Luke 23:46(v5)Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” Having said this, he breathed his last.
Acts 7:59(v5)They stoned Stephen as he called out, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”
Psalms 25:15(v4)My eyes are ever on Yahweh, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.
Deuteronomy 32:4(v5)The Rock: his work is perfect, for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness who does no wrong, just and right is he.
Psalms 143:10-11(v3)Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Your Spirit is good. Lead me in the land of uprightness. Revive me, Yahweh, for your name’s…
Show all 54 cross-references
Jonah 2:8(v6)Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
Psalms 24:4(v6)He who has clean hands and a pure heart; who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully.
Psalms 26:5(v6)I hate the assembly of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked.
Psalms 71:23(v5)My lips shall shout for joy! My soul, which you have redeemed, sings praises to you!
Luke 1:79(v3)to shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
1 Peter 1:18-19(v5)knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your…
Genesis 48:16(v5)the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and…
Psalms 79:9(v3)Help us, God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.
Psalms 140:5(v4)The proud have hidden a snare for me, they have spread the cords of a net by the path. They have set traps for me.
Isaiah 49:10(v3)They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun strike them: for he who has mercy on them will lead them. He will guide…
Isaiah 50:2(v5)Why, when I came, was there no one? When I called, why was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it can’t redeem? Or…
Jeremiah 10:8(v6)But they are together brutish and foolish, instructed by idols! It is just wood.
Jeremiah 10:15(v6)They are vanity, a work of delusion. In the time of their visitation they will perish.
John 16:13(v3)However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he…
1 Corinthians 8:4(v6)Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other…
1 Corinthians 10:20(v6)But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God, and I don’t desire that you would have…
2 Timothy 1:12(v5)For this cause I also suffer these things. Yet I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to…
Titus 1:2(v5)in hope of eternal life, which God, who can’t lie, promised before time began;
Titus 2:14(v5)who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for…
Hebrews 6:18(v5)that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to…
Revelation 5:9(v5)They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your…
Leviticus 25:48(v5)after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him;
1 Chronicles 16:28-29(v6)Ascribe to Yahweh, you relatives of the peoples, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength! Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due to his name. Bring…
Nehemiah 9:12(v3)Moreover, in a pillar of cloud you led them by day; and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light in the way in which they should go.
Psalms 19:14(v4)Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Yahweh, my rock, and my redeemer.
Psalms 23:2-3(v3)He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness…
Psalms 25:5(v3)Guide me in your truth, and teach me, For you are the God of my salvation, I wait for you all day long.
Psalms 25:11(v3)For your name’s sake, Yahweh, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
Psalms 57:6(v4)They have prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down. They dig a pit before me. They fall into the middle of it themselves.
Psalms 96:7-9(v6)Ascribe to Yahweh, you families of nations, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due to his name. Bring an…
Psalms 130:8(v5)He will redeem Israel from all their sins.
Jeremiah 14:7(v3)Though our iniquities testify against us, work for your name’s sake, Yahweh; for our rebellions are many. We have sinned against you.
John 2:8(v6)He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the ruler of the feast.” So they took it.
Romans 1:21(v6)Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart…
2 Timothy 2:13(v5)If we are faithless, he remains faithful; for he can’t deny himself.”
2 Timothy 2:26(v4)and they may recover themselves out of the devil’s snare, having been taken captive by him to his will.
Psalms 25:9(v3)He will guide the humble in justice. He will teach the humble his way.
Psalms 35:7(v4)For without cause they have hidden their net in a pit for me. Without cause they have dug a pit for my soul.
Psalms 43:3(v3)Oh, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill, to your tents.
Psalms 124:7(v4)Our soul has escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare. The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Psalms 139:2(v6)You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar.
Psalms 139:24(v3)See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.
Proverbs 29:5(v4)A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.
Joshua 7:9(v3)For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and will surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. What…
Nehemiah 9:19(v3)yet you in your manifold mercies didn’t forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud didn’t depart from over them by day, to lead…
Psalms 18:2(v3)Yahweh is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high…
Ezekiel 36:21-22(v3)But I had respect for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went. “Therefore tell the house of…
2 Corinthians 12:9(v4)He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in…
Ephesians 1:12(v3)to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (20 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5, 63. For thou art my rock. This verse may…
3. For thou art my rock. This verse may be read as one sentence, thus: As thou art like a tower for my defense, for thy name’s sake direct and guide me during my whole life. And thus the conjunction, as in many similar cases, would be superfluous. But I rather prefer a different sense, namely, that David, by interjecting this reflection, encourages himself not only to earnestness in prayer, but also in the confident hope of obtaining his requests. We know, at all events, that it is usual with him to mingle such things in his prayers as may serve to remove his doubts, and to confirm his assurance. Having, therefore, expressed his need, he assures himself, in order to encourage and animate himself, that his prayer shall certainly have a happy answer. He had formerly said, Be thou my strong rock and fortress; and now he adds, Assuredly thou art my rock, and my fortress: intimating, that he did not throw out these words rashly, like unbelievers, who, although they are accustomed to ask much from God, are kept in suspense by the dread of uncertain events. From this he also draws another encouragement, that he shall have God for his guide and governor during the whole course of his life. He uses two words, lead and guide, to express the same thing, and this he does (at least so I explain it) on account of the various accidents and unequal vicissitudes by which the lives of men are tried: as if he had said, Whether I must climb the steep mountain, or struggle along through rough places, or walk among thorns, I trust that thou wilt be my continual guide. Moreover, as men will always find in themselves matter for doubt, if they look to their own merits, “Si los hommes regardent a leur dignite.” — Fr.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv4–6Preserve me from the crafty counsels and subtle practice…
Preserve me from the crafty counsels and subtle practice of mine enemies.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv3–6Psa 31:3 For thou [art] my rock and my…
Psa 31:3 For thou [art] my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my fortress] Such places David had been forced to fly to; but still he trusted in God.
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Lead me, and guide me] Duc me, et deduc me. A metaphor from captains and generals, who lead on their armies with greatest art and industry (Vatab.).
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5, 6For thy name’s sake; for the glory of thy…
For thy name’s sake; for the glory of thy name, i.e. of thy power, and truth, and mercy to thy miserable servant.
Lead me, and guide me; two words expressing the same thing with more emphasis. Direct me clearly and continually in a right and safe path; for without thy conduct I can neither discern the right way, or continue in it.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv3–6For thou art my rock and my fortress,.... What…
For thou art my rock and my fortress,.... What he prayed for he knew him to be, and to have been in times past, and could claim his interest in him; and therefore entreats that he would appear to be to him what he was in himself, and what he had been to him;
therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me; either as a shepherd does his flock, gently, as they are able to bear it; into the green pastures of the word and ordinances, and beside the still waters of divine love, and to the overflowing fountain, and fulness of grace in himself; or as a general leads and guides his army; Christ being a Leader and Commander of the people, and the great Captain of their salvation, and who being at the head of them, they fear no enemy; or as a guide leads and directs such as are ignorant, and out of the way. The psalmist desires the Lord would lead him in the way of truth and paths of righteousness, according to his word; and guide him with his counsel, and by his Spirit, that so he might walk in the way in which he should go; and this he entreats he would do "for his name's sake"; not for any merit or worthiness in him; but for the glory of his own name, and for the honour of his free grace and mercy, for which the Lord often does many things; he defers his anger, he purges away the sins of his people, he forgives their transgressions, and remembers their sins no more, for his name's sake.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv5–6My spirit - My soul or life; to preserve…
My spirit - My soul or life; to preserve it from the malice of mine enemies. For - Thou hast delivered me formerly, and therefore I commit myself to thee for the future. O Lord, &c. - Who hast shewed thyself so, in making good thy promise.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv4–6Verse 4. Pull me out of the net] They…
Verse 4. Pull me out of the net] They have hemmed me in on every side, and I cannot escape but by miracle.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv5–6Psa 31:5. Into thy hand — That is, to…
Psa 31:5. Into thy hand — That is, to thy care and custody; I commit my spirit — My soul or life, either to preserve it from the malice of mine enemies, or, if they are permitted to kill my body, to receive it. For my case is almost desperate, and I am ready to give up the ghost. But our Lord used those words, when expiring on the cross, in a more proper and literal sense than they can be applied to David. He used them, probably, to convince the Jews that, though suffering, he was the Messiah, and that son of David who should sit on his throne for ever. For thou hast redeemed me — Thou hast delivered me formerly in great dangers, and therefore I willingly and cheerfully commit myself to thee for the future: O Lord God of truth — Who hast showed thyself to be such to me in making good thy promises.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv3–6For thou art my rock and my fortress -…
For thou art my rock and my fortress - See the notes at Psa 18:2.
Therefore for thy name’s sake - For the sake of thine own honor, or for the glory of thy name. See the notes at Psa 23:3. That is, since thou art my rock and my defense - since I put my trust in thee - show, by leading and guiding me, that my trust is well founded, or that this is Thy character, and that Thou wilt be true and faithful to those who commit their all to thee. See the notes at Psa 31:1.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn v5commit my spirit--my life, or myself. Our Saviour used…
commit my spirit--my life, or myself. Our Saviour used the words on the Cross [Luk 23:46], not as prophetical, but, as many pious men have done, as expressive of His unshaken confidence in God. The Psalmist rests on God's faithfulness to His promises to His people, and hence avows himself one of them, detesting all who revere objects of idolatry (compare Deu 32:21; Co1 8:4).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv3, 5, 63. For thy name’s sake—See on Psa_23:3
3. For thy name’s sake—See on Psa_23:3
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv4–64. Thou wilt bring me out of the net…
4. Thou wilt bring me out of the net … for thou art my strong hold. He compares his insidious enemies to hunters or fowlers, as in Psa_9:15; Psa_25:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv3–6(3) Rock.—As rock in this verse is selâ (LXX.…
(3) Rock.—As rock in this verse is selâ (LXX. and Vulg., “strength”) instead of tsûr, as in Psa_31:2, it is better to render “for thou art my cliff fortress;” literally, cliff and fortress.
For thy name’s sake—i.e., because Thou hast this name of rock and fortress.
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Lead me, and guide me.—The future is better,
“Thou wilt lead and guide me.”
To pray for protection and then stoutly affirm belief, as in Psa_31:3, has been called illogical; but it is the logic of the heart if not of the intellect; the logic, it may be added, of every prayer of faith.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv3–6For thou art my Rock; or, my cliff (yls,…
For thou art my Rock; or, my cliff (yls, not yrwx). And my Fortress. David prays God to be his Rock and Fortress in the future, because he has always looked to him as his Rock and Fortress in the past. Faith establishes a claim to have its anticipations made good. Therefore for thy Name"s sake lead me, and guide me. Metaphor is dropped, and God is simply asked for guidance and direction. In the struggle between Absalom and David more depended upon wise counsel than upon mere force. (2Sa_15:31-37 2Sa 16:15-23:17:5-23)
A prayer for guidance.
