Psalm 31:14

Psalm 31 is the lament of one man. It opens with David crying out for rescue and calling God his rock and fortress (Psalm 31:1–8). Then it describes his distress in detail: sorrow consuming him, his strength failing, his life wasting away, neighbours scorning him, people forgetting him like a dead man, and enemies slandering him and plotting against his life (Psalm 31:9–13). Verse 14 comes straight out of that, and after the prayers of this passage the psalm moves on to renewed trust and praise for God’s goodness to those who love him (Psalm 31:19–24).

The turn rests on the first word. “But” translates wəʾanî, literally “and I”, and it sets David himself over against all the scorn, fear and plotting he has just described. His circumstances are the same as they were a verse earlier. What has changed is where he rests his weight. Trust here is a deliberate act, chosen in the presence of fear.

The psalm does not name its occasion. Its persecution, betrayal and flight fit more than one period of David’s life, such as the years when Saul hunted him in the wilderness (1 Samuel 23) or the rebellion of his son Absalom (2 Samuel 15). The danger was real: armed pursuit, political intrigue and public slander, all aimed at taking his life or his good name.

The verb for trust, bâṭach, means to lean on someone with confidence and to be secure because of them. The KJV elsewhere renders it with words like “bold”, “confident” and “secure”, and the security comes from the one trusted. David puts his life and his future on the faithfulness and power of God. Scripture asks this same trust of all God’s people: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), and “Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him” (Psalm 62:8). A king in Israel was expected to rely on God’s protection ahead of his own strength, as another psalm says: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).

Isaiah joins trust and courage in one line, “I will trust, and not be afraid” (Isaiah 12:2), and promises perfect peace to the one whose mind is stayed on God (Isaiah 26:3). Nahum says, “The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him” (Nahum 1:7), and David elsewhere calls him “my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer” (Psalm 18:2).

The one David trusts has a name. “O LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, the personal covenant name of God, made known to Moses with the words “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). It speaks of God’s eternal, self-existent being and his faithfulness to his promises. David is speaking to the God of Israel, who has proved reliable through all his dealings with his people.

“I said, Thou art my God” puts that trust into words. “I said”, ʾāmartî, introduces a settled conviction, perhaps spoken aloud in prayer. The word for God, ʼĕlôhîym, can mean God or gods, and when it names the true God its plural form is read as a plural of majesty. With “my” it becomes a personal confession of belonging. This is the language of the covenant. When the covenant was renewed, Israel declared the LORD to be their God and the LORD declared Israel to be his people (Deuteronomy 26:17–18). David says it for himself in the middle of his trouble. His hope rests on who God is and what he has promised, and those stay the same while his circumstances change.

“Times”, ʻêth, means times and seasons, the occasions and circumstances that make up a life. David is speaking of all of it, good and bad, past, present and future. The “hand”, yâd, stands for power, authority and care. To be in someone’s hand is to be under their control or their protection, so David is saying that the whole course of his life is held by God. Proverbs says the same of every step: “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps” (Proverbs 16:9), and Psalm 139 speaks of God’s foreknowledge of our days (Psalm 139:16).

From that confession David moves straight to asking. “Deliver” is nâtsal, to rescue or pull out. The one delivered is David himself (“deliver me”), and the danger he is taken from is marked by “from the hand of mine enemies”. The same word yâd comes twice in the verse. David’s times are in God’s hand, and he asks to be taken out of the hand of those who want to destroy him. “And from them that persecute me” says the same thing again in other words and names the threat more sharply, people who pursue and harass him. David prays like this elsewhere, “Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God” (Psalm 59:1–2), and his confidence is that of “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1).

The order of the verse teaches something about prayer. Because his times are in God’s hand, David asks God for specific rescue from specific enemies. God’s rule over our lives is the ground of earnest, confident prayer, since the one who holds our times also hears and acts.

The word for face, pânîym, is plural in form but always used as a singular, and its senses of “front” and “presence” grow out of the face itself. God’s face stands for his presence and his regard. When his face shines on someone, he looks on them with favour and blessing. When he hides his face, it means displeasure and the withdrawal of his presence. The verb ʼôwr means to be or become light, and here it means to make light, to cause to shine. A proverb about earthly kings pictures the same thing: “In the light of the king’s countenance is life.”

David is praying the blessing that Aaron and his sons spoke over Israel: “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (Numbers 6:24–26). Another psalm asks the same for the whole people: “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us” (Psalm 67:1). In his darkness David asks for God’s light, with the comfort, guidance and peace it brings.

He calls himself “thy servant”, in Hebrew eved. It was an honourable name for one in covenant with God. It speaks of humble submission, and it also speaks of belonging, with access to God’s presence and his promises.

