The initial plea, Keep back, means “Restrain,” “Do not allow,” “Don’t let.”

Presumptuous sins (in contrast with “hidden faults” in verse 12b) are those that are committed knowingly and deliberately (Good News Translation “willful sins”). The Hebrew says only “from arrogant (ones),” which some take to refer to people (Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible en français courant, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, New Jerusalem Bible footnote); but it seems more likely that it refers to sins. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy has “pride.” The idea of “willful sins” may sometimes be rendered as “bad things which I do and know I do” or “evil things I know I do.”

Let them not have dominion over me in line b portrays sins as living beings, or powers, that can rule a person.

The verb be blameless means “faultless, complete, lacking nothing”; in 9.6 it is used in a bad sense, “vanished, finished.” I shall be blameless may be expressed negatively in some languages as “I will not have done anything evil,” or idiomatically, “I will be a person without any bad marks on me.”

Shall be … innocent translates the same verb used in verse 12b, “clear.”

Transgression translates a word meaning “rebellion, disobedience” (see 5.10, where the term occurs also in a context of rebellion). Dahood translates “the great crime,” which he defines as idolatry, and this is quite possible. The difficulty in translating it simply “grave, serious sin” is that this implicitly allows the possibility of the psalmist’s committing little sins; so Good News Translation has “the evil of sin.” “Evil of sin” as two nouns that are rather synonymous in meaning is difficult to express in translation. However, since the component of “sin” is here rebellion against God, it is possible to say, for example, “I will not be guilty of disobeying God” or “I will not be guilty of turning away from God.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .