The ''Kentish Psalm'', also known as ''Kentish Psalm 50'', is an

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

translation of and commentary on

Psalm 51 Psalm 51, one of the penitential psalms, is the 51st psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "Have mercy upon me, O God". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vu ...

(numbered 50 in the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...

). The poem is extant in a single manuscript,

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

Cotton Vespasian This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in othe ...

D.vi. Psalm 51, also known as the ''Miserere'' ("have mercy") poem, was usually read as a plea by

David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

, asking God for forgiveness for his affair with

Bathsheba Bathsheba ( or ; he, בַּת־שֶׁבַע, ''Baṯ-šeḇaʿ'', Bat-Sheva or Batsheva, "daughter of Sheba" or "daughter of the oath") was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, according to the Hebrew Bible. She was the mother of ...

. The ''Kentish Psalm'' begins by recounting that traditional exegetical material, followed by "an expansive paraphrase" of the psalm, and ends with the poet's plea that God "forgive the poet and others just as he forgave David."Fox and Sharma 18.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography *{{cite book , last1=Fox , first1=Michael , last2=Sharma , first2=Manish , editor1-first=Fox , editor1-last=Michael , others=Manish Sharma , title=Old English Literature and the Old Testament , year=2012 , publisher=U of Toronto P , location=Toronto , isbn=9780802098542 , pages=3–24 , chapter=Introduction Works attributed to David Old English poems Psalms