Psalms 31:8-18

8 You have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. You have set my feet in a large place.

9 Have mercy on me, Yahweh, for I am in distress. My eye, my soul, and my body waste away with grief.

10 For my life is spent with sorrow, My years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity. My bones are wasted away.

11 Because of all my adversaries I have become utterly contemptible to my neighbors, A fear to my acquaintances. Those who saw me on the street fled from me.

12 I am forgotten from their hearts like a dead man. I am like broken pottery.

13 For I have heard the slander of many, terror on every side, While they conspire together against me, They plot to take away my life.

14 But I trust in you, Yahweh. I said, You are my God.

15 My times are in your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me.

16 Make your face to shine on your servant. Save me in your lovingkindness.

17 Let me not be put to shame, Yahweh, for I have called on you. Let the wicked be put to shame. Let them be silent in Sheol.

18 Let the lying lips be mute, Which speak against the righteous insolently, with pride and contempt.

Psalms 31:8-18 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.