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"For thy Name"s sake... guide me." God leads men, whether they ask him or not. He guides their lives, though they may not know him even may deny his very existence. Belshazzar. (Dan_5:23, "in whose hand," etc) Cyrus. (Isa_45:1-5) Heathen nations. (Act_17:26, Act_17:27) Does this make such a prayer as the text superfluous? On the contrary, it is the very reason for it. God"s guidance of men without their knowledge, or even against their will, is very different from his guidance of those who ask it for his Name"s sake. (As you speak of "driving a horse," or "driving a friend" who asks a seat by your side.) Consider the meaning and the plea of the psalmist"s prayer.
I WHAT DOES THIS PRAYER ASK FOR? In other words, how can God grant it?
1. By the lending of his providence. Q.d.: his unfailing, unerring, unlimited control of all events and creatures, great or small. The old-fashioned phrase, "particular providence," is often strongly objected to; rightly, if it be taken to mean some special interference with the course of things here, not there; now, not then; a touch to the helm sectionally, not the firm hand never taken off it. But remember, what cleverest people (busy with wide generalizations and laws) are most apt to forget that all reality is particular. A pound of iron weighs a pound because each atom of iron is precisely like every other, and obeys exactly the same force. The harvest ripens because the same life is working in every several grain. A lifetime is not made up of weeks and years, but breaths and heart-beats. We must not liken God"s knowledge to ours. We are compelled to store ours in abstract ideas, names, laws, etc., just as we arrange books on shelves, with titles on their back useless else. Divine knowledge, lust because infinite, must take in every movement of every atom. Inconceivable! But not more inconceivable than that God has set going movements at the rate of hundreds of millions of millions in a second, which keep time throughout the universe. And what his power has called into being and sustains, and his knowledge surveys, his wisdom and goodness guide. This, at once deepest truth and plain common sense, is the Bible doctrine of providence. "He maketh grass to grow on the mountains each blade from its own root. Not a bird falls to the earth without our heavenly Father. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord". (Psa_139:3, Psa_139:9, Psa_139:10)
2. By his Word. (2Ti_3:15 Psa_119:105) What is a lamp for? To give light. How do I know that light is light? Simply by its shining. Light is its own evidence. If a lamp cannot be kindled, or, being kindled, refuses to burn, no argument will persuade you that it is a good lamp. If it burns bright and steady, shedding a clear light on the page you read, the work you handle, the path you walk in, no argument will persuade you that it is not a good lamp. So with God"s Word. Men may dispute as they please about inspiration, pile up mountains of criticism, publish every few years a new work that is to finally dispose of the Bible; they cannot stop the light from shining. This main fact remains solid, unanswerable, that a life guided by this light rises to a level, gains a purity, strength, beauty, hopeful courage, and calm settled peace not otherwise attainable. The light, observe, not of mere precept. Pagan teachers Buddha, Confucius, Seneca, and I know not how many, have given noble and lofty precepts, enabling men to say, with the old Roman poet, "I see and approve what is good, though I practise what is bad." But only from the Bible shines, along with precept, the light of pardon and the light of promise . (1Jn_2:12, 1Jn_2:25) Against the sceptics" learning and logic the plain Christian sets his experience. If you could find a grey-haired Christian saying, "I have framed my life according to the Bible, and I wish I had not; I have lived a life of prayer to God, and trust in Jesus as my Saviour, and obedience to his Word, and if I could begin again, I would be wiser, then you would at least have something to set against the lives ruined by despising the Bible, and flinging faith and prayer away. But the testimony is the other way. (Psa_119:165 Psa_19:11 2Ti_4:6-8)
3. By his Spirit. (Joh_14:13 Rom_8:14) The Bible itself affords no countenance to the idea that life can be rightly guided by the written Word alone, severed from the living presence and personal teaching of the Holy Spirit. For three plain reasons. A rightly guided life means:
(1) A life of faith in Christ; and this is the Holy Spirit"s gift and work. (Mat_16:17)
(2) A life of prayer; and the Holy Spirit is at once the Answer to prayer and the Inspirer of prayer. (Luk_11:13 Jud_1:20)
(3) The true meaning of Scripture is hidden from an unspiritual mind. (1Co_2:14)
II WHAT IS THE FORCE OF THE PLEA HERE URGED thy Name"s sake"? If one may venture to put it so plainly, it is putting God on his honour to fulfil his promises. The "Name" of God stands for all that he has made known to us of himself. Especially it includes his words of promise, because here his faithfulness stands pledged. Not that God promises to grant every request, wise or foolish, right or wrong. (Who would dare to pray?) But he does promise to attend to our prayer to give good things to those who ask. He has filled the Bible with encouragements and commands to pray, and with examples of prayer answered. As our Lord Jesus is himself the full Revelation of the Father, so he authorizes us to pray in his Name. (Joh_14:13, Joh_14:14)
Conclusion. Of all prayers there is none we need to offer more earnestly, more constantly.
1. Without God"s guidance we shall miss our way. A life at the mercy of passion, expediency, fashion, fancy, is like a rudderless ship. Especially in trouble and temptation. The traveller in fair, calm weather may think the mountain-track is plain enough without a guide; but the snowstorm comes on, and he is lost.
2. If God be not your Guide, you will have some other. Conformity to the world is practical submission to the enemy of souls. (Eph_2:2, "He who bows not to him has bowed to me," Byron"s "Cain Like a ship that has taken on board a false pilot, who steers her on the quicksand.
3. Life is a journey to be taken but once. The wrong path cannot be retraced.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon1885 · Public DomainOn vv3–6Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my…
Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my fortress. Here the tried soul avows yet again its full confidence in God. Faith's repetitions are not vain. The avowal of our reliance upon God in times of adversity is a principle method of glorifying him. Active service is good, but the passive confidence of faith is not one jot less esteemed in the sight of God. The words before us appear to embrace and fasten upon the Lord with a fiducial grip which is not to be relaxed. The two personal pronouns, like sure nails, lay hold upon the faithfulness of the Lord. O for grace to have our heart fixed in firm unstaggering belief in God! The figure of a rock and a fortress may be illustrated to us in these times by the vast fortress of Gibraltar, often besieged by our enemies, but never wrested from us: ancient strongholds, though far from impregnable by our modes of warfare, were equally important in those remoter ageswhen in the mountain fastnesses, feeble bands felt themselves to be secure. Note the singular fact that David asked the Lord to be his rock Ps 31:2 because he was his rock; and learn from it that we may pray to enjoy in experience what we grasp by faith. Faith is the foundation of prayer. Therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me. The psalmist argues like a logician with his fors and therefores. Since I do sincerely trust thee, saith he, O my God, be my director. To lead and to guide are two things very like each other, but patient thought will detect different shades of meaning, especially as the last may mean provide for me. The double word indicates an urgent needwe require double direction, for we are fools, and the way is rough. Lead me as a soldier, guide me as a traveller! lead me as a babe, guide me as a man; lead me when thou art with me, but guide me even if thou be absent; lead me by thy hand, guide me by thy word. The argument used is one which is fetched from the armoury of free grace: not for my own sake, but for thy name's sake guide me. Our appeal is not to any fancied virtue in our own names, but to the glorious goodness and graciousness which shines resplendent in the character of Israel's God. It is not possible that the Lord should suffer his own honour to be tarnished, but this would certainly be the case if those who trusted him should perish. This was Moses' plea, "What wilt thou do unto thy great name?"
Ver. 3. For thy name's sake. If merely a creature's honour, the credit of ministers, or the glory of angels were involved, man's salvation would indeed be uncertain. But every step involves the honour of God. We plead for his name's sake. If God should begin and not continue, or if he should carry on but not complete the work, all would admit that it was for some reason that must bring reproach on the Almighty. This can never be. God was self moved to undertake man's salvation. His glorious name makes it certain the top stone shall be laid in glory. William S. Plumer.
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Ver. 3. For thy name's sake. On account of the fame of thy power, thy goodness, thy truth, &c. Lead me. As a shepherd an erring sheep, as a leader military bands, or as one leads another ignorant of the way. See Ge 24:27 Ne 9:12-13 Ps 23:3 73:24. Govern my counsels, my affections, and my thoughts. Martin Geier, 1614-1681.
Ver. 3. Work out the metaphor of God as a rocky fastness of the soul.
Ver. 3. (last clause).
1. A blessing needed, lead me.
2. A blessing obtainable.
3. An argument for its being granted, for thy name's sake..
Psalms 31:4*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv5–6Into Thine hand I commit my spirit.
Psa_31:5
Into Thine hand I commit my spirit.
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The last words of Christ on the Cross
(with Luk_23:46; Act_7:59):--
I. I invite you first to consider our Saviours words just before his death: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.
1. Observe how Christ lives and passes away in the atmosphere of the Word of God. Christ was a grand original thinker, and He might always have given us words of His own. He never lacked suitable language, for never man spake like this Man. Yet the great majority of His expressions may be traced to the Old Testament. Even where they are not exact quotations, His words drop into Scriptural shape and form. You can see that the Bible has been His one Book. It was food to Him, as it is to us; and if He thus lived upon the Word of God, should not you and I do the same?
2. Notice that our Lord, in the moment of His death, recognized a personal God. We have far too much fiction in religion, and a religion of fiction will bring only fictitious comfort in the dying hour. Come to solid facts. Is God as real to thee as thou art to thyself? Come now; dost thou speak with Him as a man speaketh unto his friend? Canst thou trust Him, and rely upon Him as thou dost trust and rely upon the partner of thy bosom? If thy God be unreal, thy religion is unreal.
3. Observe how Jesus Christ here brings out, the Fatherhood of God. The psalm from which He quoted did not say, Father. David did not get as far as that in words, though in spirit he often did; but Jesus had the right to alter the psalmists words. He can improve on Scripture, though you and I cannot. He did not say, O God, into Thine hand I commit My spirit; but He said, Father. Oh, how sweet, in life and in death, to feel in our soul the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!
