Biblion Bible Commentary
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Into Your Hand I Commend My Spirit
Psalms 31:1-24
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. · WEB
A man abandoned by everyone who knew him hands himself over, and the sentence he uses becomes the last words from the cross.
In you, Yahweh, I take refuge... Be to me a strong rock, a house of defense to save me Psalms 31:1–2.
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 Psalms 31:5.
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 Psalms 31:11.
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.
But I trust in you, Yahweh. I said, "You are my God." My times are in your hand Psalms 31:14–15.
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 Psalms 31:19.
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.
You will keep them secretly in a dwelling away from the strife of tongues Psalms 31:20.
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 Psalms 31:22.
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