Psalms 71: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer for help from someone who has trusted God since birth and is now old and gray-haired. Enemies say God has abandoned him and plot to seize him, so he asks God to stay close, to rescue him, and not to cast him off when his strength fails. He recalls God's care from his mother's womb, and promises to keep hoping, to praise God with music, and to tell the next generation about God's power.

Claim by Claim

1. 71:1
   • The speaker has taken refuge in the LORD.
   • The speaker asks never to be put to shame.
2. 71:2
   • The speaker asks God to rescue him in God's righteousness.
   • The speaker asks God to deliver him.
   • The speaker asks God to incline his ear to him.
   • The speaker asks God to save him.
3. 71:3
   • The speaker asks God to be a rock of dwelling for him, to which he may continually come.
   • The speaker says God has given the command to save him.
   • The speaker says God is his rock and his fortress.
4. 71:4
   • The speaker asks his God to deliver him from the hand of the wicked.
   • The speaker asks to be delivered from the grasp of the unrighteous and ruthless man.
5. 71:5
   • The speaker says God is his hope.
   • The speaker addresses God as Lord GOD.
   • The speaker says God has been his confidence since his youth.
6. 71:6
   • The speaker says he has been supported by God from the womb.
   • The speaker says God took him out of his mother's body.
   • The speaker says his praise is continually of God.
7. 71:7
   • The speaker says he has become a portent to many.
   • The speaker says God is his strong refuge.
8. 71:8
   • The speaker's mouth is filled with God's praise.
   • The speaker's mouth is filled with God's splendor all day long.
9. 71:9
   • The speaker asks God not to cast him off in the time of old age.
   • The speaker asks God not to forsake him when his strength fails.
10. 71:10
    • The speaker's enemies speak against him.
    • Those who watch for the speaker's life take counsel together.
11. 71:11
    • The speaker's enemies say that God has forsaken him.
    • The speaker's enemies say to pursue him and seize him.
    • The speaker's enemies say there is no one to deliver him.
12. 71:12
    • The speaker asks God not to be far from him.
    • The speaker asks his God to hurry to help him.
13. 71:13
    • The speaker asks that those who accuse his soul be put to shame and consumed.
    • The speaker asks that those who seek his harm be covered with reproach and disgrace.
14. 71:14
    • The speaker says he will hope continually.
    • The speaker says he will praise God more and more.
15. 71:15
    • The speaker's mouth will recount God's righteousness.
    • The speaker's mouth will recount God's salvation all day long.
    • The speaker says he does not know their number.
16. 71:16
    • The speaker says he will come in the mighty deeds of the Lord GOD.
    • The speaker says he will make mention of God's righteousness alone.
17. 71:17
    • The speaker says God has taught him from his youth.
    • The speaker says that until now he declares God's wondrous works.
18. 71:18
    • The speaker asks God not to forsake him even in old age and gray hair.
    • The speaker asks this until he declares God's arm to the coming generation.
    • The speaker asks this until he declares God's might to all who are to come.
19. 71:19
    • The speaker says God's righteousness reaches to the height.
    • The speaker says God has done great things.
    • The speaker asks who is like God.
20. 71:20
    • The speaker says God has shown him many and severe troubles.
    • The speaker says God will revive him again.
    • The speaker says God will bring him up again from the depths of the earth.
21. 71:21
    • The speaker says God will increase his greatness.
    • The speaker says God will turn and comfort him.
22. 71:22
    • The speaker says he will praise God with the harp for God's faithfulness.
    • The speaker says he will sing praise to God with the lyre.
    • The speaker addresses God as the Holy One of Israel.
23. 71:23
    • The speaker's lips will shout for joy when he sings praise to God.
    • The speaker's soul will shout for joy, the soul God has redeemed.
24. 71:24
    • The speaker's tongue will speak of God's righteousness all day long.
    • The speaker says those who seek his harm are put to shame.
    • The speaker says those who seek his harm are disgraced.

Words Worth Explaining

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

71:1

"LORD" printed in small capitals marks a place where the Hebrew has God's personal name, which Jewish readers by long custom did not say aloud, substituting a word meaning "my Lord"; English Bibles keep that substitution and signal it with the capitals. "Put to confusion" in 1611 English, and "shame" in the plain rendering, mean public humiliation rather than a private feeling: to be visibly let down in front of onlookers, exposed as someone whose confidence was misplaced.