4. From this passage we learn that our Lord cheerfully rendered up His soul to His Father when the time had come for Him to die. No man taketh it from Me, said He concerning His life; I lay it down of Myself; and there is here a cheerful willingness to yield up His spirit into His Fathers hands. It is rather remarkable that none of the evangelists describe our Lord as dying. He did die, but they all speak of Him as giving up the ghost,--surrendering to God His spirit. You and I passively die; but He actively yielded up His spirit to His Father. In His case, death was an act; and He performed that act from the glorious motive of redeeming us from death and hell; so, in this sense, Christ stands alone in His death. But, oh, if we cannot render up our spirit as He did, yet, let us be perfectly ready to give it up. When God calls us to die, it will be a sweet way of dying if we can, like our Lord, pass away with a text of Scripture upon our lips, with a personal God ready to receive us, with that God recognized distinctly as our Father, and so die joyously, resigning our will entirely to the sweet will of the ever-blessed One, and saying, It is the Lord, My Father, let Him do as seemeth Him good.
II. My second text (Psa_31:5) is evidently the passage which our Saviour had in His mind just then: Into Thine hand I commit My spirit: Thou hast redeemed Me, O Lord God of truth. It seems to me that these are words to be used in life, for this psalm is not so much concerning the believers death as concerning his life.
1. Let us cheerfully entrust our souls to God, and feel that they are quite safe in His hands. Are you always doing this?
2. Notice that our second text has these words at the end of it: Thou hast redeemed Me, O Lord God of truth. Is not that a good reason for giving yourself up entirely to God? Christ has redeemed you, and therefore you belong to Him. So, every day, go to Him with this declaration, Into Thine hand I commit my spirit. Nay, not only every day, but all through the day. Have you to go into a house where there is fever; I mean, is it your duty to go there? Then go saying, Father, into Thine hand I commit my spirit. I would advise you to do this every time you walk down the street, or even while you sit in your own house.
III. My third text (Act_7:59) is intended to explain to us the use of our Saviours dying words for ourselves.
1. If we can die as Stephen did, we shall die with a certainty of immortality. An infidel once said to a Christian man, Some of you Christians have great fear in dying because you believe that there is another state to follow this one. I have not the slightest fear, for I believe that I shall be annihilated, and therefore all fear of death is gone from me. Yes, said the Christian man, and in that respect you seem to me to be on equal terms with that bullock grazing over there, which, like yourself, is free from any fear of death. Pray, sir, let me ask you a simple question, Have you any hope? . . . Hope, sir? No, I have no hope; of course, I have no hope, sir. Ah, then! replied the other, despite the fears that sometimes come over feeble believers, they have a hope which they would not and could not give up. And that hope is, that our spirit--even that spirit which we commit into Jesus Christs hands,--shall be for ever with the Lord.
2. To a man who can die as Stephen did, there is a certainty that Christ is near,--so near that the man speaks to Him, and says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
3. There is a certainty that we are quite safe in His hands.
4. There is the other certainty, that He is quite willing to take us into His hands. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Into, Thy hands
This psalm is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble, surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened. He was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all sorts of enemies at that moment. Into Thine hands I commit my spirit, as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so baulk the enemies of their prey.
I. where to lodge a soul for safe keeping, Into Thine hands--a banker has a strong room, and a wise man sends his securities and his valuables to the bank and takes an acknowledgment, and goes to bed at night, quite sure that no harm will come to them, and that he will get them when he wants them. And that is exactly what the psalmist does here. He deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of One who will take care of it. The great hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it.
1. Trusting Him for the salvation of our souls. Take your stand on the fact, and with emancipated and buoyant hearts, and grateful ones, work from it, and because of it.
2. Trusting Him in reference to daily life, and all its difficulties and duties. The act of trust is to run through everything that we undertake and everything that we have to fight with. Self-will wrenches our souls out of Gods hands. A man that sends his securities to the banker can get them back when he likes. And if we undertake to manage our own affairs, or fling ourselves into our work without recognition of our dependence upon Him, or if we choose our work without seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again.
3. This must be accompanied with corresponding work. Peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to God unless we back up the committing with consistent, Christlike lives.
4. This committing of our souls into Gods hands does not mean that we are absolved from taking care of them ourselves.
II. the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, God, about great things and little things. Whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, in the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity.
III. the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of Truth. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Committing ourselves to God
Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Hence--
I. he testifies, by his committing himself to god, to the power of the Lords redemption. He has felt it and acknowledges it.
II. To Gods faithfulness. God is the Lord God of truth. To which class do we belong? (R. W. Evans, B. D.)
The dying Christian come, rifting his soul to God
I. with whom does the dying Christian wish to entrust his soul? There are only two beings who can have charge of it when it quits the body--the Lord or Satan. Into the hands of one of these our souls must go when they die, and with one of these we must spend eternity. But men generally are quite indifferent on this matter. They feel no real concern. They have a vague hope of heaven and fear of hell. But neither influences their conduct in any important degree. Christians, however, must desire that which David so desired--that the Lord God should receive his spirit.
II. what is implied in committing his soul into his hands in a dying hour.
1. A firm persuasion that the soul will outlive the body. Not by reason but by the Gospel only does he first learn really and habitually to regard himself as the heir of eternity. And this conviction deepens as he grows in grace.
2. A high value for the soul. The body is as nothing compared to it. The body is the casket, but the soul is the jewel, and that he would, indeed, have saved.
3. A lively sense of the serious, and awful nature of death, a conviction of our need of help in a dying hour. The soul in such an hour will cling more closely to its God. No man will think lightly of death who has ever thought himself near death.
4. A belief that God is willing to receive the soul.
III. the warrant and encouragement thus to do.
1. God is the Christians Redeemer.
2. The faithfulness of God. He is the God of truth, and He has promised to save them that trust in Him.
IV. the lesson of this subject.
1. The great value of Christian faith.
2. Here is a source of comfort under the loss of friends.
3. How confidently we may commit into the same hand all other things.
4. How important that now we should become the redeemed of the Lord. (C. Bradley.)
A watchword /or life and death
I. The true watchword of life.
1. We approach the duties of life through a series of the most elevating considerations.
(1) We are not our own.
(2) We are parts of a great system.
(3) We are servants, not masters.
(4) The things that are round about us are beneath our serious notice, except for momentary convenience or instruction.
2. We accept the trials of life with the most hopeful patience. They are--
(1) Disciplinary.
(2) Under control.
(3) Needful.
3. We recognize the mercies of life with the most joyful thankfulness. The name of God is upon the smallest of them.
II. the true watchword of death. This watchword, as spoken by Jesus and Stephen, shows--
1. Their belief in a state of being at present invisible. They must at least be credited with speaking their deepest personal convictions. It is something to us in our ignorance and weakness to know who have believed this doctrine of a future state.
2. Their assurance of the limitations of human malice. The spirit was free!
3. Application.
(1) Where the spirit is fit for the presence of God, there is no fear of death.
(2) All who have died in the faith are present with the Lord.
(3) Jesus Himself knows what it is to pass through the valley of the shadow of death.
(4) The prayer for entrance amongst the blest may come too late. We have no authority for the encouragement of death-bed repentance. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The saints dying prayer
I. These words are full of the fact of our human immortality. Man has and is a spirit, which he can commit.
II. A man must do somewhat with his spirit. Some commit their spirit to the dream of theosophy; spiritualism; a worldly carelessness about its destiny; an external morality; external rites; purging punishments.
III. to whom it is most right and reasonable to commit ones spirit.
1. To a personal God.
2. To a redeeming God.
3. To a God of truth. (W. Hoyt, D. D.)
The redeemed soul in Gods hand
I. the believer has been redeemed by God. This Divine redemption--
1. Is a deliverance from the greatest of all evils, the service of Satan--ignorance, disease, remorse, death, hell.
2. Was effected at an infinite cost--the death of Him who is one with the Father.
3. Is an eternal redemption of the entire nature.
II. the believer is assured of his redemption.
1. This assurance comes of faith.
2. Feeling thus assured of our redemption, God should constantly be the object of our love, and our lives be dedicated to His service.
III. the believer, feeling assured of his redemption, trustfuly yields his spirit into the hand of his maker, when he departs this life. Be ye also ready. Prepare to meet your God. (Thos. Evans.)
Redemption a ground of encouragement to commit the soul to God
No question so important to us as this--how can we be just with God. Reason and philosophy cannot answer it, but the Bible does.
I. take a brief view of Gods plan of redemption. It includes--
1. The free and full pardon of sin.
2. Provision for our sanctification.
3. Adoption into Gods family.
II. All this furnishes ample ground for the committal of our souls into the hands of God. What is it to do this? It implies--
1. Conviction of guilt.
2. Persuasion of His readiness to receive and keep what is committed to Him.
3. Choosing to be ruled by Him.
III. the encouragement there is in redemption to do this. You are assured--
1. That all obstacles are put out of the way.
2. That all you need is provided for you and freely offered to you
3. No conditions are required but that you simply commit your soul to God.
4. It is the only way of being saved.
IV. conclusion.
1. None may say, there is no hope for me.
2. The work of redemption illustrates the goodness of God.
3. Are we now trusting in Christ? if so, we have committed, etc.
4. How great our obligations to live to the Divine glory. (J. Hawes, D. D.)
The language of a dying saint
I. what is implied in his committing his spirit to God.
1. A deep conviction of the souls immortality.
2. A preferable concern for his soul.
3. A firm persuasion that his spirit would be safe with God. The soul is as a precious jewel, hence a great trust.
II. His encouragement herein. Thou hast redeemed me, etc. For in this redemption the believer finds--
1. Love, wonderful, matchless, divine (1Jn_4:10; 1Pe_1:18). Hence he is greatly encouraged.
2. Property (Eze_13:4; 1Co_6:19; Eze_16:8; Isa_43:21). And then--
3. Power. God is able to keep that, etc.
4. Faithfulness.
III. improvement.
1. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.
2. Acquaint now thyself with God and be at peace.
3. Rejoice in the prospect of the glorious resurrection day. (Samuel Lavington.)
From the text learn
I. dying in a saints account is a difficult work.
1. It is an untried work.
2. It is a final farewell to the present world.
3. It is to put off or lay down the body, no more to be re-assumed till the general resurrection at the end of the world.
4. Our probation is at an end.
5. To die is a great and difficult work, seeing thereupon the soul removes into a new state and world. To remove from one kingdom or country to another, is a great thing; but how much greater to remove into a new world! a world we have not seen, and are little acquainted with.
6. We have to meet God as our Judge, who will order our soul to its unchangeable state and place in the eternal world. For all these reasons to die is always difficult. And it is more so if death find us in the dark as to our title to the life to come. Conscience may be filled with terror under the sense of sin, and dread of deserved wrath. Sin, unpardoned sin, is the sting of death, as drawing after it an everlasting hell; and the very suspicion of this is enough to make the heart to tremble. God in our last moments may hide Himself, or withdraw the light of His countenance; and what distress follows upon this, none can tell but those that have felt it. It is no wonder that such circumstances make dying work peculiarly hard.
