PSALM 31
1To the lead player, a David psalm.
2In You, O LORD, I shelter.
Let me never be shamed.
In Your bounty, O free me.
3Incline Your ear to me.
Be my stronghold of rock,
4For You are my crag and my bastion,
and for Your name’s sake guide me and lead me.
5Get me out of the net that they laid for me,
for You are my stronghold.
6In Your hand I commend my spirit.
You redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.
7I hate those who look to vaporous lies.
As for me, I trust in the LORD.
8Let me exult and rejoice in Your kindness,
that You saw my affliction,
You knew the straits of my life.
9And You did not yield me to my enemy’s hand,
You set my feet in a wide-open place.
10Grant me grace, LORD, for I am distressed.
My eye is worn out in vexation,
11For my life is exhausted in sorrow
and my years in sighing.
Through my crime my strength stumbles
and my limbs are worn out.
12For all my enemies I become a disgrace,
just as much to my neighbors, and fear to my friends.
Those who see me outside draw back from me.
13Forgotten from the heart like the dead,
I become like a vessel lost.
14For I heard the slander of many,
terror all round,
when they conspired against me,
when they plotted to take my life.
15As for me, I trust in You, O LORD.
I say, “You are my God.”
16My times are in Your hand—O save me
from the hand of my enemies, my pursuers.
17Shine Your face on Your servant,
Rescue me in Your kindness.
18LORD, let me not be shamed, for I call You.
Let the wicked know shame,
and be stilled in Sheol.
19Let lying lips be silent,
that speak haughty against the just
in arrogance and contempt.
20How great Your goodness
that You hid for those who fear You.
You have wrought for those who shelter in You
before the eyes of humankind.
21Conceal them in the hiding place of Your presence
Hide them in Your shelter
from the quarrel of tongues.
22Blessed is the LORD,
for He has done me wondrous kindness
23And I had thought in my haste:
“I am banished from before Your eyes.”
Yet You heard the sound of my pleading
when I cried out to You.
24Love the LORD, all his faithful,
and pays back in good measure the haughty in acts.
25Be strong, and let your heart be firm,
all who hope in the LORD.
PSALM 31 NOTES
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2. In You, O LORD, I shelter, / Let me never be shamed. Both these clauses, as they stand or with minor variations, are encountered in many other psalms, immediately identifying this one as a supplication. The predisposition of the psalmist to draw on a repertory of stock images and even stock lines is especially evident in this poem, which repeatedly echoes other psalms as well as a sentence from the psalm that occurs in the Book of Jonah and some lines from Jeremiah.
3. Incline Your ear to me. The literal sense of the Hebrew verb should be preserved because it suggests an urgently anthropomorphic image of God’s bending down to hear the speaker’s prayer.
Quick, save me. The abruptness of this verset mirrors the Hebrew, which is truncated (two beats instead of three) to suggest the frantic urgency of the speaker—meheirah hatsileini.
a fort-house. The addition of “house” to the conventional “fort” (plural in the Hebrew here) is unusual, and perhaps may be intended to suggest shelter as well as quasi-military protection.
5. the net. This conventional image from hunting does not jibe with the prevailing metaphor of military assault.
6. In Your hand I commend my spirit. The spirit, ruaḥ, is the life-breath (like nefesh) and does not imply a “soul” distinct from the body.
7. I hate those who look to vaporous lies. The literal sense of these words (which also appear in Jonah) is “those who watch empty [or lying] vapors [or insubstantial things].” The reference is to idols, against which the speaker stresses his trust in YHWH.
9. wide-open place. This image (Hebrew, merḥav) is the antithesis of the straits or narrow place in which the speaker felt trapped.
10. my throat and my belly. Because of the physicality of the whole line, with “eye” on one side and “belly” on the other, the anatomical sense of nefesh as “throat” seems plausible, with the line moving down vertically from eyes to throat to belly.
11. Through my crime. The translation follows the Masoretic Text, which has baʿawoni here. But the Septuagint and the Peshitta read beʿonyi, “in my affliction.” There are no other confessions of wrongdoing in this psalm.
12. just as much to my neighbors. The Hebrew wording (literally, “and to my neighbors very [much?]”) is odd. There is probably a problem with the text at this point.
Those who see me outside draw back from me. The whole line, culminating in this concrete image, is reminiscent of Job. The speaker’s distress is gravely compounded by the fact that those who know him treat him as a pariah.
13. like the dead, / . . . like a vessel lost. In the midst of many stock phrases, a concreteness of somber existential reflection manifests itself. It is a cruel fact of life that the dead and buried, however much lip service is paid them, are often forgotten, no longer part of the continuing considerations of our lives, like some lost possession for which we no longer even look.
19. Let lying lips be silent. These words nicely pick up “be stilled in Sheol” of the preceding verset and clearly imply that the silencing of the lying lips is to be effected through death. The general distress of the speaker appears to be that he has been the victim of malicious slander or perhaps even perjury.
21. the crookedness of man. The Hebrew, merukhsey ʾish, is problematic. The noun elsewhere means “mountaintop” and so might more generally suggest an uneven surface or an obstacle. But all interpretations lean heavily on context, assuming an explicit interlinear parallelism with “the quarrel of tongues,” another reference to slander.
22. in a town under siege. This abrupt image is metaphorical rather than historical, linking with the military figures early in the poem.
24. steadfastness. A general pattern of biblical noun formations argues that this term, ʾemunim, is an abstract noun and does not refer—as many translations have it—to a group of people (“the loyal” or “the steadfast”).
the haughty in acts. Literally, “who does haughtiness.”