Psalms 31:2-12

2 Get down on my level and listen, and please - no procrastination! Your granite cave a hiding place, your high cliff aerie a place of safety.

3 You're my cave to hide in, my cliff to climb. Be my safe leader, be my true mountain guide.

4 Free me from hidden traps; I want to hide in you.

5 I've put my life in your hands. You won't drop me, you'll never let me down.

6 I hate all this silly religion, but you, God, I trust.

7 I'm leaping and singing in the circle of your love; you saw my pain, you disarmed my tormentors,

8 You didn't leave me in their clutches but gave me room to breathe.

9 Be kind to me, God - I'm in deep, deep trouble again. I've cried my eyes out; I feel hollow inside.

10 My life leaks away, groan by groan; my years fade out in sighs. My troubles have worn me out, turned my bones to powder.

11 To my enemies I'm a monster; I'm ridiculed by the neighbors. My friends are horrified; they cross the street to avoid me.

12 They want to blot me from memory, forget me like a corpse in a grave, discard me like a broken dish in the trash.

Psalms 31:2-12 Meaning and Commentary

To the chief Musician, a Psalm of David. This psalm, according to Arama, was composed by David when in Keilah; but, according to Kimchi and others, when the Ziphites proposed to deliver him up into the hands of Saul; and who, upon their solicitations, came down and surrounded him with his army, from whom in haste he made his escape, and to which he is thought to refer in Psalm 31:22. Theodoret supposes it was written by David when he fled from Absalom, and that it has some respect in it to his sin against Uriah, in that verse.