II. the children of God considering themselves as dying, are chiefly concerned about their immortal souls. The psalmist here was so; he had prayed for temporal salvation in the words of this psalm before my text, but did not insist mainly upon it. However it was as to his body, his great care was with reference to his soul; O Lord, into Thy hand I commit my spirit: let that be safe, and I shall be satisfied. (Anon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v5
Psalms
‘INTO THY HANDS’
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Psa 31:5.
The first part of this verse is consecrated for ever by our Lord’s use of it on the Cross. Is it not wonderful that, at that supreme hour, He deigned to take an unknown singer’s words as His words? What an honour to that old saint that Jesus Christ, dying, should find nothing that more fully corresponded to His inmost heart at that moment than the utterance of the Psalmist long ago! How His mind must have been saturated with the Old Testament and with these songs of Israel! And do you not think it would be better for us if ours were completely steeped in those heart-utterances of ancient devotion?
But, of course, the Psalmist was not thinking about his death. It was an act for his life that he expressed in these words:-’Into Thine hands I commit my spirit.’ If you will glance over the psalm at your leisure, you will see that it is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble, surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened. He was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all sorts of enemies at that moment, not sitting comfortably, as you and I are here, but in the midst of the hurly-burly and the strife, when by a dead lift of faith he flung himself clean out of his disasters, and, if I might so say, pitched himself into the arms of God. ‘Into Thine hands I commit my spirit,’ as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so baulk the enemies of their prey. That is the figure.
I. Now, let me say a word as to where to lodge a soul for safe keeping.
‘Into Thine hands’-a banker has a strong room, and a wise man sends his securities and his valuables to the bank and takes an acknowledgment, and goes to bed at night, quite sure that no harm will come to them, and that he will get them when he wants them. And that is exactly what the Psalmist does here. He deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of One who will take care of it. The great Hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it. It closes, and ‘no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand.’
Now that is only a picturesque way of putting the most threadbare, bald, commonplace of religious teaching. The word faith, when it has any meaning at all in people’s minds when they hear it from the pulpit, is extremely apt, I fear, to create a kind of, if not disgust, at least a revulsion of feeling, as if people said, ‘Ah, there he is at the old story again!’ But will you freshen up your notions of what faith it means by taking that picture of my text as I have tried to expand and illuminate it a little by my metaphor? That is what is meant by ‘Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.’ There are two or three ways in which that is to be done, and one or two ways in which it is not to be done.
We do it when we trust Him for the salvation of our souls. There are a great many good Christian people who go mourning all their days, or, at least, sometimes mourning and sometimes indifferent. The most that they venture to say is, ‘But I cannot be sure.’ Our grandfathers used to sing:-
‘‘Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought.’
Why should it cause anxious thought? Take your own personal salvation for granted, and work from that. Do not work towards it. If you have gone to Christ and said, ‘Lord, I cannot save myself; save me. I am willing to be saved,’ be sure that you have the salvation that you ask, and that if you have put your soul in that fashion into God’s hands, any incredible thing is credible, and any impossible thing is possible, rather than that you should fail of the salvation which, in the bottom of your hearts, you desire. Take the burden off your backs and put it on His. Do not be for ever questioning yourselves, ‘Am I a saved man?’ You will get sick of that soon, and you will be very apt to give up all thought about the matter at all. But take your stand on the fact, and with emancipated and buoyant hearts, and grateful ones, work from it, and because of it. And when sin rises up in your soul, and you say to yourselves, ‘If I were a Christian I could not have done that,’ or, ‘If I were a Christian I could not be so-and-so’; remember that all sin is inconsistent with being a Christian, but no sin is incompatible with it; and that after all the consciousness of shortcomings and failure, we have just to come back to the old point, and throw ourselves on God’s love. His arms are open to clasp us round. ‘Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.’
Further, the Psalmist meant, by committing himself to God, trusting Him in reference to daily life, and all its difficulties and duties. Our act of trust is to run through everything that we undertake and everything that we have to fight with. Self-will wrenches our souls out of God’s hands. A man who sends his securities to the banker can get them back when he likes. And if we undertake to manage our own affairs, or fling ourselves into our work without recognition of our dependence upon Him, or if we choose our work without seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again, because God does not keep anybody’s securities against his will-you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! Self-will, self-reliance, self-determination-these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to God. And, as I say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. Do not fancy that you are ‘living lives of faith in the Son of God,’ if you are not looking to Him to settle what you are to do. You cannot expect that He will watch over you, if you do not ask Him where you are to go.
But now there is another thing that I would suggest, this committing of ourselves to God which begins with the initial act of trust in Him for the salvation of our souls, and is continued throughout life by the continual surrender of ourselves to Him, is to be accompanied with corresponding work. The Apostle Peter’s memory is evidently hovering round this verse, whether he is consciously quoting it or not, when he says, ‘Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in welldoing,’ which has to go along with the act of trust and dependence. There must come the continual ordering of the life in accordance with His will; for ‘well-doing’ does not mean merely some works of beneficence and ‘charity,’ of the sort that have monopolised to themselves the name in latter days, but it means the whole of righteous conduct in accordance with the will of God.
So Peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to God unless we back up the committing with consistent, Christlike lives. Of course it is vain. How can a man expect God to take care of him when he plunges himself into something that is contrary to God’s laws? There are many people who say, ‘God will take care of me; He will save me from the consequences.’ Not a bit of it-He loves us a great deal too well for that. If you take the bit between your teeth, you will be allowed to go over the precipice and be smashed to pieces. If you wish to be taken care of, keep within the prescribed limits, and consult Him before you act, and do not act till you are sure of His approval. God has never promised to rescue man when he has got into trouble by his own sin. Suppose a servant had embezzled his master’s money through gambling, and then expected God to help him to get the money to pay back into the till. Do you think that would be likely to work? And how dare you anticipate that God will keep your feet, if you are walking in ways of your own choosing? All sin takes a man out from the shelter of the divine protection, and the shape the protection has to take then is chastisement. And all sin makes it impossible for a man to exercise that trust which is the committing of his soul to God. So it has to be ‘in welldoing,’ and the two things are to go together. ‘What God hath joined let not man put asunder.’ You do not become a Christian by the simple exercise of trust unless it is trust that worketh by love.
But let me remind you, further, that this committing of our souls into God’s hands does not mean that we are absolved from taking care of them ourselves. There is a very false kind of religious faith, which seems to think that it shuffles off all responsibility upon God. Not at all; you lighten the responsibility, but you do not get rid of it. And no man has a right to say ‘He will keep me, and so I may neglect diligent custody of myself.’ He keeps us very largely by helping us to keep our hearts with all diligence, and to keep our feet in the way of truth.
So let me now just say a word in regard to the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, God, about great things and little things. Whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity. You know that when a child says, ‘I do not need to mind, father will look after that,’ he may be right or wrong in his estimate of his father’s ability and inclination; but as long as he says it, he has no kind of trouble or anxiety, and the little face is scarred by no deep lines of care or thought. So when we turn to Him and say, ‘Why should I the burden bear?’ then there comes-I was going to say ‘surging,’ but ‘trickling’ is a better word-into my heart a settled peacefulness which nothing else can give. Look at this psalm. It begins, and for the first half continues, in a very minor key. The singer was not a poet posing as in affliction, but his words were wrung out of him by anguish. ‘Mine eyes are consumed with grief; my life is spent with grief’; ‘I am . . . as a dead man out of mind’; ‘I am in trouble.’ And then with a quick wheel about, ‘But I trusted in Thee, O Lord! I said, Thou art my God.’ And what comes of that? This-’O how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee!’ ‘Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His marvellous kindness in a strong city.’ And then, at the end of all, his peacefulness is so triumphant that he calls upon ‘all His saints’ to help him to praise. And the last words are ‘Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.’ That is what you will get if you commit your soul to God. There was no change in the Psalmist’s circumstances. The same enemy was round about him. The same ‘net was privily laid for him.’ All that had seemed to him half an hour before as wellnigh desperate, continued utterly unaltered. But what had altered? God had come into the place, and that altered the whole aspect of matters. Instead of looking with shrinking and tremulous heart along the level of earth, where miseries were, he was looking up into the heavens, where God was; and so everything was beautiful. That will be our experience if we will commit the keeping of our souls to Him in well doing. You can bring June flowers and autumn fruits into snowy January days by the exercise of this trust in God. It does not need that our circumstances should alter, but only that our attitude should alter. Look up, and cast your souls into God’s hands, and all that is round you, of disasters and difficulties and perplexities, will suffer transformation; and for sorrow there will come joy because there has come trust.
I need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which, as I have said, is consecrated to us by our Lord’s own use of it at the last. But is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind and heart by which a man commits his spirit to God in life may be his when he comes to die, and that death may become a voluntary act, and the spirit may not be dragged out of us, reluctant, and as far as we can, resisting, but that we may offer it up as a libation, to use one metaphor of St. Paul’s, or may surrender it willingly as an act of faith? It is wonderful to think that life and death, so unlike each other, may be made absolutely identical in the spirit in which they are met. You remember how the first martyr caught up the words from the Cross, and kneeling down outside the wall of Jerusalem, with the blood running from the wounds that the stones had made, said, ‘Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.’ That is the way to die, and that is the way to live.
One word is all that time permits about the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. ‘Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of Truth.’ The Psalmist, I think, uses that word ‘redeemed’ here, not in its wider spiritual New Testament sense, but in its frequent Old Testament sense, of deliverance from temporal difficulties and calamities. And what he says is, in effect, this: ‘I have had experience in the past which makes me believe that Thou wilt extricate me from this trouble too, because Thou art the God of Truth.’ He thinks of what God has done, and of what God is. And Peter, whom we have already found echoing this text, echoes that part of it too, for he says, ‘Let them commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator,’ which is all but parallel to ‘Lord God of Truth.’ So God will continue as He has begun, and finish what He has begun.
‘A faithful Creator-’ He made us to need what we do need, and He is not going to forget the wants that He Himself has incorporated with our human nature. He is bound to help us because He made us. He is the God of Truth, and He will help us. But if we take ‘redeemed’ in its highest sense, the Psalmist, arguing from God’s past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the Apostle said in the triumphant words, ‘Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son . . . and whom He did predestinate them He also . . . justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified.’ ‘Thou hast redeemed me.’ ‘Thou art the God of Truth; Thou wilt not lift Thy hand away from Thy work until Thou hast made me all that Thou didst bind Thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.’
So we can say, ‘He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ You have experiences, I have no doubt, in your past, on which you may well build confidence for the future. Let each of us consult our own hearts, and our own memories. Cannot we say, ‘Thou hast been my Help,’ and ought we not therefore to be sure that He will not ‘leave us nor forsake us’ until He manifests Himself as the God of our salvation?
It is a blessed thing to lay ourselves in the hands of God, but the New Testament tells us, ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ The alternative is one that we all have to face,-either ‘into Thy hands I commit my spirit,’ or into those hands to fall. Settle which of the two is to be your fate.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v5(See Scofield "Isa 59:20") See Scofield "Exo 14:30"
redeemed
(See Scofield "Isa 59:20") See Scofield "Exo 14:30"
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv3, 5my rock
my rock
Yahweh is spoke of as if he were a huge rock that would protect the writer from attack. AT: "like a huge rock on which I can be safe" (See: Metaphor)
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my fortress
Yahweh is spoken of as if he were a strong fortress in which the writer would be protected from his enemies. (See: Metaphor)
for your name's sake
In this phrase "name" represents Yahweh. AT: "so that your name may be honored" or "so that I may worship you" (See: Metonymy)
lead and guide me
The words "lead" and "guide" mean basically the same thing and strengthen the request that Yahweh lead him. AT: "lead me where you want me to go" (See: Doublet)
Pluck me out of the net that they have hidden for me
The writer is spoken of as if he were a bird caught in a hidden net, and waiting for Yahweh to free him from the trap. (See: Metaphor)
you are my refuge
Yahweh is spoken of as if he is a place where the writer can hide from people who are attacking him. AT: "you always protect me" or "you give me constant protection" (See: Metaphor)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv5–631:5 I entrust my spirit into your hand: Whether…
31:5 I entrust my spirit into your hand: Whether he lives or dies, the psalmist will trust his Lord. Jesus uttered these words on the cross just before he died (Luke 23:46).
GEBible — Godless Engineer's Bible App
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6 3. For thou art my rock. This verse may…
3. For thou art my rock. This verse may be read as one sentence, thus: As thou art like a tower for my defense, for thy name’s sake direct and guide me during my whole life. And thus the conjunction, as in many similar cases, would be superfluous. But I rather prefer a different sense, namely, that David, by interjecting this reflection, encourages himself not only to earnestness in prayer, but also in the confident hope of obtaining his requests. We know, at all events, that it is usual with him to mingle such things in his prayers as may serve to remove his doubts, and to confirm his assurance. Having, therefore, expressed his need, he assures himself, in order to encourage and animate himself, that his prayer shall certainly have a happy answer. He had formerly said, Be thou my strong rock and fortress; and now he adds, Assuredly thou art my rock, and my fortress: intimating, that he did not throw out these words rashly, like unbelievers, who, although they are accustomed to ask much from God, are kept in suspense by the dread of uncertain events. From this he also draws another encouragement, that he shall have God for his guide and governor during the whole course of his life. He uses two words, lead and guide, to express the same thing, and this he does (at least so I explain it) on account of the various accidents and unequal vicissitudes by which the lives of men are tried: as if he had said, Whether I must climb the steep mountain, or struggle along through rough places, or walk among thorns, I trust that thou wilt be my continual guide. Moreover, as men will always find in themselves matter for doubt, if they look to their own merits, “Si los hommes regardent a leur dignite.” — Fr.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv4–6 Preserve me from the crafty counsels and subtle practice…
Preserve me from the crafty counsels and subtle practice of mine enemies.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–6 Psa 31:3 For thou [art] my rock and my…
Psa 31:3 For thou [art] my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my fortress] Such places David had been forced to fly to; but still he trusted in God.
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Lead me, and guide me] Duc me, et deduc me. A metaphor from captains and generals, who lead on their armies with greatest art and industry (Vatab.).
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6 For thy name’s sake; for the glory of thy…
For thy name’s sake; for the glory of thy name, i.e. of thy power, and truth, and mercy to thy miserable servant.
Lead me, and guide me; two words expressing the same thing with more emphasis. Direct me clearly and continually in a right and safe path; for without thy conduct I can neither discern the right way, or continue in it.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–6 For thou art my rock and my fortress,.... What…
For thou art my rock and my fortress,.... What he prayed for he knew him to be, and to have been in times past, and could claim his interest in him; and therefore entreats that he would appear to be to him what he was in himself, and what he had been to him;
therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me; either as a shepherd does his flock, gently, as they are able to bear it; into the green pastures of the word and ordinances, and beside the still waters of divine love, and to the overflowing fountain, and fulness of grace in himself; or as a general leads and guides his army; Christ being a Leader and Commander of the people, and the great Captain of their salvation, and who being at the head of them, they fear no enemy; or as a guide leads and directs such as are ignorant, and out of the way. The psalmist desires the Lord would lead him in the way of truth and paths of righteousness, according to his word; and guide him with his counsel, and by his Spirit, that so he might walk in the way in which he should go; and this he entreats he would do "for his name's sake"; not for any merit or worthiness in him; but for the glory of his own name, and for the honour of his free grace and mercy, for which the Lord often does many things; he defers his anger, he purges away the sins of his people, he forgives their transgressions, and remembers their sins no more, for his name's sake.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5–6 My spirit - My soul or life; to preserve…
My spirit - My soul or life; to preserve it from the malice of mine enemies. For - Thou hast delivered me formerly, and therefore I commit myself to thee for the future. O Lord, &c. - Who hast shewed thyself so, in making good thy promise.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv4–6 Verse 4. Pull me out of the net] They…
Verse 4. Pull me out of the net] They have hemmed me in on every side, and I cannot escape but by miracle.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5–6 Psa 31:5. Into thy hand — That is, to…
Psa 31:5. Into thy hand — That is, to thy care and custody; I commit my spirit — My soul or life, either to preserve it from the malice of mine enemies, or, if they are permitted to kill my body, to receive it. For my case is almost desperate, and I am ready to give up the ghost. But our Lord used those words, when expiring on the cross, in a more proper and literal sense than they can be applied to David. He used them, probably, to convince the Jews that, though suffering, he was the Messiah, and that son of David who should sit on his throne for ever. For thou hast redeemed me — Thou hast delivered me formerly in great dangers, and therefore I willingly and cheerfully commit myself to thee for the future: O Lord God of truth — Who hast showed thyself to be such to me in making good thy promises.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3–6 For thou art my rock and my fortress -…
For thou art my rock and my fortress - See the notes at Psa 18:2.
Therefore for thy name’s sake - For the sake of thine own honor, or for the glory of thy name. See the notes at Psa 23:3. That is, since thou art my rock and my defense - since I put my trust in thee - show, by leading and guiding me, that my trust is well founded, or that this is Thy character, and that Thou wilt be true and faithful to those who commit their all to thee. See the notes at Psa 31:1.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v5 commit my spirit--my life, or myself. Our Saviour used…
commit my spirit--my life, or myself. Our Saviour used the words on the Cross [Luk 23:46], not as prophetical, but, as many pious men have done, as expressive of His unshaken confidence in God. The Psalmist rests on God's faithfulness to His promises to His people, and hence avows himself one of them, detesting all who revere objects of idolatry (compare Deu 32:21; Co1 8:4).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6 3. For thy name’s sake—See on Psa_23:3
3. For thy name’s sake—See on Psa_23:3
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv4–6 4. Thou wilt bring me out of the net…
4. Thou wilt bring me out of the net … for thou art my strong hold. He compares his insidious enemies to hunters or fowlers, as in Psa_9:15; Psa_25:15.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–6 (3) Rock.—As rock in this verse is selâ (LXX.…
(3) Rock.—As rock in this verse is selâ (LXX. and Vulg., “strength”) instead of tsûr, as in Psa_31:2, it is better to render “for thou art my cliff fortress;” literally, cliff and fortress.
For thy name’s sake—i.e., because Thou hast this name of rock and fortress.
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Lead me, and guide me.—The future is better,
“Thou wilt lead and guide me.”
To pray for protection and then stoutly affirm belief, as in Psa_31:3, has been called illogical; but it is the logic of the heart if not of the intellect; the logic, it may be added, of every prayer of faith.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3–6 For thou art my Rock; or, my cliff (yls,…
For thou art my Rock; or, my cliff (yls, not yrwx). And my Fortress. David prays God to be his Rock and Fortress in the future, because he has always looked to him as his Rock and Fortress in the past. Faith establishes a claim to have its anticipations made good. Therefore for thy Name"s sake lead me, and guide me. Metaphor is dropped, and God is simply asked for guidance and direction. In the struggle between Absalom and David more depended upon wise counsel than upon mere force. (2Sa_15:31-37 2Sa 16:15-23:17:5-23)
A prayer for guidance.
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"For thy Name"s sake... guide me." God leads men, whether they ask him or not. He guides their lives, though they may not know him even may deny his very existence. Belshazzar. (Dan_5:23, "in whose hand," etc) Cyrus. (Isa_45:1-5) Heathen nations. (Act_17:26, Act_17:27) Does this make such a prayer as the text superfluous? On the contrary, it is the very reason for it. God"s guidance of men without their knowledge, or even against their will, is very different from his guidance of those who ask it for his Name"s sake. (As you speak of "driving a horse," or "driving a friend" who asks a seat by your side.) Consider the meaning and the plea of the psalmist"s prayer.
I WHAT DOES THIS PRAYER ASK FOR? In other words, how can God grant it?
