I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,

I will rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee;

having risen, I will go on unto my father, and will say to him, Father, I did sin, to the heaven, and before thee,

I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have done wrong, against heaven and in your eyes:

I will arise - This is a common expression among the Hebrews to denote "entering on a piece of business." It does not imply that he was "sitting," but that he meant immediately to return. This should be the feeling of every sinner who is conscious of his guilt and danger.
To My father - To his father, although he had offended him, and treated him unkindly, and had provoked him, and dishonored him by his course of conduct. So the sinner. He has nowhere else to go but to "God." He has offended him, but he may trust in his kindness. If "God" does not save him he cannot be saved. There is no other being that has an arm strong enough to deliver from sin; and though it is painful for a man to go to one whom he has offended - though he cannot go but with shame and confusion of face - yet, unless the sinner is willing to go to "God" and confess his faults, he can never be saved.
I have sinned - I have been wicked, dissipated, ungrateful, and rebellious.
Against heaven - The word "heaven" here, as it is often elsewhere, is put for God. I have sinned against "God." See Matthew 21:25. It is also to be observed that one evidence of the genuineness of repentance is the feeling that our sins have been committed chiefly against "God." Commonly we think most of our offences as committed against "man;" but when the sinner sees the true character of his sins, he sees that they have been aimed chiefly against "God," and that the sins against "man" are of little consequence compared with those against God. So David, even after committing the crimes of adultery and murder after having inflicted the deepest injury on "man" - yet felt that the sin as committed against "God" shut every other consideration out of view: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," etc., Psalm 2:4.
Before thee - This means the same as "against" thee. The offences had been committed mainly against God, but they were to be regarded, also, as sins against his "father," in wasting property which he had given him, in neglecting his counsels, and in plunging himself into ruin. He felt that he had "disgraced" such a father. A sinner will be sensible of his sins against his relatives and friends as well as against God. A true penitent will be as ready to "acknowledge" his offences against his fellow-men as those against his Maker.

Against heaven - Εις τον ουρανον; that is, against God. The Jews often make use of this periphrasis in order to avoid mentioning the name of God, which they have ever treated with the utmost reverence. But some contend that it should be translated, even unto heaven; a Hebraism for, I have sinned exceedingly - beyond all description.

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against (b) heaven, and before thee,
(b) Against God, because he is said to dwell in heaven.

I will arise,.... This is the resolution which at last, through divine grace, he came into: he determines to quit the country, and his companions; he had left his harlots, and his old course of living before, but was in the same country still; for this a man may do, and yet remain unregenerate: but he is now for leaving the country itself, and his new acquaintance; he is now determined to drop his legal preacher, to be gone out of his fields, and from under his ministry, and to leave his swine and husks;
and go to my father: not to his old companions in debauchery and sin; nor to his elder brother, the Pharisees; he had made trial of both these to his cost already; nor to his father's servants, but to his father himself; to which he was moved and encouraged, from his being ready to perish, from the fulness of bread in his father's house and from the relation he stood in to him; notwithstanding, all that had passed, he was his father, and a kind and merciful one: this shows, that he knew him as his father, having now the Spirit of adoption sent down into him; and the way unto him, which lies through Christ the mediator:
and will say unto him, father; or, "my father", as the Syriac and Persic versions read:
I have sinned against heaven; by preferring earthly things to heavenly ones; and have sinned openly in the face of the heavens, who were witnesses against him; and against God, who dwells in heaven. It was usual with the Jews to call God, "heaven"; See Gill on Matthew 21:25. They have this very phrase;
"there is a man, (say (b) they), who sins against earth, and he does not , "sin against heaven"; against heaven, and he does not sin against earth: but he that speaks with an ill tongue sins against heaven and earth, as it is said, Psalm 73:9 "they set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth."''
And so the sense is, that he had sinned against God himself, and not merely against men, and human laws. All sin is a transgression of the law of God; and the thought of sin being committed against a God of infinite holiness, justice, goodness, grace, and mercy, is cutting to a sensible sinner: and this being the case, this man determined to go to God his Father, and him only, for the pardon of his sin, against whom it was committed. It is added,
and before thee; for he was now convinced of his omniscience. Sin may be committed against a man, and not before him, or he not know it; but whatever is committed against God, is before him, it is in his sight, he knows it: he is God omniscient, though sinners take no notice of this perfection of his, but go on in sin, as if it was not seen, known, and observed by God. But when God works powerfully and effectually upon the heart of a sinner, he convinces him of his omniscience, as this man was convinced: hence he determined to go to God, and acknowledge his sin before him; and that it was committed before him, and was in his sight; and that he could not be justified in his sight by any righteousness of his own; and therefore humbly desires pardon at his hands. This man's sense of sin and sorrow for it, and confession of it, appear very right and genuine, which he determined to express; they appear to be the convictions of the Spirit of God: it was not a sense of sin, and sorrow for it, as done before men, but God; and the concern was not so much for the mischief that comes by sin, as for the evil that was in it; and this did not drive him to despair, as in the cases of Cain and Judas, but brought him home to his father; and his confession appears to be hearty, sincere, and without excuse.
(b) Midrash Kohclet, in c. 9. 12. fol. 79. 4.

I will arise and go to my FATHER--The change has come at last, and what a change!--couched in terms of such exquisite simplicity and power as if expressly framed for all heart-broken penitents.
Father, &c.--Mark the term. Though "no more worthy to be called his son," the prodigal sinner is taught to claim the defiled, but still existing relationship, asking not to be made a servant, but remaining a son to be made "as a servant," willing to take the lowest place and do the meanest work. Ah! and is it come to this? Once it was, "Any place rather than home." Now, "Oh, that home! Could I but dare to hope that the door of it would not be closed against me, how gladly would I take any place and do any worK, happy only to be there at all." Well, that is conversion--nothing absolutely new, yet all new; old familiar things seen in a new light and for the first time as realities of overwhelming magnitude and power. How this is brought about the parable says not. (We have that abundantly elsewhere, Philippians 2:13, &c.). Its one object is to paint the welcome home of the greatest sinners, when (no matter for the present how) they "arise and go to their Father."

I will arise and go to my father - How accurately are the first steps of true repentance here pointed out! Against Heaven - Against God.