Psalm 71:17

Psalm 71 carries no title naming its author. The speaker is an old man, possibly a king or a leader, and he may well be David in his later years. He has leaned on God from birth and trusted him from his youth (Psalm 71:5–6). He asks God to rescue him from the hand of the wicked (Psalm 71:2–4) and to be “my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort” (Psalm 71:3). His enemies “lay wait for my soul” (Psalm 71:10), and his prayer a few lines before this passage is, “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth” (Psalm 71:9).

In Israel old age was a mark of honour and often of wisdom: “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness” (Proverbs 16:31). Age also brought failing strength and greater need of others, and a man in power could find younger rivals and old enemies closing in. Few psalms look back over a whole life from birth as this one does. That long memory of God’s help is the ground of everything the psalmist says in verses 14 to 18, where his plea becomes a promise of hope, praise and witness.

“But I will hope continually” sets the psalmist’s own resolve against the enemies, the weakness and the fear of the verses before. The verb yâchal means to wait or to hope, so his hope is a waiting on God for what God will do. “Continually” is tâmîyd, the word for something that goes on always or is done regularly and constantly. He will keep waiting on God for as long as the trouble lasts, and “I will” makes it a choice he has made.

This hope rests on who God is and on what he has already done, which is why the psalm has just recounted God’s help from the psalmist’s youth. Hebrews calls our hope an anchor for the soul (Hebrews 6:19), and Paul traces how tribulation works patience, patience experience, and experience hope (Romans 5:3–5).

“And will yet praise thee more and more” carries the resolve further. The word for praise, tᵉhillâh, comes from the root halal, to laud or boast, and it names praise that is given voice, a hymn or song of praise. “Yet” looks past age and trouble to a praise that increases. As the years teach him more of God’s goodness and his acts of salvation, the psalmist means to give God more glory, and he means to do it in hard days as well as good ones, giving thanks in every thing (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

People ask how anyone can hope continually when things are dire and God’s help is slow in coming. The psalmist’s own way is to fix his eyes on God’s unchanging character and proven faithfulness. He recalls God’s help from his youth, he prays, and he leans on God’s strength where his own is gone. Paul heard the Lord say that his strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Hope of this kind looks squarely at the hard facts and still waits on God, holding that God is at work and that his purposes are good, before anything can be seen.

“My mouth shall shew forth” uses the verb çâphar, the ordinary word for counting or numbering, which in this form means to recount, tell or declare. It is the verb for setting things out one by one, so the psalmist means a deliberate telling of what God has done, spoken aloud.

He names two things to tell. God’s righteousness, tsᵉdâqâh, is his rightness: his justice, his faithfulness to his covenant promises, and his right dealings, above all in delivering the oppressed and vindicating his people. God’s salvation, tᵉshûwʻâh, is rescue, whether that means deliverance, help, safety or victory. The two belong together in God, since his righteousness shows itself in his saving acts. Isaiah joins them too, calling for salvation to be brought forth and righteousness to spring up together (Isaiah 45:8).

“For I know not the numbers thereof” gives the reason. The noun is çᵉphôrâh, a number or a numbering, from the root meaning to number, the root of çâphar as well. So the psalmist vows to recount what he can never finish counting.

“I will go” is bôwʼ, to go or to come, and it speaks of moving forward to meet whatever lies ahead. The psalmist goes “in the strength of the Lord GOD”. That title joins ʼĂdônây, Lord or Master, a name of God’s authority and rule, with Yᵉhôvih, God’s personal covenant name. The one he trusts is the sovereign Lord who has bound himself to his people. “Strength” here is gᵉbûwrâh, might, valour or force, a word used of people, of nations and even of a horse, and also of mighty deeds. Its sense here is God’s own might. In a world where strength meant soldiers and a strong body, an old man with neither says he will go forward in God’s.

Isaiah says that God gives power to the faint, and that those who wait upon the LORD renew their strength (Isaiah 40:29–31). Paul tells believers to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might (Ephesians 6:10), and Jesus said that without him we can do nothing (John 15:5). To go in God’s strength means to pray before, during and after what we undertake, to give God the glory for any success, to obey him and trust him to supply what he asks of us, and to keep going in hard times because his strength holds when ours fails (2 Corinthians 12:9).

“I will make mention of thy righteousness” uses zâkar, which means to remember, and in this form to mention or bring to remembrance. Mentioning God’s righteousness is remembering it out loud, so that others remember it too. This is the righteousness of verse 15, the same word tsᵉdâqâh, God’s justice and faithfulness shown in his saving acts. Another psalm makes the same vow: “I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works” (Psalm 9:1).