1. By the lending of his providence. Q.d.: his unfailing, unerring, unlimited control of all events and creatures, great or small. The old-fashioned phrase, "particular providence," is often strongly objected to; rightly, if it be taken to mean some special interference with the course of things here, not there; now, not then; a touch to the helm sectionally, not the firm hand never taken off it. But remember, what cleverest people (busy with wide generalizations and laws) are most apt to forget that all reality is particular. A pound of iron weighs a pound because each atom of iron is precisely like every other, and obeys exactly the same force. The harvest ripens because the same life is working in every several grain. A lifetime is not made up of weeks and years, but breaths and heart-beats. We must not liken God"s knowledge to ours. We are compelled to store ours in abstract ideas, names, laws, etc., just as we arrange books on shelves, with titles on their back useless else. Divine knowledge, lust because infinite, must take in every movement of every atom. Inconceivable! But not more inconceivable than that God has set going movements at the rate of hundreds of millions of millions in a second, which keep time throughout the universe. And what his power has called into being and sustains, and his knowledge surveys, his wisdom and goodness guide. This, at once deepest truth and plain common sense, is the Bible doctrine of providence. "He maketh grass to grow on the mountains each blade from its own root. Not a bird falls to the earth without our heavenly Father. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord". (Psa_139:3, Psa_139:9, Psa_139:10)
2. By his Word. (2Ti_3:15 Psa_119:105) What is a lamp for? To give light. How do I know that light is light? Simply by its shining. Light is its own evidence. If a lamp cannot be kindled, or, being kindled, refuses to burn, no argument will persuade you that it is a good lamp. If it burns bright and steady, shedding a clear light on the page you read, the work you handle, the path you walk in, no argument will persuade you that it is not a good lamp. So with God"s Word. Men may dispute as they please about inspiration, pile up mountains of criticism, publish every few years a new work that is to finally dispose of the Bible; they cannot stop the light from shining. This main fact remains solid, unanswerable, that a life guided by this light rises to a level, gains a purity, strength, beauty, hopeful courage, and calm settled peace not otherwise attainable. The light, observe, not of mere precept. Pagan teachers Buddha, Confucius, Seneca, and I know not how many, have given noble and lofty precepts, enabling men to say, with the old Roman poet, "I see and approve what is good, though I practise what is bad." But only from the Bible shines, along with precept, the light of pardon and the light of promise . (1Jn_2:12, 1Jn_2:25) Against the sceptics" learning and logic the plain Christian sets his experience. If you could find a grey-haired Christian saying, "I have framed my life according to the Bible, and I wish I had not; I have lived a life of prayer to God, and trust in Jesus as my Saviour, and obedience to his Word, and if I could begin again, I would be wiser, then you would at least have something to set against the lives ruined by despising the Bible, and flinging faith and prayer away. But the testimony is the other way. (Psa_119:165 Psa_19:11 2Ti_4:6-8)
3. By his Spirit. (Joh_14:13 Rom_8:14) The Bible itself affords no countenance to the idea that life can be rightly guided by the written Word alone, severed from the living presence and personal teaching of the Holy Spirit. For three plain reasons. A rightly guided life means:
(1) A life of faith in Christ; and this is the Holy Spirit"s gift and work. (Mat_16:17)
(2) A life of prayer; and the Holy Spirit is at once the Answer to prayer and the Inspirer of prayer. (Luk_11:13 Jud_1:20)
(3) The true meaning of Scripture is hidden from an unspiritual mind. (1Co_2:14)
II WHAT IS THE FORCE OF THE PLEA HERE URGED thy Name"s sake"? If one may venture to put it so plainly, it is putting God on his honour to fulfil his promises. The "Name" of God stands for all that he has made known to us of himself. Especially it includes his words of promise, because here his faithfulness stands pledged. Not that God promises to grant every request, wise or foolish, right or wrong. (Who would dare to pray?) But he does promise to attend to our prayer to give good things to those who ask. He has filled the Bible with encouragements and commands to pray, and with examples of prayer answered. As our Lord Jesus is himself the full Revelation of the Father, so he authorizes us to pray in his Name. (Joh_14:13, Joh_14:14)
Conclusion. Of all prayers there is none we need to offer more earnestly, more constantly.
1. Without God"s guidance we shall miss our way. A life at the mercy of passion, expediency, fashion, fancy, is like a rudderless ship. Especially in trouble and temptation. The traveller in fair, calm weather may think the mountain-track is plain enough without a guide; but the snowstorm comes on, and he is lost.
2. If God be not your Guide, you will have some other. Conformity to the world is practical submission to the enemy of souls. (Eph_2:2, "He who bows not to him has bowed to me," Byron"s "Cain Like a ship that has taken on board a false pilot, who steers her on the quicksand.
3. Life is a journey to be taken but once. The wrong path cannot be retraced.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv3–6 Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my…
Ver. 3. For thou art my rock and my fortress. Here the tried soul avows yet again its full confidence in God. Faith's repetitions are not vain. The avowal of our reliance upon God in times of adversity is a principle method of glorifying him. Active service is good, but the passive confidence of faith is not one jot less esteemed in the sight of God. The words before us appear to embrace and fasten upon the Lord with a fiducial grip which is not to be relaxed. The two personal pronouns, like sure nails, lay hold upon the faithfulness of the Lord. O for grace to have our heart fixed in firm unstaggering belief in God! The figure of a rock and a fortress may be illustrated to us in these times by the vast fortress of Gibraltar, often besieged by our enemies, but never wrested from us: ancient strongholds, though far from impregnable by our modes of warfare, were equally important in those remoter ageswhen in the mountain fastnesses, feeble bands felt themselves to be secure. Note the singular fact that David asked the Lord to be his rock Ps 31:2 because he was his rock; and learn from it that we may pray to enjoy in experience what we grasp by faith. Faith is the foundation of prayer. Therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me. The psalmist argues like a logician with his fors and therefores. Since I do sincerely trust thee, saith he, O my God, be my director. To lead and to guide are two things very like each other, but patient thought will detect different shades of meaning, especially as the last may mean provide for me. The double word indicates an urgent needwe require double direction, for we are fools, and the way is rough. Lead me as a soldier, guide me as a traveller! lead me as a babe, guide me as a man; lead me when thou art with me, but guide me even if thou be absent; lead me by thy hand, guide me by thy word. The argument used is one which is fetched from the armoury of free grace: not for my own sake, but for thy name's sake guide me. Our appeal is not to any fancied virtue in our own names, but to the glorious goodness and graciousness which shines resplendent in the character of Israel's God. It is not possible that the Lord should suffer his own honour to be tarnished, but this would certainly be the case if those who trusted him should perish. This was Moses' plea, "What wilt thou do unto thy great name?"
Ver. 3. For thy name's sake. If merely a creature's honour, the credit of ministers, or the glory of angels were involved, man's salvation would indeed be uncertain. But every step involves the honour of God. We plead for his name's sake. If God should begin and not continue, or if he should carry on but not complete the work, all would admit that it was for some reason that must bring reproach on the Almighty. This can never be. God was self moved to undertake man's salvation. His glorious name makes it certain the top stone shall be laid in glory. William S. Plumer.
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Ver. 3. For thy name's sake. On account of the fame of thy power, thy goodness, thy truth, &c. Lead me. As a shepherd an erring sheep, as a leader military bands, or as one leads another ignorant of the way. See Ge 24:27 Ne 9:12-13 Ps 23:3 73:24. Govern my counsels, my affections, and my thoughts. Martin Geier, 1614-1681.
Ver. 3. Work out the metaphor of God as a rocky fastness of the soul.
Ver. 3. (last clause).
1. A blessing needed, lead me.
2. A blessing obtainable.
3. An argument for its being granted, for thy name's sake..
Psalms 31:4*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv5–6 Into Thine hand I commit my spirit.
Psa_31:5
Into Thine hand I commit my spirit.
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The last words of Christ on the Cross
(with Luk_23:46; Act_7:59):--
I. I invite you first to consider our Saviours words just before his death: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.
1. Observe how Christ lives and passes away in the atmosphere of the Word of God. Christ was a grand original thinker, and He might always have given us words of His own. He never lacked suitable language, for never man spake like this Man. Yet the great majority of His expressions may be traced to the Old Testament. Even where they are not exact quotations, His words drop into Scriptural shape and form. You can see that the Bible has been His one Book. It was food to Him, as it is to us; and if He thus lived upon the Word of God, should not you and I do the same?
2. Notice that our Lord, in the moment of His death, recognized a personal God. We have far too much fiction in religion, and a religion of fiction will bring only fictitious comfort in the dying hour. Come to solid facts. Is God as real to thee as thou art to thyself? Come now; dost thou speak with Him as a man speaketh unto his friend? Canst thou trust Him, and rely upon Him as thou dost trust and rely upon the partner of thy bosom? If thy God be unreal, thy religion is unreal.
3. Observe how Jesus Christ here brings out, the Fatherhood of God. The psalm from which He quoted did not say, Father. David did not get as far as that in words, though in spirit he often did; but Jesus had the right to alter the psalmists words. He can improve on Scripture, though you and I cannot. He did not say, O God, into Thine hand I commit My spirit; but He said, Father. Oh, how sweet, in life and in death, to feel in our soul the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!
4. From this passage we learn that our Lord cheerfully rendered up His soul to His Father when the time had come for Him to die. No man taketh it from Me, said He concerning His life; I lay it down of Myself; and there is here a cheerful willingness to yield up His spirit into His Fathers hands. It is rather remarkable that none of the evangelists describe our Lord as dying. He did die, but they all speak of Him as giving up the ghost,--surrendering to God His spirit. You and I passively die; but He actively yielded up His spirit to His Father. In His case, death was an act; and He performed that act from the glorious motive of redeeming us from death and hell; so, in this sense, Christ stands alone in His death. But, oh, if we cannot render up our spirit as He did, yet, let us be perfectly ready to give it up. When God calls us to die, it will be a sweet way of dying if we can, like our Lord, pass away with a text of Scripture upon our lips, with a personal God ready to receive us, with that God recognized distinctly as our Father, and so die joyously, resigning our will entirely to the sweet will of the ever-blessed One, and saying, It is the Lord, My Father, let Him do as seemeth Him good.
II. My second text (Psa_31:5) is evidently the passage which our Saviour had in His mind just then: Into Thine hand I commit My spirit: Thou hast redeemed Me, O Lord God of truth. It seems to me that these are words to be used in life, for this psalm is not so much concerning the believers death as concerning his life.
1. Let us cheerfully entrust our souls to God, and feel that they are quite safe in His hands. Are you always doing this?
2. Notice that our second text has these words at the end of it: Thou hast redeemed Me, O Lord God of truth. Is not that a good reason for giving yourself up entirely to God? Christ has redeemed you, and therefore you belong to Him. So, every day, go to Him with this declaration, Into Thine hand I commit my spirit. Nay, not only every day, but all through the day. Have you to go into a house where there is fever; I mean, is it your duty to go there? Then go saying, Father, into Thine hand I commit my spirit. I would advise you to do this every time you walk down the street, or even while you sit in your own house.
III. My third text (Act_7:59) is intended to explain to us the use of our Saviours dying words for ourselves.
1. If we can die as Stephen did, we shall die with a certainty of immortality. An infidel once said to a Christian man, Some of you Christians have great fear in dying because you believe that there is another state to follow this one. I have not the slightest fear, for I believe that I shall be annihilated, and therefore all fear of death is gone from me. Yes, said the Christian man, and in that respect you seem to me to be on equal terms with that bullock grazing over there, which, like yourself, is free from any fear of death. Pray, sir, let me ask you a simple question, Have you any hope? . . . Hope, sir? No, I have no hope; of course, I have no hope, sir. Ah, then! replied the other, despite the fears that sometimes come over feeble believers, they have a hope which they would not and could not give up. And that hope is, that our spirit--even that spirit which we commit into Jesus Christs hands,--shall be for ever with the Lord.
