Psalm 31: Into Your Hand I Commit My Spirit

"In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down thine ear to me… be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me… Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me… Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth."

"Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief… For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing… I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours… I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel. For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side."

"But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand… Make thy face to shine upon thy servant… Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee… For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications."

"O love the LORD, all ye his saints… Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD."

"Fear on every side"

Magor missaviv, "terror all around," is a phrase Jeremiah uses again and again (Jeremiah 6:25; 20:3, 10; 46:5; 49:29). Jeremiah 20:10 matches Psalm 31:13 closely. Either the prophet echoed the psalm, the psalm the prophet, or both drew on a common phrase.

"Make thy face to shine"

31:16 borrows the priestly blessing (Numbers 6:25), also echoed in Psalms 4:6, 67:1 and 80:3, 7, 19.

On the cross

Luke 23:46 has Jesus die with the words of 31:5: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Stephen prays similarly (Acts 7:59). In Jewish tradition the verse is part of the bedtime prayer (the Shema at bedtime) and of Adon Olam ("into his hand I commit my spirit when I sleep"); in Christian monastic Compline the verse is the response "In manus tuas."

"Pro extasi"

The library's Vulgate title reads "In finem. Psalmus David, pro extasi," "for (or in) ecstasy." The Hebrew title has only "to the chief musician, a psalm of David." In v. 22 the Hebrew "in my alarm" (behofzi) appears in the Vulgate as "in excessu mentis meae" and in Giguet's Greek as "dans le transport de mon âme"; the Greek title may take its word from that verse.