice; may Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
From deep within the abyss he cries out: "Hear my voice." Like a person trapped in a deep pit who calls out - can anyone hear me? Yet one certainly cannot say of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He does not hear; the Holy One, blessed be He, always hears. Therefore, the Malbim explains that "hear" here means: accept my prayer, fulfill my request, and act upon it.
To this he adds: "May Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications." "The voice of my supplications" refers to the quality of the voice, the presentation of the matter, and the justified pleas - that the words and the manner in which I plead them should make an impression Above. There is also an allusion here to a great virtue in prayer: often a person laments that it is hard for him to feel moved or to shed tears. The verse tells him - at least pray in a pleading tone, even if it is only the external voice. For this voice, the tone of supplication, affects one's inner self and makes a person like a child pleading before the Omnipresent. This is the essence of prayer: not to say "Heal us, Hashem, and we shall be healed; save us and we shall be saved" as mere recitation, but to say it in a pleading manner - Please Hashem, heal me. And even if one's heart is not yet fully there, the very sound of supplication will awaken him to speak his words as a supplicant before Hashem.
From the verse "Out of the depths I have called to You," Ashkenazim derived the practice of setting a lower place for the shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader), and some did so even symbolically: the floor tiles are recessed by about three centimeters so that he stands in the aspect of "out of the depths." Among Sephardim, the custom is generally the opposite - one ascends a platform to lead the prayers. Anyone who has prayed in the synagogue of the Mahari Aboab or the synagogue of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu in Tzfat feels as though they are literally climbing a ladder to reach the Torah scroll. The reason for this seems to be so that his voice can be heard by the entire congregation; for when he is elevated and raises his voice, everyone can hear, whereas when he stands in a lower place, it is difficult to hear him.
אִם־עֲוֺנוֹת תִּשְׁמָר־יָהּ אֲדֹנָי מִי יַעֲמֹד׃ - If You should preserve iniquities, O Yah, my Lord, who could stand?
Radak explains: If You keep account of iniquities, who could survive? We would be destroyed and perish if You kept our sins against us. The Malbim explains similarly: If You wish to preserve iniquities and not forgive, who could stand and endure?
The Malbim adds a profound principle: Since God is *bilti ba'al tachlit* (boundless and infinite) - and in the Malbim's terminology this means without limit, for *tachlit* denotes an end or boundary, as in "To all completion (*tikhla*) I have seen an end" (Tehillim 119:96) and "And the heavens were finished (*vayekhulu*)" - it necessarily follows that service toward Him must also be boundless. To serve the Infinite requires infinite devotion. If so, even the slightest sin becomes immensely grave, for one has defied the will of the Infinite. Do not look at the minor nature of the deed, but at the greatness of the One who commanded it: one who defies an exalted king, even merely by turning his head - in ancient times, turning one's head in the presence of a king could cost someone his head, for the king inspired awe and terror, and any slight movement could cost a person their life.
From this, the Malbim explains, it is inconceivable that a human being could ever fully discharge the obligation to serve the Infinite - only one who is himself boundless could do so. An analogy illustrates this: if a person had limitless needs, a finite being could never satisfy them, because the needs are unbounded while the provider is always limited; only one who is himself boundless could satisfy them. In the same way, to fulfill the will of the Creator, blessed be He, would require the servant to be infinite just as He is. If so, who could stand? For even a minor sin constitutes an infinite rebellion.
There is a phrasing in the Malbim here that initially seems perplexing: "And there is no difference between infinite and infinite." One might have thought it more appropriate to say "between finite and infinite." Frequently, readings in the printed editions of the Malbim appear corrupt, and consulting manuscripts clarifies that the text was misread; yet an examination of the Malbim's own manuscript confirms that this is precisely the phrasing. The meaning is clear: one serves the Infinite, and even a minor sin takes on infinite proportions, for relative to the One who commanded it, it is a boundless rebellion. It turns out that there is no difference between a minor sin and a grave sin - both are infinite, and both represent limitless rebellion. Therefore, even for a minor sin, severe punishment would be warranted. If so, if You should preserve iniquities, O Yah, who could stand before You? What, then, is the way we are nevertheless able to survive?
כִּי־עִמְּךָ הַסְּלִיחָה לְמַעַן תִּוָּרֵא׃ - For with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared.
