Into Your Hand I Commend My Spirit
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. In you, Yahweh, I take refuge. Let me never be disappointed. Deliver me in your righteousness. 2 Bow down your ear to me. Deliver me speedily. Be to me a strong rock, a house of defense to save me. 3 For you are my rock and my fortress, therefore for your name’s sake lead me and guide me. 4 Pluck me out of the net that they have laid secretly for me, for you are my stronghold. 5 Into your hand I commend my spirit. You redeem me, Yahweh, God of truth. 6 I hate those who regard lying vanities, but I trust in Yahweh. 7 I will be glad and rejoice in your loving kindness, for you have seen my affliction. You have known my soul in adversities. 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 horror 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 loving kindness. 17 Let me not be disappointed, Yahweh, for I have called on you. Let the wicked be disappointed. Let them be silent in Sheol. 18 Let the lying lips be mute, which speak against the righteous insolently, with pride and contempt. 19 Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have worked for those who take refuge in you, before the sons of men! 20 In the shelter of your presence you will hide them from the plotting of man. You will keep them secretly in a dwelling away from the strife of tongues. 21 Praise be to Yahweh, for he has shown me his marvelous loving kindness in a strong city. 22 As for me, I said in my haste, “I am cut off from before your eyes.” Nevertheless you heard the voice of my petitions when I cried to you. 23 Oh love Yahweh, all you his saints! Yahweh preserves the faithful, and fully recompenses him who behaves arrogantly. 24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in Yahweh.
A man abandoned by everyone who knew him hands himself over, and the sentence he uses becomes the last words from the cross.
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. In you, Yahweh, I take refuge. Let me never be disappointed. Deliver me in your righteousness. 2 Bow down your ear to me. Deliver me speedily. Be to me a strong rock, a house of defense to save me.
The psalm alternates between confidence and collapse three times, which is what distress actually does rather than what an edited account of it would look like.
Into your hand I commend my spirit. You redeem me, Yahweh, God of truth.
Jesus spoke the first clause as he died Luke 23:46, and the choice is worth noticing. It is not a cry of dereliction; it is a bedtime prayer. Jewish children were taught to say this line before sleeping, and it was said from the cross by someone using the words he had learned as a child. The verb means to deposit something with a trustee for safekeeping, expecting it back.
Because of all my adversaries I have become utterly contemptible to my neighbors, a horror to my acquaintances. Those who saw me on the street fled from me.
The social description is the harshest thing in the psalm. Not persecution but avoidance — people crossing the road, an acquaintance who does not want to be seen speaking to him. I am forgotten from their hearts like a dead man. I am like broken pottery Psalms 31:12. A cracked pot is not repaired; it is thrown out, because it has no value at all.
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.
The turn, and it returns to the hand of verse five. My times covers everything the psalm has been complaining about — the timing of the trouble, its length, when it ends. He does not ask for it to be shortened; he says who is holding the schedule.
Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear you, which you have worked for those who take refuge in you, before the sons of men!
Laid up — stored, in reserve, not yet distributed. The psalm's confidence is not that the goodness is currently visible but that it exists somewhere and has his name on it.
In the shelter of your presence you will hide them from the plotting of man. You will keep them secretly in a dwelling away from the strife of tongues.
The specific shelter offered is from words, which is what has been damaging him throughout.
As for me, I said in my haste, “I am cut off from before your eyes.” Nevertheless you heard the voice of my petitions when I cried to you.
A man reviewing his own panic and labeling it accurately. He said it in his haste, and he was wrong, and he prints the mistake anyway — because the correction is the psalm's evidence.
settled What this mark means