Psalms 71
Psalm 71 is the psalm of old age - one of the few places in Scripture that speaks directly into the particular fears of a life's later years. The singer has grown old. His strength is failing. His enemies, who once had to reckon with him, now watch and wait, certain that his decline means his God has let him go. And so he prays the prayer that countless believers have prayed after him: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth (v. 9).
It is not death itself that frightens him most. It is the fear of abandonment - the dread that the God who carried him through every other season might somehow turn away in this last one, when he can do the least for himself.
But the fear is answered, almost before it is spoken, by memory. This is a man who can trace God's hand all the way back to the beginning of his life: thou art my trust from my youth (v. 5), and further still, by thee have I been holden up from the womb (v. 6). He has been a wonder to many precisely because God has been his strong refuge (v. 7) through it all. A life like that does not argue for abandonment; it argues against it.
The God who held him before he could hold anything, who has been his rock and his fortress (v. 3) for decades, is not the kind of God who drops His own at the finish line.
So the psalm climbs out of fear into something far stronger than mere survival. It turns on a single resolve - But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more (v. 14) - and it ends with two things the aging believer can still give.
The first is witness: a longing to live just long enough to show God's strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come (v. 18), handing the faith forward to those who follow.
The second is a hope that reaches clean through the grave: that the God who has shewn him great and sore troubles will yet quicken him - make him alive again - and bring me up again from the depths of the earth (v. 20). The prayer that began as a frightened plea against being cast off ends as a song to the Holy One of Israel, sung by lips and a redeemed soul that expect to be raised.
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Psalm 71:1-8My Trust From My Youth
1In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion. 2Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me. 3Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress. 4Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man. 5For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. 6By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother’s bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee. 7I am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge. 8Let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honour all the day.
Like so many psalms, this one opens with the bedrock confession that everything else will rest on: In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust. But the prayer that follows it - let me never be put to confusion - tells you what kind of trust this is. To be “put to confusion” is to be put to shame, to be left exposed and disappointed, the way a man is shamed when the thing he leaned on gives way and everyone sees him fall.
The singer is asking God never to let that happen - never to let his lifelong trust turn out to have been misplaced. It is a bold thing to ask, but it rests on something solid: a whole history of being kept.
He is not gambling on God for the first time here. He is appealing to a God he has trusted for so long that to be disappointed now would unmake everything. This is faith with a track record behind it, and the prayer of the rest of the psalm is simply the unfolding of that one settled relationship into the frightening new territory of old age.
These are the words the New Testament hands to Christ. Paul, looking back on Israel in the wilderness, says plainly, that Rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:4); and Jesus Himself promised to build His church upon a rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail (Matt. 16:18).
The God who is the believer's unshakable refuge is met, in the fullness of time, in the One who is the sure foundation - the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner (Matt. 21:42). The rock the aging singer has leaned on his whole life, who held him from the womb (v. 6) and will not drop him in old age, has a face and a name.
For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth (v. 5). Here is the spine of the entire psalm in a single line. This is not a recent faith, taken up late as a hedge against death. It is a trust the singer has carried from my youth - through the strength of his early years, through the long middle of his life, and now into its closing chapters.
That continuity is everything. It means his prayer against being cast off in old age (v. 9) is not the panic of a stranger suddenly reaching for God, but the appeal of a lifelong companion.
There is a particular dignity in a faith that has weathered decades, that can say from my youth and mean it - and there is a particular comfort in serving a God whose own faithfulness spans the whole length of a life. The hope of his old age is not a different hope from the hope of his youth. It is the same hope, grown deep and grey and sure, in the same God who has never once let him down.
I am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge (v. 7). The word wonder here can cut two ways, and the singer may well mean both. To some he is a marvel of God's grace - a man whose long, kept life is itself a kind of sign, a walking testimony to a God who does not let go. But to others a wonder is a spectacle, something stared at, even an object of suspicion or scorn - look how far he has fallen; look how his God has left him. Either way, the singer is exposed, the subject of other people's watching.
And he meets that exposure with a single defiant but: but thou art my strong refuge. Let them make of him what they will. Whatever the onlookers see when they look at him, he knows where he actually stands - not out in the open for the crowd to judge, but hidden behind the walls of God.
It is a good word for anyone whose life has become, for better or worse, something other people talk about: the verdict that matters is not theirs. Your refuge is not their opinion. It is God.
So practice it now. Run to God as your refuge in the small storms while you still can, so that the path to His shelter is worn smooth by the time the great storms come.
And do what verse 6 does - look back and count how far His faithfulness already reaches. He held you before you could hold anything; He has kept you through seasons you barely survived. A God with a record like that in your own life is not a God who will abandon you at the end. Let your remembering feed your trusting, and let your trusting fill your mouth, as verse 8 prays, with thy praise… all the day.
Psalm 71:9-16Cast Me Not Off in the Time of Old Age
9Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. 10For mine enemies speak against me; and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, 11Saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him. 12O God, be not far from me: O my God, make haste for my help. 13Let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my soul; let them be covered with reproach and dishonour that seek my hurt. 14But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more. 15My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof. 16I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD: I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only.