“O God, thou hast taught me from my youth” turns to address God directly. ʼĔlôhîym is plural in form and, used of the true God, is a plural of majesty, and here the psalmist speaks straight to the one who can answer him. The verb for taught is lâmad, which means to learn and, in the form used here, to teach, instruct or train. Strong’s gives the root’s first sense as to goad, as a driver urges an ox along the right path. God has been the psalmist’s teacher from his earliest years, by instruction, by experience and by his care through every turn of life.

People ask why the psalmist stresses his youth. He wants to show that God’s guidance has been the foundation of his whole life, present from his most impressionable years. That long walk with God is the ground of his present plea and of his resolve to keep telling God’s works. In Israel children were taught God’s law and his saving deeds from an early age, as the law commanded: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Proverbs gives the promise: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). This psalm is that promise lived out.

“And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works.” “Hitherto”, ʻad-hennah, means up to this point, until now. The psalmist has told of God’s deeds from his youth to his old age, and his witness has answered God’s teaching all that time. Samuel used the same kind of word when he set up the stone Ebenezer: “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).

To declare is nâgad, to tell, make known or announce, always by word of mouth to someone present. Strong’s gives its root sense as to stand out in front, which pictures putting a thing before someone’s eyes. The wondrous works are God’s niphlaʼot, from pâlâʼ, to be great, difficult or wonderful. They are deeds beyond any human power, which fill people with awe, such as his works of creation and his acts of salvation in Israel’s history like the Exodus. Recounting them strengthens faith in present trouble, as another psalmist found: “I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11). God formed his people for himself so that they would declare his praise (Isaiah 43:21), and in Israel this telling was part of worship, often in the temple or at the feasts, where it reminded the whole people of God’s power and faithfulness.

“Now also when I am old and grayheaded” uses two words for one state, the full reality of old age in body and in years. “O God, forsake me not” is the heart of the verse. The verb ʻâzab means to loosen or let go, and so to leave destitute or abandon. The psalmist fears being left without God’s presence and support, because then he could not do what he lives for. His trust rests on God’s faithfulness to his people, which the New Testament puts in God’s own words: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

His reason for wanting more years is God’s glory: “until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.” The two lines say one thing twice, and the second carries it further. “Thy strength” here is zᵉrôwaʻ, literally the arm, used for force and might, and especially for God’s hand reaching out to act and save. “Thy power” is gᵉbûwrâh, the same word as “strength” in verse 16. The might the psalmist leans on in verse 16 is the might he wants to show the young in verse 18.

Showing God’s strength takes in the psalmist’s own life as well as his words, since a life carried by God through weakness and danger is itself a witness. He hopes God will keep acting in his life so that the people around him and the people after him can see God’s power for themselves.

Every line of this vow finds its fullest meaning in Jesus Christ. He hoped in God perfectly, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). He entrusted himself to the Father even to death, praying, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His resurrection, as the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Corinthians 15:20), makes our hope certain, for Christ in us is “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The praise that grows “more and more” reaches its fullest form in the worship of the Lamb who was slain, whom heaven declares worthy of power and riches and wisdom and glory and blessing (Revelation 5:12).

The righteousness and salvation the psalmist tells of are revealed in Christ. In him the righteousness of God is made known apart from the law, through faith (Romans 3:21), and he is made unto us righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). There is salvation in no other name (Acts 4:12). The psalmist’s “thine only” points to this one Saviour, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus also went in the strength of the Lord GOD, for he said that the Son does nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do (John 5:19). Through him we now offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually (Hebrews 13:15).

Jesus is the great teacher, who “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:29), and the greatest of God’s wondrous works are his. At Cana he did the beginning of his miracles and “manifested forth his glory” (John 2:11). Above all, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). On the cross God showed his strength, when Christ “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). The psalmist’s wish to show God’s power to every generation is now the church’s calling. Christ sent his disciples to teach all nations and promised to be with them to the end of the world (Matthew 28:19–20), and he gives his Spirit so that his people are witnesses “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

These verses give us the testimony of someone who has known God from youth to grey hair and found him faithful the whole way. His hope is a patient waiting on God that lasts as long as the trouble does. His praise grows with the years, because God’s righteous and saving acts keep giving him more to tell than he can count. His strength is spent, and he goes forward in God’s.

They also show us God himself. He teaches his people from childhood, he stays with them in old age, and his righteousness is the one righteousness worth telling. His works are meant to be passed from the old to the young, so that every generation knows his strong arm. An old believer praying “forsake me not” is asking for time to do that work, and the God who taught him from his youth is the God who hears.