2. To a man who can die as Stephen did, there is a certainty that Christ is near,--so near that the man speaks to Him, and says, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
3. There is a certainty that we are quite safe in His hands.
4. There is the other certainty, that He is quite willing to take us into His hands. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Into, Thy hands
This psalm is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble, surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened. He was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all sorts of enemies at that moment. Into Thine hands I commit my spirit, as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so baulk the enemies of their prey.
I. where to lodge a soul for safe keeping, Into Thine hands--a banker has a strong room, and a wise man sends his securities and his valuables to the bank and takes an acknowledgment, and goes to bed at night, quite sure that no harm will come to them, and that he will get them when he wants them. And that is exactly what the psalmist does here. He deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of One who will take care of it. The great hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it.
1. Trusting Him for the salvation of our souls. Take your stand on the fact, and with emancipated and buoyant hearts, and grateful ones, work from it, and because of it.
2. Trusting Him in reference to daily life, and all its difficulties and duties. The act of trust is to run through everything that we undertake and everything that we have to fight with. Self-will wrenches our souls out of Gods hands. A man that sends his securities to the banker can get them back when he likes. And if we undertake to manage our own affairs, or fling ourselves into our work without recognition of our dependence upon Him, or if we choose our work without seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again.
3. This must be accompanied with corresponding work. Peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to God unless we back up the committing with consistent, Christlike lives.
4. This committing of our souls into Gods hands does not mean that we are absolved from taking care of them ourselves.
II. the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, God, about great things and little things. Whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, in the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity.
III. the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of Truth. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Committing ourselves to God
Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Hence--
I. he testifies, by his committing himself to god, to the power of the Lords redemption. He has felt it and acknowledges it.
II. To Gods faithfulness. God is the Lord God of truth. To which class do we belong? (R. W. Evans, B. D.)
The dying Christian come, rifting his soul to God
I. with whom does the dying Christian wish to entrust his soul? There are only two beings who can have charge of it when it quits the body--the Lord or Satan. Into the hands of one of these our souls must go when they die, and with one of these we must spend eternity. But men generally are quite indifferent on this matter. They feel no real concern. They have a vague hope of heaven and fear of hell. But neither influences their conduct in any important degree. Christians, however, must desire that which David so desired--that the Lord God should receive his spirit.
II. what is implied in committing his soul into his hands in a dying hour.
1. A firm persuasion that the soul will outlive the body. Not by reason but by the Gospel only does he first learn really and habitually to regard himself as the heir of eternity. And this conviction deepens as he grows in grace.
2. A high value for the soul. The body is as nothing compared to it. The body is the casket, but the soul is the jewel, and that he would, indeed, have saved.
3. A lively sense of the serious, and awful nature of death, a conviction of our need of help in a dying hour. The soul in such an hour will cling more closely to its God. No man will think lightly of death who has ever thought himself near death.
4. A belief that God is willing to receive the soul.
III. the warrant and encouragement thus to do.
1. God is the Christians Redeemer.
2. The faithfulness of God. He is the God of truth, and He has promised to save them that trust in Him.
IV. the lesson of this subject.
1. The great value of Christian faith.
2. Here is a source of comfort under the loss of friends.
3. How confidently we may commit into the same hand all other things.
4. How important that now we should become the redeemed of the Lord. (C. Bradley.)
A watchword /or life and death
I. The true watchword of life.
1. We approach the duties of life through a series of the most elevating considerations.
(1) We are not our own.
(2) We are parts of a great system.
(3) We are servants, not masters.
(4) The things that are round about us are beneath our serious notice, except for momentary convenience or instruction.
2. We accept the trials of life with the most hopeful patience. They are--
(1) Disciplinary.
(2) Under control.
(3) Needful.
3. We recognize the mercies of life with the most joyful thankfulness. The name of God is upon the smallest of them.
II. the true watchword of death. This watchword, as spoken by Jesus and Stephen, shows--
1. Their belief in a state of being at present invisible. They must at least be credited with speaking their deepest personal convictions. It is something to us in our ignorance and weakness to know who have believed this doctrine of a future state.
2. Their assurance of the limitations of human malice. The spirit was free!
3. Application.
(1) Where the spirit is fit for the presence of God, there is no fear of death.
(2) All who have died in the faith are present with the Lord.
(3) Jesus Himself knows what it is to pass through the valley of the shadow of death.
(4) The prayer for entrance amongst the blest may come too late. We have no authority for the encouragement of death-bed repentance. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The saints dying prayer
I. These words are full of the fact of our human immortality. Man has and is a spirit, which he can commit.
II. A man must do somewhat with his spirit. Some commit their spirit to the dream of theosophy; spiritualism; a worldly carelessness about its destiny; an external morality; external rites; purging punishments.
III. to whom it is most right and reasonable to commit ones spirit.
1. To a personal God.
2. To a redeeming God.
3. To a God of truth. (W. Hoyt, D. D.)
The redeemed soul in Gods hand
I. the believer has been redeemed by God. This Divine redemption--
1. Is a deliverance from the greatest of all evils, the service of Satan--ignorance, disease, remorse, death, hell.
2. Was effected at an infinite cost--the death of Him who is one with the Father.
3. Is an eternal redemption of the entire nature.
II. the believer is assured of his redemption.
1. This assurance comes of faith.
2. Feeling thus assured of our redemption, God should constantly be the object of our love, and our lives be dedicated to His service.
III. the believer, feeling assured of his redemption, trustfuly yields his spirit into the hand of his maker, when he departs this life. Be ye also ready. Prepare to meet your God. (Thos. Evans.)
Redemption a ground of encouragement to commit the soul to God
No question so important to us as this--how can we be just with God. Reason and philosophy cannot answer it, but the Bible does.
I. take a brief view of Gods plan of redemption. It includes--
1. The free and full pardon of sin.
2. Provision for our sanctification.
3. Adoption into Gods family.
II. All this furnishes ample ground for the committal of our souls into the hands of God. What is it to do this? It implies--
1. Conviction of guilt.
2. Persuasion of His readiness to receive and keep what is committed to Him.
3. Choosing to be ruled by Him.
III. the encouragement there is in redemption to do this. You are assured--
1. That all obstacles are put out of the way.
2. That all you need is provided for you and freely offered to you
3. No conditions are required but that you simply commit your soul to God.
4. It is the only way of being saved.
IV. conclusion.
1. None may say, there is no hope for me.
2. The work of redemption illustrates the goodness of God.
3. Are we now trusting in Christ? if so, we have committed, etc.
4. How great our obligations to live to the Divine glory. (J. Hawes, D. D.)
The language of a dying saint
I. what is implied in his committing his spirit to God.
1. A deep conviction of the souls immortality.
2. A preferable concern for his soul.
3. A firm persuasion that his spirit would be safe with God. The soul is as a precious jewel, hence a great trust.
II. His encouragement herein. Thou hast redeemed me, etc. For in this redemption the believer finds--
1. Love, wonderful, matchless, divine (1Jn_4:10; 1Pe_1:18). Hence he is greatly encouraged.
2. Property (Eze_13:4; 1Co_6:19; Eze_16:8; Isa_43:21). And then--
3. Power. God is able to keep that, etc.
4. Faithfulness.
III. improvement.
1. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.
2. Acquaint now thyself with God and be at peace.
3. Rejoice in the prospect of the glorious resurrection day. (Samuel Lavington.)
From the text learn
I. dying in a saints account is a difficult work.
1. It is an untried work.
2. It is a final farewell to the present world.
3. It is to put off or lay down the body, no more to be re-assumed till the general resurrection at the end of the world.
4. Our probation is at an end.
5. To die is a great and difficult work, seeing thereupon the soul removes into a new state and world. To remove from one kingdom or country to another, is a great thing; but how much greater to remove into a new world! a world we have not seen, and are little acquainted with.
6. We have to meet God as our Judge, who will order our soul to its unchangeable state and place in the eternal world. For all these reasons to die is always difficult. And it is more so if death find us in the dark as to our title to the life to come. Conscience may be filled with terror under the sense of sin, and dread of deserved wrath. Sin, unpardoned sin, is the sting of death, as drawing after it an everlasting hell; and the very suspicion of this is enough to make the heart to tremble. God in our last moments may hide Himself, or withdraw the light of His countenance; and what distress follows upon this, none can tell but those that have felt it. It is no wonder that such circumstances make dying work peculiarly hard.
II. the children of God considering themselves as dying, are chiefly concerned about their immortal souls. The psalmist here was so; he had prayed for temporal salvation in the words of this psalm before my text, but did not insist mainly upon it. However it was as to his body, his great care was with reference to his soul; O Lord, into Thy hand I commit my spirit: let that be safe, and I shall be satisfied. (Anon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v5
Psalms
‘INTO THY HANDS’
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Psa 31:5.
The first part of this verse is consecrated for ever by our Lord’s use of it on the Cross. Is it not wonderful that, at that supreme hour, He deigned to take an unknown singer’s words as His words? What an honour to that old saint that Jesus Christ, dying, should find nothing that more fully corresponded to His inmost heart at that moment than the utterance of the Psalmist long ago! How His mind must have been saturated with the Old Testament and with these songs of Israel! And do you not think it would be better for us if ours were completely steeped in those heart-utterances of ancient devotion?
But, of course, the Psalmist was not thinking about his death. It was an act for his life that he expressed in these words:-’Into Thine hands I commit my spirit.’ If you will glance over the psalm at your leisure, you will see that it is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble, surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened. He was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all sorts of enemies at that moment, not sitting comfortably, as you and I are here, but in the midst of the hurly-burly and the strife, when by a dead lift of faith he flung himself clean out of his disasters, and, if I might so say, pitched himself into the arms of God. ‘Into Thine hands I commit my spirit,’ as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so baulk the enemies of their prey. That is the figure.
I. Now, let me say a word as to where to lodge a soul for safe keeping.
‘Into Thine hands’-a banker has a strong room, and a wise man sends his securities and his valuables to the bank and takes an acknowledgment, and goes to bed at night, quite sure that no harm will come to them, and that he will get them when he wants them. And that is exactly what the Psalmist does here. He deposits his most precious treasure in the safe custody of One who will take care of it. The great Hand is stretched out, and the little soul is put into it. It closes, and ‘no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand.’
Now that is only a picturesque way of putting the most threadbare, bald, commonplace of religious teaching. The word faith, when it has any meaning at all in people’s minds when they hear it from the pulpit, is extremely apt, I fear, to create a kind of, if not disgust, at least a revulsion of feeling, as if people said, ‘Ah, there he is at the old story again!’ But will you freshen up your notions of what faith it means by taking that picture of my text as I have tried to expand and illuminate it a little by my metaphor? That is what is meant by ‘Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.’ There are two or three ways in which that is to be done, and one or two ways in which it is not to be done.
