Today’s Passage: Psalm 31
This long psalm moves through real distress, disgrace, and danger, but it opens with five words that would become some of the most famous in all of Scripture.
As you read, hold this: verse 5’s words were not written for a single use. They were spoken again, centuries later, by a very different sufferer, in a very different kind of danger, and meant exactly the same thing both times.
Psalm 31:1-5 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
¹ In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; save me by Your righteousness. ² Incline Your ear to me; come quickly to my rescue. Be my rock of refuge, the stronghold of my deliverance. ³ For You are my rock and my fortress; lead me and guide me for the sake of Your name. ⁴ You free me from the net laid out for me, for You are my refuge. ⁵ Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.
Study notes The last words Jesus ever spoke
Verse 5’s prayer of surrender is not a poetic sentiment that later inspired similar language. It is, word for word, what Jesus actually prayed as He died.
"Then Jesus called out in a loud voice, 'Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.' And when He had said this, He breathed His last." Luke 23:46 (BSB)
David prayed this in the middle of real danger, not knowing whether rescue would come. Jesus prayed it knowing exactly what came next, death itself, and still meant it as total, trusting surrender. The same five words carried both men through their darkest moment.
Psalm 31:6-8 (BSB)
⁶ I hate those who cling to worthless idols, but in the LORD I trust. ⁷ I will be glad and rejoice in Your loving devotion, for You have seen my affliction; You have known the anguish of my soul. ⁸ You have not delivered me to the enemy; You have set my feet in the open.
David’s confidence rests specifically on being known, not merely helped. God has “seen” his affliction and “known” the anguish, personal attention before any actual rescue arrives.
Psalm 31:9-13 (BSB)
⁹ Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes fail from sorrow, my soul and body as well. ¹⁰ For my life is consumed with grief and my years with groaning; my iniquity has drained my strength, and my bones are wasting away. ¹¹ Among all my enemies I am a disgrace, and among my neighbors even more. I am dreaded by my friends—they flee when they see me on the street. ¹² I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind. I am like a broken vessel. ¹³ For I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side. They conspire against me and plot to take my life.
The psalm does not rush past this section. It lingers over abandonment by friends, physical exhaustion, being treated as already dead, honest and specific rather than vague.
Psalm 31:14-18 (BSB)
¹⁴ But I trust in You, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” ¹⁵ My times are in Your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me. ¹⁶ Make Your face shine on Your servant; save me by Your loving devotion. ¹⁷ O LORD, let me not be ashamed, for I have called on You. Let the wicked be put to shame; let them lie silent in Sheol. ¹⁸ May lying lips be silenced—lips that speak with arrogance against the righteous, full of pride and contempt.
Word study Commit — paqad (Psalm 31:5)
“Commit” translates אַפְקִיד (paqad, ahf-KEED) — Strong's H6485, a verb meaning “to entrust, to deposit for safekeeping,” the same root used for entrusting valuables into someone else’s care. Verse 15’s parallel phrase, “my times are in Your hands,” extends the same idea across the whole psalm: not just the final moment of death, but every ordinary hour, entrusted the same way.
Psalm 31:19-24 (BSB)
¹⁹ How great is Your goodness which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have bestowed before the sons of men on those who take refuge in You! ²⁰ You hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the schemes of men. You conceal them in Your shelter from accusing tongues. ²¹ Blessed be the LORD, for He has shown me His loving devotion in a city under siege. ²² In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from Your sight!” But You heard my plea for mercy when I called to You for help. ²³ Love the LORD, all His saints. The LORD preserves the faithful, but fully repays the arrogant. ²⁴ Be strong and courageous, all you who hope in the LORD.
Verse 22 is worth pausing on: David’s own panic, “I am cut off from Your sight,” turns out to have been wrong. The feeling of abandonment and the actual fact of abandonment were never the same thing.
Context A city under siege
Verse 21’s specific detail, “in a city under siege,” suggests this psalm may have been composed or later applied to a real, remembered crisis, David hemmed in by hostile forces with no clear way out, though the exact historical occasion is not named. Whatever the specific event, the detail keeps the psalm’s danger concrete rather than abstract: not vague spiritual trouble, but the very real experience of feeling surrounded with nowhere left to run.
Personal Application
- Verse 5’s prayer of total surrender was prayed by both David, in the middle of uncertain danger, and Jesus, knowing exactly what was coming. Could you honestly pray those same five words about your own life today, whatever uncertainty or fear you are currently facing?
- Verse 22 admits a panicked feeling of abandonment that turned out not to match reality. Is there a current fear that God has cut you off that this verse would call you to reconsider?
Decision of the day: Pray “into Your hands I commit my spirit” over one specific fear or uncertainty today, as an act of total, deliberate surrender rather than anxious control.
Pray to Close
The truth to carry from this psalm: the words that carried David through danger, and Jesus through death itself, are still available for whatever you are facing today.
Praise: for the LORD who is rock, fortress, and refuge, worthy of total surrender in every kind of danger.
Confess: any anxious grip you have kept on your own circumstances rather than genuinely entrusting them to God.
Ask: for the same trust David and Jesus both prayed, hands open, spirit entrusted, whatever comes next.
Worship for Today
How Deep the Father's Love for Us · Stuart Townend
This song’s meditation on the cross, where Christ’s own dying words are echoed, matches this psalm’s own centerpiece exactly: the same surrender David first prayed in danger, fulfilled completely in the greater suffering this song contemplates.
Listen: