Vindicate me, Lord,
for I have led a blameless life;
I have trusted in the Lord
and have not faltered. Psalm 26:1

This is an interesting verse given what we know about King David. How could he possibly say he’s led a blameless life when we know that he was an adulterer and ordered a murder? Blameless is this instance does not mean sinless.

Instead we only look to the second part of the verse (something Old Testament writers use quite often called “parallelism”) to help expand upon the first, “I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.”

Other examples of this type of writing in the Old Testament:

And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Job 1:8

And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” Job 2:3

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. Genesis 6:9

When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. Genesis 17:1

The underlined phrases in the passages above amplify the meaning of blameless and upright. So blameless in today’s passage would be similar to 1 Timothy 3’s qualifications of an elder/overseer, “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach…”

The key to verse one, however, is this: I have trusted in the Lord. Without that trust every day of our lives, life gets old and stagnant.