Psalm 31:23

Psalm 31 is a psalm of David, and most of it is prayer from deep trouble. He begins by asking the LORD to deliver him and be his strong rock (Psalm 31:1–5). He tells of a life “spent with grief” and strength that fails, of friends who flee from him, and of being “forgotten as a dead man out of mind” and “like a broken vessel” (Psalm 31:9–13). He has heard “the slander of many,” and his enemies take counsel together to take away his life (Psalm 31:13). Then he turns: “But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand” (Psalm 31:14–15).

The six verses of this passage grow out of that trust. David praises God’s goodness, thanks him for a rescue he has known for himself, admits how close he came to despair, and then calls all God’s people to love the LORD and take courage. What one man learned in his trouble becomes a word for the whole congregation. The occasion is left unnamed. David’s life held many seasons like it, from the years when Saul hunted him to the rebellion of his own son Absalom.

Verse 19 opens with a cry of wonder. The word for goodness, ṭûwb, means what is good and right, and it reaches to welfare, kindness, blessing and the good things God gives. After all the grief of the verses before, David can only exclaim at how great God’s goodness is. The LORD proclaimed himself to Moses as “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6–7), and David has found him to be exactly that.

Verse 20 tells what God does with those who trust him: “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” The word for secret, çêther, comes from çâthar, to hide, and means a hiding place, a covering or a secret place. Presence is pânîym, face. The word is plural in form and always used as a singular, and its sense of presence grows out of the face itself. To be hidden in the secret of God’s face is to be kept close to him, under his eye and in his care, so that God himself is the hiding place.

The second half of the verse says it again with a new picture. The pavilion is a çukkâh, a booth or shelter, the same word used for the booths of the Feast of Booths. A booth is a light and temporary dwelling, and with God it becomes a shelter that keeps his people safe. David speaks the same way in Psalm 27:5: “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me.” The thought returns in Psalm 91:1: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

Verse 21 is David’s praise for what God has done for him: “Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city.” To bless, bârak, is a word Strong’s ties to kneeling, and it is used both for blessing God in adoration and for God’s blessing on people. When David blesses the LORD he is declaring him worthy of all praise for who he is, as in “I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1–3).

The kindness is cheçed, one of the great words of the Old Testament, rendered lovingkindness, mercy and steadfast love. It is God’s faithful love toward his covenant people, a commitment that shows itself in deeds of rescue, protection and provision. Lamentations says the same of it: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23).

The word for marvellous, pâlâʼ, has the root sense in Strong’s of setting apart or distinguishing, and so of being great, difficult or wonderful. It is used of God’s mighty works of salvation and judgment. God’s kindness to David went beyond anything he could expect, and it was plainly God’s own doing. Psalm 107 joins the two thoughts: “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalm 107:8).

Verse 22 is a confession: “For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.” Haste is châphaz, a word for alarm, hurried flight and panic. David is owning up to something he said in fear, a rash outcry from overwhelming trouble. What he said was that he was cut off, gâraz, severed from before God’s eyes. God’s eyes stand for his watchful and caring attention, so to be cut off from them is to feel shut out of his sight and his protection altogether. The same words, “I said in my haste,” open Psalm 116:11.

“Nevertheless” turns the verse. While David was saying he was cut off, God was hearing “the voice of my supplications”. Supplications, tachănûwn, are earnest pleas for grace and favour, the prayers of someone who knows how much he needs God’s mercy. David’s feelings went one way and God’s faithfulness went the other, and God’s faithfulness held, because his hearing rests on his own steadfast love. Lamentations tells the same story: “I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice … Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not” (Lamentations 3:55–57). And God answers the fear of being forgotten in Isaiah: “yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15–16).

Verse 23 turns from David’s own story to all God’s people: “O love the LORD, all ye his saints: for the LORD preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.” Love is ʼâhab, to love or have affection for, here the affection of the heart turned toward the LORD, showing itself in trust, worship and obedience. It is the love the law called for: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Moses joined love to fear, as this passage does, when he told Israel what the LORD required of them: “to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him” (Deuteronomy 10:12).

