Psalms 31:3-13

3 (30-4) For thou art my strength and my refuge; and for thy name’s sake thou wilt lead me, and nourish me.

4 (30-5) Thou wilt bring me out of this snare, which they have hidden for me: for thou art my protector.

5 (30-6) Into thy hands I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth.

6 (30-7) Thou hast hated them that regard vanities, to no purpose. But I have hoped in the Lord:

7 (30-8) I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy. For thou hast regarded my humility, thou hast saved my soul out of distresses.

8 (30-9) And thou hast not shut me up in the hands of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a spacious place.

9 (30-10) Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am afflicted: my eye is troubled with wrath, my soul, and my belly:

10 (30-11) For my life is wasted with grief: and my years in sighs. My strength is weakened through poverty and my bones are disturbed.

11 (30-12) I am become a reproach among all my enemies, and very much to my neighbours; and a fear to my acquaintance. They that saw me without fled from me.

12 (30-13) I am forgotten as one dead from the heart. I am become as a vessel that is destroyed.

13 (30-14) For I have heard the blame of many that dwell round about. While they assembled together against me, they consulted to take away my life.

Psalms 31:3-13 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.