Verse explainer
God's forgiveness isn't a filing away of your sins — it's a removal so complete the distance has no measurable end.
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
BSBAs far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
The plain meaning
The image is deliberately chosen. North and south are fixed poles — you can reach them and turn back. But east and west are opposite directions on an infinite axis; travel east and you never arrive at west. The Psalmist (David, v. 1) isn't making a rough promise that God forgives mostly or usually — he's saying the separation between the forgiven and their transgressions is boundless and permanent. The surrounding verses press this home: v. 11 compares God's steadfast love to the height of the heavens above the earth, and v. 13 compares his compassion to that of a father over his children. The whole passage builds a case that divine mercy operates at a scale that simply cannot be exhausted. The verb 'removed' carries the sense of active displacement — the transgressions are not merely overlooked or archived, they are put at the farthest conceivable distance from the one who committed them.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Spurgeon marvels at the choice of east and west over north and south, noting that a traveler moving east never crosses into west — the poles are terminals but the cardinal directions are endless. He reads this as the Holy Spirit deliberately selecting an image of infinite removal rather than merely great distance, so no anxious believer could ever calculate their way to the boundary and fear they might reach it.
Gill ties this verse to the surrounding fatherly imagery (v. 13), arguing that the same God who has the affections of a tender parent toward his children is the one who effects this boundless removal. Forgiveness for Gill is no grudging transaction but flows from the same compassion that receives backsliders and heals their backslidings — the infinite distance is the measure of his mercy, not merely a legal decree.
Henry emphasizes that the removal is total and irreversible: God does not merely set sins aside where they might be retrieved against the believer, but displaces them so utterly that the psalmist can find no analogy adequate except an unmeasurable spatial infinite. He connects this to divine covenant faithfulness — it is not the believer's merit but God's hesed (steadfast love) that drives the removal.
The word behind it
Hiphil perfect of rachaq — 'to put far away, to remove to a distance.' The Hiphil stem makes God the active agent: he himself has caused the distance. Gesenius notes rachaq describes both physical remoteness and deliberate, purposeful sending away. The perfect tense treats the removal as a completed act, not a future hope or conditional promise — it is already done.
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