“Save me”, from yashaʻ, is a plea for rescue in the fullest sense, from enemies, from despair and from every danger he has no power to escape on his own. The ground of the plea is God’s cheçed, translated here “mercies”. It is one of the richest words in the Old Testament: God’s covenant loyalty, his steadfast love, his unfailing kindness, a love that is active and lasting and keeps faith with his people when their need is deepest. When God proclaimed his name to Moses, he called himself “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6–7). David’s great prayer of repentance begins the same way: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness” (Psalm 51:1).

Shame, bûwsh, here means public disgrace, loss of honour and defeat at the hands of enemies. For a man who has openly trusted God, being put to shame would mean that his trust had come to nothing in front of everyone, so the word also carries the sense of being disappointed. David’s prayer to be spared shame is therefore also a prayer for God to show his own faithfulness.

He gives a reason: “for I have called upon thee.” The verb qârâʼ means to call, to cry out to, to invoke. David has called on God earnestly and kept relying on him, and on that ground he expects to be vindicated. Scripture gives this as a promise, “let none that wait on thee be ashamed” (Psalm 25:3), and Paul writes, “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11).

Then the prayer turns. The disgrace David’s enemies meant for him he asks to fall on them: “let the wicked be ashamed.” The verse sets the one who calls on God beside the wicked and gives them opposite ends, as Psalm 1 does with the way of the righteous and the way of the ungodly, and as Psalm 58 does when it asks God to judge the wicked.

Verse 18 takes up the silencing again with a different verb. ʼâlam means to tie fast, and of the mouth, to be tongue-tied or bound, to be dumb. David asks God to bind the mouths that lie about him, which would bring their harm to a stop. “Lying lips” stands for the people who speak falsehood and slander, and the rest of the verse describes their words.

“Grievous things”, ʻâthâq, are hard, arrogant, impudent things, brazen words meant to wound. They are spoken “proudly”, gaʼăvâh, with arrogance and self-exaltation, and “contemptuously”, bûwz, with scorn and disrespect. Their target is “the righteous”, tsaddîyq, those who are upright before God and innocent of what is said against them.

In Israel a man’s reputation was worth a great deal, and slander could cut him off from his community, bring him under legal condemnation and even cost him his life. Scripture takes such speech seriously. James calls the tongue “an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). Among the things the LORD hates are “a proud look, a lying tongue” and “a false witness that speaketh lies” (Proverbs 6:16–19). Another psalm promises, “The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things” (Psalm 12:3–4), and Proverbs warns, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). God answers lies by bringing the truth to light: “he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday” (Psalm 37:6).

These prayers ask God to do justice, and they leave the doing of it in his hands. Verses 17 and 18 are imprecations, prayers for judgment on the wicked, of a kind found often in the Psalms. They come from a longing for God’s righteous rule to be established, for evil to be defeated and for his name to be vindicated, and they hand the whole matter over to the Judge. Paul gives believers the same rule: “avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

Jesus taught, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). The same Jesus pronounced woes on the scribes and Pharisees and spoke of judgment on the unrepentant (Matthew 23). Love for enemies and longing for God’s justice belong together. Psalms like this one teach us that God is just and will call evil to account, and they let us bring righteous anger at injustice to him and leave it with him.

Every line of these verses finds its fullest meaning in Jesus. He trusted his Father through betrayal and suffering. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), and even then he called the Father his God, and he died with the words “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Through him we too can say “Thou art my God.” He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he came “that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:5–7), and “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Jesus’ times were in his Father’s hand from his birth to his death and resurrection. In Gethsemane he prayed, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His death came by God’s determinate counsel, and God “raised up, having loosed the pains of death” (Acts 2:24). Those who belong to him are held in his hand as well: “neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

God’s face shines on us in Christ, for God has given “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Jesus is the true Servant of the LORD, who did his Father’s will perfectly. The mercies David appealed to are shown most fully at the cross, where God “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10), and we are saved by those mercies alone: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

Jesus, though innocent, bore the shame of the cross, “despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), and God vindicated him by raising him from the dead. At the cross he triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). So all who call on his name share his vindication: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Lying lips spoke against him too. False witnesses were sought against him (Matthew 26:59–60), and on the cross he was reviled and mocked (Matthew 27:39–44). He answered with silence, as Isaiah foretold: “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). Peter writes of him, “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). God vindicated his Son, and one day every lie will be silenced. “The accuser of our brethren is cast down” (Revelation 12:10), and the one who rides out to judge is called “Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11).

These five verses give us words for the hardest days. David’s “But I trusted in thee” is spoken from inside the trouble, before anything around him has changed, and his “Thou art my God” is a confession every believer can make with him. They show us a God who holds every one of our times in his hand, who turns his face toward his servants in favour, whose steadfast love is the ground of every request we bring, and who hears those who call on him. They also show that he is the judge of lies and pride, so the one who is slandered can hand his cause over to him. Verse 18 turns its light on our own speech as well, since the pride and contempt it names are hateful to God in any mouth. And because Christ prayed in this way before us and was vindicated, everyone who trusts him can say with David, “My times are in thy hand.”