Where we are
Psalm 31 is a lament, and a lament is a strange kind of faith. We tend to think trust looks calm — a settled heart, an untroubled face. This psalm knows better. Here is a man surrounded, slandered, wasting away with grief until his eye is "consumed," a man who feels "forgotten as a dead man out of mind" and "like a broken vessel" — and the same man says, four separate times and in four different keys, that he is putting himself into the hands of God. The complaint and the trust are not sequential, as if he first despairs and then recovers. They are simultaneous. He trusts while besieged. That is what a lament of trust is: honesty about the trouble and confidence in God spoken in the same breath, the two braided together so tightly you cannot pull them apart.
David — the psalm is ascribed to him — writes as one who knows what it is to be hunted. Whether the setting is Saul's pursuit or the treachery of Absalom's revolt or some grief the superscription does not name, the shape is the same one every believer eventually stands inside: the sense that everyone has turned, that the walls are closing, that even friends flee at the sight of you. And the psalm's answer is not a strategy. It is a Person. Nearly every image David reaches for is a place to hide in God — a rock, a fortress, an house of defence, a strong city, a pavilion, the secret of God's presence. The whole poem is the sound of a man running to cover and finding it.
Here is what to watch as the psalm unfolds:
- Trust and complaint coexist — this is the spine. Do not wait for David to stop grieving before he trusts. He grieves and trusts at once. The psalm's honesty is its gift: you may bring the Lord your fear on every side and your confidence in his righteousness in the same prayer.
- The psalm cycles — it does not climb a straight line. It opens in trust (vv. 1–8), sinks into raw grief (vv. 9–13), rises again into trust (vv. 14–18), swells into praise (vv. 19–22), and turns outward to charge the saints (vv. 23–24). Petition and confidence alternate more than once. Feel the oscillation; it is the true rhythm of a besieged heart.
- Committing one's spirit to God is the psalm's center. "Into thine hand I commit my spirit" (v. 5) and "My times are in thy hand" (v. 15) are the two hinges. The whole poem turns on the act of handing yourself over — your breath, your times, your future — to the God who has redeemed you.
- A verse the Savior prayed from the cross lives here. Watch verse 5. On Christ's lips at Calvary, David's prayer of trust became the trust of the dying Redeemer — a resonance we handle reverently below.
This is Hebrew poetry, so watch for parallelism — the second line of a verse echoing, sharpening, or answering the first — and for the repeated hand motif that stitches the psalm together.
In thee do I put my trust (verses 1–8)
The psalm opens with the whole of itself in one line:
In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. — Psalm 31:1
Notice the ground of the plea. David does not ask to be delivered because he is righteous; he asks to be delivered "in thy righteousness" — God's own faithfulness to his covenant is the collateral. And notice the fear underneath: "let me never be ashamed." For a hunted man, shame is not embarrassment; it is the public collapse of everything he staked on God. If the Lord does not act, then the taunting neighbours were right, and David's trust was a fool's bet. So the first prayer of the psalm is really this: let my trust not turn out to have been misplaced.
Then the images of refuge begin to pile up:
Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me. — Psalm 31:2–3
Rock, fortress, house of defence — David is not describing scenery. He is describing what he needs God to be to him: something immovable to stand on when everything else is sliding, and something walled and high to hide inside when the enemy is at the gate. And again the motive is God's, not David's: "for thy name's sake lead me." He asks God to rescue him because rescuing the trusting is the kind of thing this God is known for — his reputation is on the line, not merely David's life.
Then, at the heart of this first movement, comes the verse the whole psalm is remembered for:
Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth. — Psalm 31:5
Read what David is actually doing. The word rendered "commit" is a banking word — to deposit, to place something valuable in trusted keeping for safekeeping. David takes the one thing that is wholly his, his ruach, his spirit, his very breath, and hands it across the counter to God for keeping. And look at the ground he stands on to do it: "thou hast redeemed me." The committing rests on a completed act. He does not deposit his spirit into an unknown; he deposits it with the God who has already bought him back, the "God of truth" — emeth, the firm and faithful One you can put your whole weight on. This is the anatomy of trust the whole psalm teaches: hand yourself over, on the strength of what God has already proven himself to be.
And here we must pause reverently, because these are the words the Savior prayed as he died. Luke records that Jesus, in the last moment on the cross, "cried with a loud voice" and said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost" (Luke 23:46). It is worth being careful about what this means. Psalm 31 is not a chapter-long prophecy of the Atonement; it is a lament David sang out of his own affliction. But the dying Redeemer reached back into Israel's book of prayer and took David's words of trust onto his own lips — and in his mouth they became the deepest trust ever spoken, the Son handing his spirit into the Father's keeping at the very moment it looked most like abandonment. That a Bronze Age fugitive's prayer of confidence could become the Savior's final word is not coincidence; it is the reason the Psalms are the Church's prayer book. David gave us the words; Christ filled them to the brim. When the disciple in extremity prays "into thine hand I commit my spirit," he prays David's psalm and echoes his Lord.
