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Psalms 31: What the Passage Says

73 claims across 24 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Psalms 31 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer for help from someone under attack. The speaker asks God for rescue, calls God a rock and a fortress, and describes being worn down by grief, slandered by many, and avoided by neighbors and friends. He states his trust in God, asks that his enemies be silenced, and thanks God for hearing him. The psalm ends by urging everyone who hopes in the LORD to love him and be strong.

Claim by Claim

  1. 31:1
    • The speaker takes refuge in the LORD.
    • The speaker asks never to be put to shame.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to rescue him by his righteousness.
  2. 31:2
    • The speaker asks the LORD to turn his ear toward him.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to rescue him quickly.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to be a rock of refuge for him.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to be a fortified house that saves him.
  3. 31:3
    • The LORD is the speaker's rock.
    • The LORD is the speaker's fortress.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to lead him for the sake of his name.
    • The speaker asks the LORD to guide him.
  4. 31:4
    • The speaker asks to be pulled out of the net that they hid for him.
    • The LORD is the speaker's stronghold.
  5. 31:5
    • The speaker commits his spirit into the LORD's hand.
    • The LORD has redeemed the speaker.
    • The LORD is the God of truth.
  6. 31:6
    • The speaker has hated those who cling to worthless idols.
    • The speaker trusts in the LORD.
  7. 31:7
    • The speaker will be glad and rejoice in the LORD's steadfast love.
    • The LORD has seen the speaker's affliction.
    • The LORD has known the distresses of the speaker's soul.
  8. 31:8
    • The LORD has not handed the speaker over into the enemy's hand.
    • The LORD has set the speaker's feet in a broad place.
  9. 31:9
    • The speaker asks the LORD for mercy.
    • The speaker is in distress.
    • The speaker's eye is worn out by grief.
    • The speaker's soul and body are worn out as well.
  10. 31:10
    • The speaker's life is consumed with grief.
    • The speaker's years are consumed with sighing.
    • The speaker's strength fails because of his iniquity.
    • The speaker's bones waste away.
  11. 31:11
    • The speaker became a reproach among all his enemies.
    • He was a reproach especially among his neighbors.
    • He became an object of dread to his acquaintances.
    • Those who saw him outside fled from him.
  12. 31:12
    • The speaker is forgotten like a dead man out of mind.
    • The speaker is like a broken vessel.
  13. 31:13
    • The speaker has heard the slander of many.
    • There is terror on every side.
    • They take counsel together against him.
    • They plot to take his life.
  14. 31:14
    • The speaker trusts in the LORD.
    • The speaker said that the LORD is his God.
  15. 31:15
    • The speaker's times are in the LORD's hand.
    • The speaker asks to be delivered from the hand of his enemies.
    • The speaker asks to be delivered from those who pursue him.
  16. 31:16
    • The speaker asks the LORD to make his face shine on his servant.
    • The speaker asks to be saved because of the LORD's steadfast love.
  17. 31:17
    • The speaker asks not to be put to shame.
    • The speaker has called upon the LORD.
    • The speaker asks that the wicked be put to shame.
    • The speaker asks that the wicked be silent in Sheol.
  18. 31:18
    • The speaker asks that lying lips be silenced.
    • Those lips speak insolent things against the righteous.
    • They speak with pride and contempt.
  19. 31:19
    • The LORD's goodness is great.
    • The LORD has stored up that goodness for those who fear him.
    • The LORD has done it for those who take refuge in him.
    • He has done it in the sight of the sons of men.
  20. 31:20
    • The LORD hides them in the shelter of his presence from the plotting of men.
    • The LORD conceals them in a shelter from the strife of tongues.
  21. 31:21
    • The speaker blesses the LORD.
    • The LORD has shown the speaker his wondrous steadfast love.
    • This happened in a city that is either fortified or under siege; the wording allows both.
  22. 31:22
    • The speaker said in his alarm that he was cut off from before the LORD's eyes.
    • The LORD heard the voice of the speaker's pleas.
    • The speaker cried out to the LORD.
  23. 31:23
    • The speaker calls all the LORD's faithful ones to love the LORD.
    • The LORD preserves the faithful.
    • The LORD repays the proud doer in full.
  24. 31:24
    • The speaker calls them to be strong.
    • The LORD will strengthen their heart.
    • This is addressed to all who wait in hope for the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