The saints are the châçîyd, the godly or devoted ones, a word related to the cheçed David praised in verse 21. They are God’s faithful people, imperfect yet committed to him in heart and seeking to walk in his ways. In the Old Testament they were the faithful in Israel, and the New Testament gives the name to all believers, as when Paul writes “to the saints which are at Ephesus” (Ephesians 1:1).

The reason for love follows. The LORD “preserveth the faithful”, and the verb nâtsar means to guard, keep, protect and watch over. It describes God’s watchful care over those who stay loyal to him, keeping them through trouble and vindicating them in the end.

The psalm ends with a command and a promise: “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.” “Be of good courage” is châzaq, to be strong and firm, to take hold and hold fast, and it calls God’s people to stand firm in their trouble. “He shall strengthen” is ʼâmats, here in the form that means to make strong, so God himself is the one who gives the strength. The heart, lêbâb, is the whole inner person, mind, will and feelings, and that is what God makes strong.

The people addressed are those who hope in the LORD. Yâchal means to wait or to hope, a confident expectation that rests on God’s character, his promises and what he has already done, held patiently while waiting for him to act. David says nearly the same at the end of another psalm: “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD” (Psalm 27:14). The LORD told Joshua, “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:9). Isaiah says that “they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31), and another psalm sings, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

The goodness David praises is shown most fully in Jesus Christ, who is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). The goodness laid up for God’s people is the eternal salvation and abundant life he came to give (John 10:10), and in him God “hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). The goodness wrought “before the sons of men” was done in the open, in his miracles, his death and his rising, for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Through him “we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

The hiding place of verse 20 is ours in him. The Word was made flesh and “dwelt among us” (John 1:14), a verb that pictures him pitching his tent among us, and he is the child Isaiah foretold, whose name is Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). Jesus himself suffered both dangers the verse names. He bore the pride of men in the leaders who condemned him and in Pilate, who gave him up to be crucified (Matthew 27:11–26), and the strife of tongues in the mockery at the cross (Matthew 27:39–44). Now the life of every believer “is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), and the Spirit he promised dwells with and in his people (John 14:16–17).

The strong city of verse 21 finds its fullest meaning in him too. He is God’s kindness in person, the goodness and mercy that follow us (Psalm 23:6) and “the author of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:9). In him we receive “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:28) and dwell “in the secret place of the most High” (Psalm 91:1).

David’s cry in verse 22 points to the cross, where Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), in the words of Psalm 22:1. There God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and God answered by raising him up, “because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24). Because he “ever liveth to make intercession” for us (Hebrews 7:25), the prayers of those who are in him are heard.

The call of verse 23 to love and its promise to preserve the faithful meet in him as well. He loved and obeyed the Father, “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). He “was cut off out of the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8), and God preserved him by raising him from the dead. God sent him “that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17), and by his death sinners, the proud among them, are “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10) and made his saints through humble faith.

The courage of verse 24 is seen in Jesus, who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), and he gives it to his people: “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Paul could say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13), and he prayed that believers would be “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” (Ephesians 3:16–17).

The last two verses of the passage are spoken to us, and they ask two things of everyone who fears the LORD. We are to love him, and the reason given is what he does, for he keeps the faithful. We are to take courage, and the strength for it comes from him as we hope in him.

David also shows us how to speak about God. He remembered a particular kindness God had shown him and blessed the LORD for it aloud, and the things God has done for us are meant to be told in the same way, before the sons of men. He was honest about what he had said in his panic, and he set it beside what God actually did, so that God’s faithfulness had the last word. When pride and harsh words press in, he points us to the secret of God’s presence, and we go there in prayer, in the Scriptures and in worship. And because part of the goodness God has laid up is still in store, those who hope in him have good things still ahead.