The movement then closes in a small burst of confidence:
I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: for thou hast considered my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities; And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my feet in a large room. — Psalm 31:7–8
Watch the hand motif turn. David has just placed his spirit into God's hand (v. 5); now he rejoices that God "hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy" (v. 8). Two hands are contending for him, and he has chosen which one to be in. And notice how tender the grounds of his gladness are: not that the trouble is gone, but that God "hast known my soul in adversities." To be known in the trouble — seen, understood, not forgotten — is itself a mercy worth rejoicing over. The "large room" is the opposite of being cornered: the God who has him has room for him.
My grief, my broken vessel (verses 9–13)
Then the floor drops out. Having just rejoiced in the "large room," David plunges without transition into the psalm's darkest stretch — and this abruptness is exactly the point. Trust does not inoculate him against the next wave of grief; it only tells him where to carry it.
Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly. For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing… I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel. — Psalm 31:9–12
Do not rush past this. Here is a man of faith describing a full physical and social collapse. Grief has eaten his eyes, his soul, his body — the whole self is worn down ("consumed," the same wasting the enemy could not accomplish, grief accomplishes from within). His years are "spent with sighing." And the wound is not only the enemy's assault; it is the desertion of the near ones — his neighbours make him a reproach, his acquaintances dread him, those who see him coming cross the street. Then the two most desolate images in the psalm: "forgotten as a dead man out of mind," dropped from memory as thoroughly as a corpse, and "like a broken vessel" — a shattered clay pot, the useless thing you sweep up and throw out. This is the felt experience of abandonment, and Scripture lets him say it plainly.
For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. — Psalm 31:13
"Fear was on every side" — a phrase so exact that Jeremiah would later borrow it for his own siege of hostility (Jer. 20:10). Slander, conspiracy, a plot on his life: the pressure is real, external, and coordinated. And the psalm does not tell David to pretend it is not there. Faith here does not deny the fear on every side; it simply refuses to let that fear have the last word. Which is precisely what the next verse does.
But I trusted in thee — into thine hand (verses 14–18)
The whole psalm pivots on one small adversative:
But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. — Psalm 31:14–15
But. One word turns the entire poem. Everything before it was true — the wasting, the slander, the fear on every side — and none of it is retracted. David simply sets his trust against it: "But I trusted in thee." Notice the tense; it is settled, a standing commitment that predates this trouble and outlasts it. And then the second great hinge of the psalm, matched to the first: at verse 5 he committed his spirit into God's hand; here he commits his times.
"My times are in thy hand" may be the most quietly load-bearing sentence in the psalm. Times — the seasons and turns and appointments of a life — are exactly what a hunted man cannot control. He does not know if he has years or hours. So he does the only thing trust can do with an unknown future: he hands it over. The timing of my deliverance, the length of my days, the hour of my death — all of it in thy hand, not the enemy's. The Restoration hears this note clearly. To Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail the Lord promised, "thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less" (D&C 122:9) — the same conviction David reached for, that the calendar of a faithful life is held in God's hand and not surrendered to his persecutors. And in the same breath, God's providence over the timing of our lives becomes the ground of peace: not that we see the schedule, but that Someone trustworthy keeps it.
From that handed-over trust, David can pray boldly again:
Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies' sake. Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee… — Psalm 31:16–17
"Make thy face to shine" reaches straight back to the priestly blessing of Numbers 6 — the covenant benediction, "the LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee" (Num. 6:25). David asks for nothing he has not been promised. And he returns to the opening fear — "let me not be ashamed" — but now anchored: not because he is worthy, but "for I have called upon thee." The trust that dared to deposit his spirit and his times now dares to expect that such trust will not be humiliated.
Oh how great is thy goodness (verses 19–22)
Now the psalm swells from petition into praise, and the praise begins with wonder:
Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men! — Psalm 31:19
"Oh how great" is the cry of a man staggered by an abundance he had not fully counted on. And notice where the goodness is: "laid up" — stored, reserved, kept in trust like treasure in a vault against the day it is needed. God's goodness toward the faithful is not spent down to the last coin in this life; much of it is deposited ahead, held for "them that fear" and "them that trust." There is a beautiful symmetry here that the psalm builds on purpose: David committed his spirit into God's keeping (v. 5), and in return God has goodness laid up in his keeping for David (v. 19). Trust deposits; God reserves. The Restoration extends the thought into eternity: knowledge and intelligence gained here rise with us, and "whatsoever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection" (D&C 130:18–19) — goodness laid up, drawn on forever. What we entrust to God he keeps; what he lays up for us he keeps too.
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. — Psalm 31:20
Here the refuge images return one more time, and now they are the safest of all: not a rock or a wall of stone but "the secret of thy presence" — hidden in the very nearness of God — and a "pavilion," a royal tent, sheltered from "the strife of tongues," which is exactly the slander and conspiracy of verse 13 named again and now shut outside. The same trouble is still there; David has simply been moved inside.