Rashi comments: You have not granted authority to any emissary to forgive, as it says regarding an angel, "for he will not pardon your transgression" (Shemot 23:21). Who does pardon our transgression? Only the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. And what is meant by "that You may be feared"? Rashi explains: Through forgiveness You will be held in awe, for if there were no forgiveness, people would not fear You; they would say, "Either way we are doomed, so why repent?" But now that forgiveness exists, people fear You so as not to sin, and if they do sin, they repent. In other words, reverence for the Holy One, blessed be He, is rooted in the reality that no one can rely on forgiveness from anyone else. If forgiveness could come from another, one would fear that other party, worry that he might not forgive, and seek to appease him. But since only the Holy One, blessed be He, can forgive, this leads us to revere Him alone.
Radak explains in the name of his father: The Holy One, blessed be He, grants dominion to the celestial beings to carry out His will on earth, but forgiveness does not reside with them, only with Him. He has emissaries to execute His will here, but to forgive - He dispatches no emissaries. And why? So that people should not say in their hearts, "If we sin, we will appease the angels and they will pardon our transgressions. If I did something wrong, I will have a word with the angel and work things out with him." The verse therefore comes to make known that forgiveness is not in their power, so that people will fear God, blessed be He, for with Him alone is forgiveness, and with no other.
Ibn Ezra adds a wonderful explanation: If You do not forgive, sinners will not fear You, and they will pursue their desires to their heart's content. This is also deeply true psychologically. If every exit is locked before a person, he reaches a point where he says, "Enough, it's over, I no longer care. There is no forgiveness and no pardon, so I have no chance of being cleansed of what I have done - so let me just indulge in the world." This resembles Elisha ben Avuyah (Acher), about whom a heavenly voice proclaimed, "Return, wayward children" - except for Acher. A state of despair is the most terrible thing, and this is also the method of the *yetzer hara*: when it seeks to break a person, it tells him, "For you there is no longer any hope; your teshuvah will not be accepted, you have rebelled and sinned so much." This is why the Holy One, blessed be He, accepted the repentance of King Menasheh, and accepted the repentance of heinous sinners, to demonstrate that He pardons and forgives even one who finds himself in the deepest abyss - that even there, pardon and forgiveness apply. This is the meaning of "with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared": precisely because You pardon and forgive, awe and reverence are possible, for a person realizes that it is worth making the effort.
Thus, there is no such thing as "He does not forgive." Rabbeinu Yonah states: For every act of teshuvah, forgiveness is granted - there is no repentance that brings no forgiveness at all. Rather, the greater the teshuvah, the greater the forgiveness. An analogy can be drawn from laundering. If someone takes a mechanic's shirt after a day of work and immerses it in water, is it cleaner? Inevitably, yes. How do we know? Because the water is dirty. If the water is dirty, the shirt must be cleaner. It is true that it might not look clean, and none of us would wear it out in public, certainly not to a wedding, but it is cleaner. Scrub it, and it becomes cleaner still, with the water growing dirtier. Add detergent, and it becomes even cleaner. Put it into a washing machine on a boil cycle, and it becomes cleaner still. In this way, every act of teshuvah performs some cleansing, and the more thorough the wash, the greater the erasing and purification. To say, "I repented, but I received no atonement at all" is simply untrue. The Holy One, blessed be He, always atones for something, and the more effort we invest, the greater the forgiveness will be. The door is never locked. Yet that forgiveness comes solely from Him, blessed be He; nowhere does it say that one should go to a priest and have a priest grant him absolution.
A story is told of a priest whose church stood empty, with no one coming through its doors. Once, he had to travel out of town, and he was hesitant to appoint a local substitute, fearing the man might open his own church tomorrow and become a competitor. He decided to invite the local rabbi, saying to him: "There is good income here; just sit behind the curtain, unseen, and people will come to confess." When the priest returned a week later, he saw no crowd and no penitents. A week passed, two weeks, a month. He asked the rabbi: "What did you do? You ruined my entire congregation; I have no livelihood left!" The rabbi replied: "I told them - a thousand dollars and you have forgiveness for the entire coming year." He had already made a fortune upfront for the whole year! To our point: "With You is forgiveness" - no mortal flesh and blood can say to a person, "You are forgiven and pardoned," but only the Holy One, blessed be He.