We do it when we trust Him for the salvation of our souls. There are a great many good Christian people who go mourning all their days, or, at least, sometimes mourning and sometimes indifferent. The most that they venture to say is, ‘But I cannot be sure.’ Our grandfathers used to sing:-
‘‘Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought.’
Why should it cause anxious thought? Take your own personal salvation for granted, and work from that. Do not work towards it. If you have gone to Christ and said, ‘Lord, I cannot save myself; save me. I am willing to be saved,’ be sure that you have the salvation that you ask, and that if you have put your soul in that fashion into God’s hands, any incredible thing is credible, and any impossible thing is possible, rather than that you should fail of the salvation which, in the bottom of your hearts, you desire. Take the burden off your backs and put it on His. Do not be for ever questioning yourselves, ‘Am I a saved man?’ You will get sick of that soon, and you will be very apt to give up all thought about the matter at all. But take your stand on the fact, and with emancipated and buoyant hearts, and grateful ones, work from it, and because of it. And when sin rises up in your soul, and you say to yourselves, ‘If I were a Christian I could not have done that,’ or, ‘If I were a Christian I could not be so-and-so’; remember that all sin is inconsistent with being a Christian, but no sin is incompatible with it; and that after all the consciousness of shortcomings and failure, we have just to come back to the old point, and throw ourselves on God’s love. His arms are open to clasp us round. ‘Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.’
Further, the Psalmist meant, by committing himself to God, trusting Him in reference to daily life, and all its difficulties and duties. Our act of trust is to run through everything that we undertake and everything that we have to fight with. Self-will wrenches our souls out of God’s hands. A man who sends his securities to the banker can get them back when he likes. And if we undertake to manage our own affairs, or fling ourselves into our work without recognition of our dependence upon Him, or if we choose our work without seeking to know what His will is, that is recalling our deposit. Then you will get it back again, because God does not keep anybody’s securities against his will-you will get it back again, and much good it will do you when you have got it! Self-will, self-reliance, self-determination-these are the opposites of committing the keeping of our souls to God. And, as I say, if you withdraw the deposit, you take all the burden and trouble of it on your own shoulders again. Do not fancy that you are ‘living lives of faith in the Son of God,’ if you are not looking to Him to settle what you are to do. You cannot expect that He will watch over you, if you do not ask Him where you are to go.
But now there is another thing that I would suggest, this committing of ourselves to God which begins with the initial act of trust in Him for the salvation of our souls, and is continued throughout life by the continual surrender of ourselves to Him, is to be accompanied with corresponding work. The Apostle Peter’s memory is evidently hovering round this verse, whether he is consciously quoting it or not, when he says, ‘Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in welldoing,’ which has to go along with the act of trust and dependence. There must come the continual ordering of the life in accordance with His will; for ‘well-doing’ does not mean merely some works of beneficence and ‘charity,’ of the sort that have monopolised to themselves the name in latter days, but it means the whole of righteous conduct in accordance with the will of God.
So Peter tells us that it is vain for us to talk about committing the keeping of our soul to God unless we back up the committing with consistent, Christlike lives. Of course it is vain. How can a man expect God to take care of him when he plunges himself into something that is contrary to God’s laws? There are many people who say, ‘God will take care of me; He will save me from the consequences.’ Not a bit of it-He loves us a great deal too well for that. If you take the bit between your teeth, you will be allowed to go over the precipice and be smashed to pieces. If you wish to be taken care of, keep within the prescribed limits, and consult Him before you act, and do not act till you are sure of His approval. God has never promised to rescue man when he has got into trouble by his own sin. Suppose a servant had embezzled his master’s money through gambling, and then expected God to help him to get the money to pay back into the till. Do you think that would be likely to work? And how dare you anticipate that God will keep your feet, if you are walking in ways of your own choosing? All sin takes a man out from the shelter of the divine protection, and the shape the protection has to take then is chastisement. And all sin makes it impossible for a man to exercise that trust which is the committing of his soul to God. So it has to be ‘in welldoing,’ and the two things are to go together. ‘What God hath joined let not man put asunder.’ You do not become a Christian by the simple exercise of trust unless it is trust that worketh by love.
But let me remind you, further, that this committing of our souls into God’s hands does not mean that we are absolved from taking care of them ourselves. There is a very false kind of religious faith, which seems to think that it shuffles off all responsibility upon God. Not at all; you lighten the responsibility, but you do not get rid of it. And no man has a right to say ‘He will keep me, and so I may neglect diligent custody of myself.’ He keeps us very largely by helping us to keep our hearts with all diligence, and to keep our feet in the way of truth.
So let me now just say a word in regard to the blessedness of thus living in an atmosphere of continual dependence on, and reference to, God, about great things and little things. Whenever a man is living by trust, even when the trust is mistaken, or when it is resting upon some mere human, fallible creature like himself, the measure of his confidence is the measure of his tranquillity. You know that when a child says, ‘I do not need to mind, father will look after that,’ he may be right or wrong in his estimate of his father’s ability and inclination; but as long as he says it, he has no kind of trouble or anxiety, and the little face is scarred by no deep lines of care or thought. So when we turn to Him and say, ‘Why should I the burden bear?’ then there comes-I was going to say ‘surging,’ but ‘trickling’ is a better word-into my heart a settled peacefulness which nothing else can give. Look at this psalm. It begins, and for the first half continues, in a very minor key. The singer was not a poet posing as in affliction, but his words were wrung out of him by anguish. ‘Mine eyes are consumed with grief; my life is spent with grief’; ‘I am . . . as a dead man out of mind’; ‘I am in trouble.’ And then with a quick wheel about, ‘But I trusted in Thee, O Lord! I said, Thou art my God.’ And what comes of that? This-’O how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee!’ ‘Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His marvellous kindness in a strong city.’ And then, at the end of all, his peacefulness is so triumphant that he calls upon ‘all His saints’ to help him to praise. And the last words are ‘Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.’ That is what you will get if you commit your soul to God. There was no change in the Psalmist’s circumstances. The same enemy was round about him. The same ‘net was privily laid for him.’ All that had seemed to him half an hour before as wellnigh desperate, continued utterly unaltered. But what had altered? God had come into the place, and that altered the whole aspect of matters. Instead of looking with shrinking and tremulous heart along the level of earth, where miseries were, he was looking up into the heavens, where God was; and so everything was beautiful. That will be our experience if we will commit the keeping of our souls to Him in well doing. You can bring June flowers and autumn fruits into snowy January days by the exercise of this trust in God. It does not need that our circumstances should alter, but only that our attitude should alter. Look up, and cast your souls into God’s hands, and all that is round you, of disasters and difficulties and perplexities, will suffer transformation; and for sorrow there will come joy because there has come trust.
I need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which, as I have said, is consecrated to us by our Lord’s own use of it at the last. But is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind and heart by which a man commits his spirit to God in life may be his when he comes to die, and that death may become a voluntary act, and the spirit may not be dragged out of us, reluctant, and as far as we can, resisting, but that we may offer it up as a libation, to use one metaphor of St. Paul’s, or may surrender it willingly as an act of faith? It is wonderful to think that life and death, so unlike each other, may be made absolutely identical in the spirit in which they are met. You remember how the first martyr caught up the words from the Cross, and kneeling down outside the wall of Jerusalem, with the blood running from the wounds that the stones had made, said, ‘Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.’ That is the way to die, and that is the way to live.
One word is all that time permits about the ground upon which this great venture of faith may be made. ‘Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of Truth.’ The Psalmist, I think, uses that word ‘redeemed’ here, not in its wider spiritual New Testament sense, but in its frequent Old Testament sense, of deliverance from temporal difficulties and calamities. And what he says is, in effect, this: ‘I have had experience in the past which makes me believe that Thou wilt extricate me from this trouble too, because Thou art the God of Truth.’ He thinks of what God has done, and of what God is. And Peter, whom we have already found echoing this text, echoes that part of it too, for he says, ‘Let them commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator,’ which is all but parallel to ‘Lord God of Truth.’ So God will continue as He has begun, and finish what He has begun.
‘A faithful Creator-’ He made us to need what we do need, and He is not going to forget the wants that He Himself has incorporated with our human nature. He is bound to help us because He made us. He is the God of Truth, and He will help us. But if we take ‘redeemed’ in its highest sense, the Psalmist, arguing from God’s past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the Apostle said in the triumphant words, ‘Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son . . . and whom He did predestinate them He also . . . justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified.’ ‘Thou hast redeemed me.’ ‘Thou art the God of Truth; Thou wilt not lift Thy hand away from Thy work until Thou hast made me all that Thou didst bind Thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.’
So we can say, ‘He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’ You have experiences, I have no doubt, in your past, on which you may well build confidence for the future. Let each of us consult our own hearts, and our own memories. Cannot we say, ‘Thou hast been my Help,’ and ought we not therefore to be sure that He will not ‘leave us nor forsake us’ until He manifests Himself as the God of our salvation?
It is a blessed thing to lay ourselves in the hands of God, but the New Testament tells us, ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ The alternative is one that we all have to face,-either ‘into Thy hands I commit my spirit,’ or into those hands to fall. Settle which of the two is to be your fate.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v5 (See Scofield "Isa 59:20") See Scofield "Exo 14:30"
redeemed
(See Scofield "Isa 59:20") See Scofield "Exo 14:30"
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 5 my rock
my rock
Yahweh is spoke of as if he were a huge rock that would protect the writer from attack. AT: "like a huge rock on which I can be safe" (See: Metaphor)
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my fortress
Yahweh is spoken of as if he were a strong fortress in which the writer would be protected from his enemies. (See: Metaphor)
for your name's sake
In this phrase "name" represents Yahweh. AT: "so that your name may be honored" or "so that I may worship you" (See: Metonymy)
lead and guide me
The words "lead" and "guide" mean basically the same thing and strengthen the request that Yahweh lead him. AT: "lead me where you want me to go" (See: Doublet)
Pluck me out of the net that they have hidden for me
The writer is spoken of as if he were a bird caught in a hidden net, and waiting for Yahweh to free him from the trap. (See: Metaphor)
you are my refuge
Yahweh is spoken of as if he is a place where the writer can hide from people who are attacking him. AT: "you always protect me" or "you give me constant protection" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
name
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5–6 31:5 I entrust my spirit into your hand: Whether…
31:5 I entrust my spirit into your hand: Whether he lives or dies, the psalmist will trust his Lord. Jesus uttered these words on the cross just before he died (Luke 23:46).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.