31:1
"Put to shame" in Hebrew is not about embarrassed feelings. It means being publicly humiliated, exposed as someone who relied on the wrong protector and was left standing there with nothing. The opposite of shame here is rescue, not confidence.
31:2
The land these poems come from is full of rocky crags and caves where a hunted person could get above his pursuers and out of reach. "Rock" and "stronghold" are literal places of escape before they are images for God.
31:3
A name meant a reputation, what people knew you to be. Asking God to act "for your name's sake" is asking him to act in keeping with the character he is known by, so that his reputation as a rescuer stands.
31:4
The trap is a hunting net, spread on the ground and hidden, then pulled shut when the animal steps on it. The image is of being caught by a plan laid in advance and out of sight.
31:5
"Spirit" here translates a word meaning breath, the life in a person, not a part of them separate from the body. Handing it over is entrusting one's life to God's keeping, and the line is a prayer of a living person in danger. "Redeemed" is a commercial word: paying a price to get back a person or property that had passed into someone else's hands, as when a relative bought a family member out of slavery.
31:6
The Hebrew word behind "worthless idols" means something empty, a puff of breath, things that look like they can help and cannot. Ancient manuscripts differ on the first word here: some read "I hate," others "you hate," addressed to God.
31:7
"Faithful love" translates the Hebrew word *chesed*, which recurs in verses 16 and 21. It means committed loyalty to someone you are bound to, the dependable kindness of a person who keeps their obligations, not a passing warm feeling.
31:8
"A large room" does not mean a big chamber. In 1611 "room" meant space, so this is open ground. The contrast runs through the psalm: enemies close in and corner you, rescue means space to move.
31:9
Hebrew locates emotion in the body's organs. "My whole self" translates *nephesh*, the throat or breath, and so the living person; "body" is literally the belly or inner organs, where grief was felt. The verse describes a person whose distress has worked its way through eyes, life, and gut alike.
31:10
Bones stand for the frame that holds a person up, and so for their strength and stamina. "My bones are wasting away" says the speaker's whole capacity to keep going is draining out.
31:11
In a small ancient town, reputation was survival. Being "a reproach" means being an object of open contempt, and neighbors mattered most because they were the people you depended on daily. "A fear to mine acquaintance" means friends were frightened of him, either of catching whatever affliction he had or of being associated with someone this publicly disgraced.
31:12
A broken clay jar could not be mended and had no value as scrap; it was swept out with the rubbish. The comparison is to something discarded past any hope of use, not merely damaged.
31:13
"Terror on every side" is a set phrase in Hebrew, used elsewhere for a town surrounded by an army with no direction left to run. It names encirclement, not just fear.
31:15
"Times" means the turns and seasons of a life, how long it lasts and what happens in it. The speaker is saying the timing of his rescue, or his death, is not in his enemies' control.
31:16
A shining face is an idiom for favor, drawn from court life: a ruler whose face lifts and brightens toward a petitioner has decided in his favor, while a turned or darkened face means rejection. The same words appear in the ancient priestly blessing in Numbers 6.
31:17
"The place of the dead" is Sheol, where the Hebrew scriptures picture everyone going at death, a shadowy, silent place below, not a place of punishment. Its silence is the point here.
31:18
"Grievous things" here means harsh, damaging speech, not sad things. The whole psalm treats slander as a physical weapon: words that can strip a person of their standing and get them killed.
31:19
To "fear" God in these poems means reverent loyalty, taking him seriously enough to order your life by him, rather than being frightened of him. "In full view of everyone" is literally "before the sons of men": the rescue happens publicly, where the onlookers who mocked can see it.
31:20
The picture is of a host's tent. In this culture a guest taken inside a tent came under the owner's protection, and an enemy who wanted him had to get through the host first. "Quarreling tongues" are accusations and hostile talk, the specific danger the speaker faces.
31:21
The Hebrew phrase can mean either a fortified city that kept him safe or a city under siege where he was trapped; the rendering takes the second, but both readings are old and defensible.
31:22
"Cut off from your sight" uses seeing as a figure for attention and care. The complaint is not that God cannot see him but that God has stopped taking any notice.
31:23
The word rendered "all you who belong to him" is *chasidim*, formed from the same root as the "faithful love" of verses 7, 16 and 21. It means people bound to God in that loyalty and expected to return it, not people who are morally spotless. "Pays back in full" is a neutral accounting word: they receive exactly what is owed them.
31:24
In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thinking, willing and nerve, not of feeling as in modern English. To have your heart strengthened is to be given the resolve to hold your position.

Read Psalms 31