The Malbim distinguishes between human forgiveness and the forgiveness of the Holy One, blessed be He. When a person forgives someone who wronged him, the cause is usually rooted in the wrongdoer himself: he came to ask for forgiveness and regretted his deeds; or the injured party sees how much the offender is suffering because of his actions, and takes pity on him and forgives - as in stories regarding shidduchim, where people sometimes deeply hurt others and it severely hindered their prospects for marriage, and even though the victim was deeply hurt, he pardons so that the offender will no longer suffer; or the offender finds favor in his eyes. Thus, the cause of forgiveness is not in the forgiver, but in the forgiven. Not so with the Holy One, blessed be He - "For with You is forgiveness": the forgiveness resides within You, stemming not from the sinner, but from the Forgiver.
And so we find in the Midrash that Avraham Avinu, peace be upon him, said to the Holy One, blessed be He: "If You seek strict judgment, there can be no world; and if You seek a world, there can be no strict judgment." Master of the Universe, if You wish to execute strict judgment, the world cannot endure. And Chazal taught that had the Holy One, blessed be He, judged the Patriarchs with strict justice, even Avraham Avinu could not have stood. His entire kindness toward us is that He combined the attribute of mercy with the attribute of judgment, and the world would have no existence were it not that He pardons and forgives sins. It turns out that the reason for pardon and forgiveness lies within Him - "For with You is forgiveness."
And what, essentially, is forgiveness? The Malbim explains: its definition is to remove the sin as though it had never existed at all. Yet a human being cannot turn something that exists into something that does not exist. Today, the laws of nature are well known - the law of conservation of energy and the law of conservation of mass - and we know that nothing in the world can truly be made to vanish. It may change from one state of matter to another, but it will not disappear. Take a gas canister containing liquid; open it, and after an hour it is empty - seemingly gone. Yet it did not disappear; rather, it transformed from liquefied gas into gas that evaporated into the air, and it is still present. And if one cannot smell it or see it, know that gas naturally has no odor, and a special odorant is added so that a leak can be detected. But it is impossible to take an existing entity and remove it entirely from existence; everything that exists in the world remains in existence.
Regarding this, the Malbim explains: no human being can take something that exists in reality and make it as though it never was. The only One who can do so is the Holy One, blessed be He; sins exist, and He transforms them into nonexistence, wiping them out entirely. Therefore, the Malbim emphasizes, nowhere in Tanach do we find the term selichah used between one human being and another; nowhere is it written that one person said to another, "Salachti" ("I have forgiven"). Forgiveness is always from Hashem alone. A close examination reveals that the root s-l-ch (ס.ל.ח) appears fifty-one times in Tanach, and all of them refer to the Holy One, blessed be He; there is not a single instance of one person forgiving another with this word. This is the meaning of "For with You is forgiveness" - total erasure exists only with You.
The Malbim further elucidates "That You may be feared": a mortal human being, because he wishes to be feared and respected, refuses to pardon. Indeed, an advice is cited in the holy books: if someone is constantly harassed by another who repeatedly torments him and then asks for forgiveness, he should pardon him in his heart, yet say to him, "I will not forgive you until you stop bothering me." That is, he forgives in his heart, but maintains a deterrent, for if the harasser knows he is not pardoned, there is a chance he will cease. Such is the way of flesh and blood: if a person always pardons, people will walk all over him and trample him, and therefore he does not forgive.
With the Holy One, blessed be He, however, no such concern exists. The reason to fear Him, explains the Malbim, stems from His greatness and loftiness, and it is precisely forgiveness that reveals this - for people see that You are far too exalted for Your honor to be diminished. When a mortal human being is wronged, his standing is, as it were, diminished: previously he was respected, and now harsh words have been spoken against him and his honor is compromised. Not so toward Heaven: one who insults and blasphemes the Exalted brings disgrace only upon himself. The parable is simple: imagine a young man standing and hurling curses and insults at the Chofetz Chaim. What would people say afterward - what a disgrace to the Chofetz Chaim, or what a disgrace to the youth? The young man's father would be ashamed to step outside! The youth reviled the Chofetz Chaim, yet the shame is entirely his own, not the Chofetz Chaim's. Therefore it is written, "For those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be degraded" - not "I will degrade them," for Hashem has no need to degrade them; they degrade themselves. When someone insults Hashem, there is no greater disgrace, and the disgrace belongs to the offender, not to the Holy One, blessed be He. For if you have sinned, what have you affected in Him? Hashem is far too exalted for His honor to be marred, and far too exalted for any person to be justified before Him. Therefore, forgiveness itself brings about "that You may be feared": it is what engenders awe, unlike the way of flesh and blood who imagines that only by withholding forgiveness will people fear him. Moreover, since the offender harms only himself, it is fitting for Hashem to forgive - which also accords with the words of Ibn Ezra: through the possibility of forgiveness, a person realizes that it is worthwhile to make an effort and seek pardon, whereas if there were no forgiveness at all, people would say, "I have no hope of salvation anyway," and pursue their every desire without restraint.
