PSALM 31 |
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1 In You, O Yahweh, I have
taken refuge; |
Let me never be ashamed; |
In Your righteousness deliver
me. [1] |
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2 Incline Your ear to me, |
rescue me quickly; |
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A stronghold to save me. |
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3 For You are my rock (סֶלַע) and my fortress; |
For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me. |
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4 You will pull me out of the
net which they have secretly laid for me, |
For You are my strength. |
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5 Into Your hand I commit my spirit; |
You have ransomed me, O Yahweh, God of truth. [4] |
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6 I hate those who regard vain idols, |
But I trust in Yahweh. |
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7 I will rejoice and be glad
in Your lovingkindness, |
Because You have
seen my affliction; |
You have known the troubles of my soul, |
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8 And You have not given me over into the hand of the
enemy; |
You have set my feet in a large place. |
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9 Be gracious[5]
to me, O Yahweh, for I am in distress; |
My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also. |
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10 For my life is spent with sorrow |
And my years with sighing; |
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My strength has failed because of my iniquity, |
And my body has wasted away. |
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11 Because of all my adversaries, I have become a
reproach, |
Especially to my neighbors, |
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And an object of dread to my acquaintances; |
Those who see me in the street flee from me. |
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12 I am forgotten as a dead man, out of mind; |
I am like a broken vessel. |
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13 For I have heard the slander of many, |
Terror is on every side; |
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While they took counsel together against me, |
They schemed to take away my life. |
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14 But as for me, I trust in You, O Yahweh, |
I say, “You are my God.” |
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15 My times are in Your hand; |
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me. |
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16 Make Your face to shine [6] upon Your servant; |
Save me in Your lovingkindness. |
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17 Let me not be put to shame, O Yahweh, for I call upon You; |
Let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol. [7] |
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18 Let the lying lips be mute, |
Which speak
arrogantly against the righteous |
With pride and contempt. |
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19 How great is Your goodness, |
Which You have stored up for those who fear You, |
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Which You have wrought for those who take refuge in
You, |
Before the sons of men! |
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20 You hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the
conspiracies of man; |
You keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues. |
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21 Blessed be Yahweh, |
For He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city. |
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22 As for me, I said in my alarm, |
“I am cut off from before Your eyes”; |
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Nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications |
When I cried to You. |
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23 O love Yahweh, all you His
godly ones! |
Yahweh preserves
the faithful |
And fully recompenses the proud doer. |
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24 Be strong and let your heart take courage, |
All you who hope in Yahweh. |
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[1] Psalm 31:1 was one of the texts that Martin Luther meditated upon which was foundational to the Protestant Reformation. In 1513 Martin Luther was still and Augustinian monk preparing, a course of lectures on the Psalms while his mind was preoccupied with the agonizing endeavor to “find a gracious God.” He was struck by the prayer of Psalm 31:1, “In thy righteousness deliver me.” But how could God’s righteousness deliver him? The righteousness of God was surely calculated rather to condemn the sinner than to save him. As he thought about the meaning of the words, his attention was more and more directed to Paul’s statement in Romans 1:17 that in the gospel “the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” The result of his study is best told in his own words: “I had greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the righteousness of God,’ because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous.… Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. “Thereupon I felt myself to be
reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of
Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the righteousness of
God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in
greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven”
(quoted in Christian History: Paul and his Times). |
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[2]
Reference to God as rock occurs about 17x in the Psalms (18:2,31,46; 19:14;
28:1; 31:2; 62:2,6,7; 71:3; 73:26; 78:35; 89:26; 92:15; 94:22; 95:1; 144:1). |
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[3] “Let us not think that only metaphysical
analogies say something valid or make it possible to understand authentic
aspects of God; poetic analogies are no less valid. Metaphysical preaching by analogy
attributes abstract concepts to God: God is being, power, wisdom. Poetic analogy preaches through the
concrete: God is a rock, a citadel, a bulwark…When God is refracted in
multiple images of poetic language, we are given the pleasing, silent
impression of realism. It is as if God
were already incarnate in the poetic word before becoming incarnate in flesh
and blood. It is as if the “many and
various ways” (Heb 1:1) of that word were an imaginative rehearsal for the
future historical incarnation” (Luis Alonso Schökel, The Literary Language of the Bible
pp.71,72). |
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[4] John Knox says that as his mentor George Wishart was
coming to the stake to be burned for heresy Wishart “saw down upon his knees,
and rose up again, and thrice he said these words: ‘O Thou Saviour of the
world, have mercy upon me! Father of
Heaven, I commend my spirit into Thy holy hands”…As a sign of forgiveness he
kissed the executioner on the cheek, saying, “Lo, here is a token that I
forgive thee. My harte, do thy
office.” (quoted in Rowland Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 254). |
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[5] The plea ḥānan, “be gracious to me,” appears nineteen times in the Psalms. It is probably rooted in God’s statement to Moses, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion” (Exodus 33:19) and the Aaronic benediction, “Yahweh make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:25). |
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[6] Make Your face to shine occurs five times in the Psalms (Psalm 31:16; 67:1; 80:3, 7, 19; 119:135; cf. Psalm 45:12). After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they hid themselves from the “face” of the LORD God (Gen.3:8). Jacob wrestled with God, was blessed by God and he could say “I have seen God face to face” (Genesis 32:28-30). The blessed hope of Jacob was also the hope of pronounced by the priest upon the people (Numbers 6:22-26; cf. Psalm 17:15; 51:9). |
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[7] “let them be silent in Sheol” could also be
translated, “let them go lamenting to Sheol” (NIDOTTE I:973). |