71:2

"Righteousness" here is not God's moral standard measured against the speaker, but God's own reliable, upright dealing, his habit of setting things right for those wronged. In the Psalms it regularly comes close in meaning to "rescue" or "vindication," which is why the line can ask to be saved *by* it.

71:3

"Rock" and "fortress" are literal landscape terms in a country of cliffs and crags: a high outcrop or a walled strongpoint where a hunted person could not be reached. Verses 1–3 repeat, with small changes, the opening of Psalm 31, reusing an older poem's lines was a normal way to compose. The clause "thou hast given commandment to save me" translates a difficult Hebrew phrase; the parallel in Psalm 31 reads instead "a house of defence to save me," and scholars disagree about which wording is original.

71:5

"Lord GOD" with GOD in small capitals marks a double name in Hebrew, the word for "my Lord" followed by God's personal name. Printing the second word in capitals is the translators' way of showing that a different Hebrew word stands behind it than behind the ordinary "Lord."

71:6

The Hebrew verb rendered "took me out" is uncertain and may mean "cut me free", the action of the midwife severing the cord. The image is of God doing the midwife's work, so that the speaker's dependence goes back not to a decision he made but to the moment of birth.

71:7

The Hebrew word behind "a wonder" and "a strange sign" means a portent or omen, an unusual thing people read as a message. Because long suffering was widely assumed to mean divine displeasure, a person visibly afflicted became an object lesson others pointed at. The word does not mean he is admired; it means he is stared at.

71:8

"Honour" here does not mean politeness. It means God's shining greatness, the kind that makes people look up.

71:9

Old age carried real danger in a world with no pensions, no savings system and no state support. An old person depended entirely on family, on physical strength that was gone, and on a reputation that enemies were busy destroying.

71:10

"My soul" translates a Hebrew word meaning the living self (breath, life, the whole person), not an immaterial part housed in a body. To lie in wait for someone's soul is to lie in wait to kill him.

71:11

The enemies' words assume a common ancient reading of misfortune: that a person still under a patron's protection would not be suffering, so continued trouble proves the protector has withdrawn. Their conclusion "there is none to deliver him" is a practical calculation, no protector means no risk in attacking.

71:13

"Confounded" in 1611 English meant defeated and disgraced, brought down in public, not merely confused. "Reproach" means the insults and contempt that follow such a fall.

71:15

The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean "I do not know their number" (the rescues are past counting) or "I do not know how to reckon," that is, the speaker lacks the skill of a trained scribe or accountant. Translations divide between the two.

71:16

"I will go in" renders a Hebrew verb meaning simply "come" or "enter," with no object stated. It may mean entering the temple to give public thanks, or coming forward into a confrontation, or coming with a recital of God's mighty acts; the line does not say which.

71:17

"Hitherto" means up until now. "Wondrous works" are the amazing things God had done for Israel, like rescuing them from Egypt.

71:18

"Greyheaded" means hair turned gray with age; grey is the British spelling. A "generation" is all the people living at one time, so he wants to tell the people around him now and the children who come later.

71:19

Saying God's righteousness is "very high" is a way of saying it reaches past the sky. It is too great to measure.

71:20

"Quicken" is older English for "make alive again," here reviving someone brought near death rather than raising the long dead. "The depths of the earth" is standard poetic language for the grave and the realm of the dead; someone gravely ill or in mortal danger could be described as already down there. Hebrew manuscripts differ here between "shown me" and "shown us," so some translations put the whole verse in the plural.

71:21

"Greatness" translates a word for public standing, honor, and reputation (the regard one is held in by the community), rather than personal size or power. The request is for restored status after disgrace.

71:22

The "psaltery" and "harp" are two Hebrew stringed instruments: the *nebel*, a larger, deeper-toned instrument, and the *kinnor*, a smaller lyre held in the arms. Neither resembles a modern concert harp. "Thy truth" translates a word meaning dependability or faithfulness, being true in the sense of holding firm, not in the sense of stating facts. "Holy One of Israel" is a fixed title, common in the book of Isaiah, built on a word meaning set apart from all else.

71:23

"Redeemed" translates a legal term from family law: the act of a relative who pays to buy back a kinsman's forfeited land, or the kinsman himself out of debt-slavery. Applied to God it carries that commercial and family sense, someone with an obligation stepped in and paid the price to get the person back. "My soul" again means the whole living self.

71:24

The final lines shift to a completed tense (the enemies *have been* disgraced) although verse 13 was still asking for it. Hebrew poetry commonly states a hoped-for outcome as already accomplished, and translators differ over whether to render such lines as past fact or as continued confidence about the future.