In the sefer Tehillot Maharitz, an additional explanation is cited in the name of the author of Ma'aseh Hashem: although the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts penitents and forgives, He does not openly announce, "I have forgiven." Why so? So that a person will retain a sense of awe. At the conclusion of Yom Kippur, none of us hears a heavenly voice (bat kol) declaring, "Salachti kidvarecha" ("I have forgiven according to your word"). We believe with complete faith that Yom Kippur atones, and one who doubts the efficacy of Yom Kippur's atonement does not receive its atonement - yet as for hearing the forgiveness directly, no one has heard it. This is the meaning of "For with You is forgiveness": You keep forgiveness hidden with Yourself and do not proclaim it, "that You may be feared," so that a person will always remain in uncertainty - Have I been forgiven? Has it been pardoned completely? - and through this, he will constantly remain engaged in repentance and rectifying his deeds, in the spirit of "and my sin is ever before me."
This is also the intention of the Midrash: "For with You is forgiveness" - forgiveness is deposited with You from Rosh Hashanah, and why all this? "So that You may be feared" - in order to place Your awe upon Your creations on Yom Kippur. The righteous are written and sealed for life already on Rosh Hashanah; however, the Holy One, blessed be He, conceals the verdict and does not inform them that He has pardoned and forgiven, so that His awe remains upon them. For were it not so, the righteous person would say: Behold, already on Rosh Hashanah, in the preliminary stage, I was acquitted; Yom Kippur is evidently for the general public and to strengthen the community, while I do not need it. Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not inform them of the forgiveness - so that they will not cease praying on Yom Kippur as well, for Hashem yearns for the prayer of the righteous.
And this is what is stated: "Know that Hashem has set apart (hiflah) the pious for Himself" (Tehillim 4:4). "Hiflah" is related to "If a matter is concealed (yifaleh) from you" (Devarim 17:8) and "for it is hidden (peli)" (Shoftim 13:18) - meaning something concealed, a matter that is not revealed. The Holy One, blessed be He, covers and conceals who is truly pious before Him, whose deeds are truly pleasing to Him. And for what purpose? As the verse continues: "Hashem will hear when I call out to Him" - for the Holy One, blessed be He, always yearns to hear song and prayer. When a person does not know his standing before the Omnipresent, he prays, and prays again. But if he knew, having been informed that he has had a positive balance for a long time, he would take a break and rest for himself - whereas the divine will is that a person should constantly exert himself.
Regarding this, the Pele Yoetz presents a wonderful parable: Man's service in this world is comparable to a person sent into exile to a penal colony because he left behind substantial debts, and they tell him: You will never know whether you have succeeded in paying off your debts or not, but know that one day they will take you out of exile and return you to your city, and then it will be examined whether your balance is clear. And what does this cause? It causes the man to work unceasingly, for he never knows - perhaps they will take him shortly and it will turn out that he has not covered the debt, and they will send him back here. Such is the reality of man in this world: the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want a person to possess certain knowledge of his status, for if he did, he would say: "Thank God, I have already accumulated many merits; I will go take a rest." But out of uncertainty, he constantly exerts himself, thereby progressing and gaining further merits in His service, blessed be He.
The psalm is a prayer for the forgiveness of iniquity. It opens with a cry "Out of the depths" - from two depths at once, the depths of the body and the depths of the soul - asking that the prayer be accepted, and specifically with a voice of supplication, for the voice itself awakens the heart. "If You, Yah, should preserve iniquities" teaches that in our limited power we cannot fulfill our obligation toward the Infinite, and that every sin is an infinite rebellion; therefore, no man could stand. The answer is, "For with You is forgiveness": forgiveness is not in the hands of an intermediary and does not depend on the one forgiven, but rather on the One Who forgives, and its definition is a complete erasure that no created being has the power to effect - which is why the term selichah is found in Tanach only in reference to the Holy One, blessed be He. And precisely this forgiveness generates reverence: it prevents despair, reveals the exaltedness of the One Whose honor cannot be diminished, and because it remains concealed and unannounced - His awe is preserved upon us, and we never cease praying and exerting ourselves in His service.