Blessed be the LORD: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in a strong city. 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. — Psalm 31:21–22
And then, with disarming honesty, David confesses the low point he passed through to get here: "I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes." In the panic of the siege he had concluded he was abandoned, out of God's sight entirely — the very despair verses 9–13 gave voice to. He does not hide that he thought it. He simply reports the nevertheless: "nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications." God heard the prayer of a man who was sure God had stopped looking. That is a mercy worth blessing him for out loud, and it is a comfort to every believer who has prayed while half-convinced no one was listening: the hearing does not depend on the strength of your certainty. It depends on the faithfulness of the God you cried to.
The chapter's architecture
Let me be honest about the shape of this psalm, because its honesty is part of what it teaches. Psalm 31 is not a straight climb from despair to triumph. It cycles. It moves through trust, then grief, then trust again, then praise — and the return trips are the point. Trace the movement:
- Trust and refuge (vv. 1–8) — "In thee do I put my trust"; the rock, the fortress, the house of defence; the spirit committed into God's hand; a first burst of gladness.
- Grief and siege (vv. 9–13) — the collapse: the consumed eye, the broken vessel, the dead man forgotten, the fear on every side.
- Trust renewed (vv. 14–18) — the great "But I trusted in thee"; the times committed into God's hand; bold petition again.
- Praise and testimony (vv. 19–22) — "Oh how great is thy goodness"; the pavilion; the confession of the panic he passed through and the God who heard anyway.
- The charge to the saints (vv. 23–24) — the psalm turns outward to the whole congregation.
That is a psalm that petitions and then trusts, sinks and then rises, more than once. It is not the tidy arc we might prefer, and its refusal to be tidy is a mercy: it looks like the actual experience of a besieged heart, which does not trust once and stay there but trusts, and slips, and trusts again. The Hebrew parallelism runs throughout — the second line of nearly every verse deepening or answering the first ("be thou my strong rock" / "for an house of defence to save me"; "deliver me from the hand of mine enemies" / "and from them that persecute me").
But over the top of that oscillation, one motif holds the whole poem together and gives it a spine the cycling cannot break: the hand. The word threads through the psalm deliberately. David commits his spirit into God's hand (v. 5). He rejoices that God has not shut him up into the enemy's hand (v. 8). He declares his times are in God's hand (v. 15). He prays to be delivered from the hand of his enemies (v. 15). Two hands contend for this man throughout — the enemy's grip and God's keeping — and the psalm is, at its core, the record of a soul deciding, again and again, whose hand to be in. That repeated "into thine hand" is the psalm's true architecture: not a straight line, but a settled choice made over and over as the waves come.
How this chapter changes the reader
Most of us will spend more of our lives in Psalm 31 than we would like to admit — not besieged by armies, perhaps, but worn by grief, stung by "the strife of tongues," half-convinced at three in the morning that we are "cut off from before thine eyes." This psalm was written for exactly those hours, and it changes the reader in three ways.
First, it gives us permission to grieve and trust at once. The great false choice we impose on ourselves is that faith requires us to feel fine — that if we still ache, still fear, still weep, our trust must be failing. Psalm 31 demolishes that. David is consumed with grief and committing his spirit to God in the same poem, sometimes in the same breath. You do not have to resolve the sorrow before you pray the trust. Bring both. The Lord who "hast known my soul in adversities" is not waiting for you to compose yourself; he is meeting you in the adversity.
Second, it teaches the one gesture that trust always comes down to: handing yourself over. Your spirit, when you are afraid. Your times, when you cannot control the future. Whatever the trouble, the psalm's move is the same — take the thing you are gripping and place it into God's hand, "for thou hast redeemed me." This is not resignation; it is deposit. You commit what is precious to the keeping of the One who has already paid to get you back, and you rest in the knowledge that "my times are in thy hand," not the enemy's, not the illness's, not the calendar's. And this is where the psalm touches its holiest ground. When you pray "into thine hand I commit my spirit," you are praying the words David gave and the words the Savior filled — the trust of the dying Redeemer, who committed his spirit to the Father in the darkest hour and was not, finally, abandoned. To pray this psalm is to trust the way Christ trusted.
Third, it ends by turning us outward. Having been carried through the whole cycle himself, David does not keep the lesson private. He turns to the congregation and hands it on:
O love the LORD, all ye his saints: for the LORD preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD. — Psalm 31:23–24
That is the psalm's last word to us, and it is a charge, not a wish. Be of good courage — take heart, be strong — and the promise attached is exactly proportioned to the trouble: "he shall strengthen your heart." The courage is not summoned from within; it is supplied. The same God who was a rock and a fortress and a pavilion becomes strength poured into the heart of everyone "that hope in the LORD." So the psalm that began with one hunted man taking refuge ends with the whole community invited into the same shelter, and the same courage, and the same hand. Love the Lord. Hope in him. Commit your spirit. Be of good courage. He will strengthen your heart.