Psalm 31:9-13

9 Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief.

10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction,^[a]and my bones grow weak.

11 Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends— those who see me on the street flee from me.

12 I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery.

13 For I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!” They conspire against me and plot to take my life.

Psalm 31:9-13 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.

Cross References

• 1. Psalms 4:1
• 2. Psalms 6:7
• 3. Psalms 63:1
• 4. ver 7
• 5. Psalms 6:6; Psalms 13:2
• 6. Psalms 22:15; Psalms 32:4; Psalms 38:10; Psalms 73:26
• 7. Psalms 25:18
• 8. S Psalms 6:2; Psalms 38:3; Psalms 39:11
• 9. Deuteronomy 30:7; Psalms 3:7; Psalms 25:19; Psalms 102:8
• 10. S Psalms 22:6
• 11. Job 19:13; Psalms 38:11; Psalms 64:8; Isaiah 53:4
• 12. Psalms 28:1; Psalms 88:4
• 13. S Leviticus 19:16; Psalms 50:20
• 14. S Job 18:11; Isaiah 13:8; Jeremiah 6:25; Jeremiah 20:3,10; Jeremiah 46:5; Jeremiah 49:5; Lamentations 2:22
• 15. Psalms 41:7; Psalms 56:6; Psalms 71:10; Psalms 83:3
• 16. S Genesis 37:18; S Matthew 12:14; Matthew 27:1

Footnotes

• [a] Or "guilt"