Now the psalm names its great fear directly, in words that have become the prayer of believers in every generation since: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth (v. 9). Notice exactly what he dreads. It is not pain, and it is not even death. It is being cast off - discarded, set aside as useless - at the precise moment he is least able to fend for himself.
There is a special vulnerability to the failing of strength. In youth, weakness can be hidden or outrun; in age, it stands plainly visible, and the world is quick to write off those who can no longer produce.
The singer feels that. He fears that as his body weakens, he will be treated as finished - and worse, that even God might join the verdict. So he prays against it with everything he has. And the very form of the prayer is its own quiet answer: a God you can still cry to like this is not a God who has cast you off. The plea itself is an act of the trust that v. 5 confessed.
On the cross, at the very end of His strength, Jesus prayed words from another psalm of forsakenness: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. 27:46; Ps. 22:1). He entered fully into the dread this verse names - the dread of being abandoned in the hour of greatest weakness - so that it might never finally fall on those who are His.
For the promise He leaves His people runs in exactly the opposite direction: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Heb. 13:5), and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Matt. 28:20). The aging believer prays forsake me not; the risen Christ answers, I will not. Because He was forsaken on the cross, the one who trusts Him can be sure of the very thing this psalm pleads for - that strength may fail, and age may come, and God will still not let go.
The enemies do not merely attack; they interpret. They look at the old man's weakness and announce its meaning: God hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him (v. 11).
This is the cruelest blow in the psalm, because it aims past the body at the soul. They are not just hunting him; they are telling him that his God has already given up on him, that his decline is the proof of it, and that no rescue is coming. It is the same logic the mockers would one day fling at the cross: He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him (Matt. 27:43).
The voice that says God hath forsaken you - look at the state of you is one of the oldest weapons in the world, and it is never louder than when we are weak. The singer's answer is not to argue with the accusation but to turn from it to God: O God, be not far from me… make haste for my help (v. 12). When the verdict “God has left you” is hurled at you, the reply is not self-defense. It is prayer - running again to the refuge the accusers swear has abandoned you.
And then comes the great hinge of the psalm, on the smallest of words: But. But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more (v. 14).
The enemies have had their say; now the singer has his. Against their God hath forsaken him he sets a resolve they cannot touch - he will hope continually, and not only hope but praise, and not only praise but praise more and more. This is faith refusing the verdict of the crowd. Nothing in his circumstances has improved; the strength is still failing, the enemies still circling. But he chooses the trajectory of his own soul: not down into the despair they are pressing on him, but up into ever-increasing hope and ever-louder praise.
Notice the word yet - will yet praise thee. It is the language of someone who has already praised God for a lifetime and is determined that the song is not over, that there is more praise still to come even in these last and weakest days. The accusers measure his future by his fading body. He measures it by the faithfulness of God - and so his best praise, he insists, is still ahead of him.
Psalm 71 shows you what to do with it. First, do not argue with it on its own terms; turn from it to God and pray, be not far from me… make haste for my help. The answer to the accusation is not a better self-image; it is the nearness of God.
Second, set your own deliberate but against the lie: But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more. You may not be able to change your circumstances or silence the voice, but you can choose the direction of your soul - and you can decide, as the singer did, that your praise is not finished, that there is yet more song in you. Hope is not a feeling that arrives; here it is a resolve you make, in the teeth of every reason not to.
Psalm 71:17-24Thou Shalt Bring Me Up Again
17O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. 18Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. 19Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great things: O God, who is like unto thee! 20Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. 21Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side. 22I will also praise thee with the psaltery, even thy truth, O my God: unto thee will I sing with the harp, O thou Holy One of Israel. 23My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee; and my soul, which thou hast redeemed. 24My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long: for they are confounded, for they are brought unto shame, that seek my hurt.
The aging singer now reveals what he most wants his remaining days for, and it is striking: not rest, not ease, not even relief from his enemies, but the chance to keep witnessing. O God, thou hast taught me from my youth… Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come (vv. 17-18).
His whole life has been a school - thou hast taught me from my youth - and now he asks to live long enough to pass the lesson on. There is a whole vision of old age in that one word until.
He does not see his final years as a slow fade into irrelevance, but as a bridge between generations: he has received God's faithfulness, and he means to hand it forward to this generation and to every one that is to come. This is the proper work of the grey head. The young have strength; the old have testimony - a long, proven record of what God has done - and that testimony is precisely what the next generation needs and cannot get any other way.
The singer's prayer is that he might be a faithful link in the chain, telling those who follow what he has seen of the God who never let him go.
Jesus claimed exactly this power as His own: For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will (John 5:21). Paul, brought to the end of his own strength, learned to trust the same God this psalm trusts - that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead (2 Cor. 1:9). And the hope became fact on a Sunday morning: now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Cor. 15:20).
The aging believer who feared being cast off when his strength failed reached out, in the dark, for a God who could bring him up again from the lowest place - and that reach was answered when Christ Himself was brought up from the depths of the earth and could not be held there.
So the psalm's final note is one of unbreakable confidence. The singer ends praising the Holy One of Israel with his lips and with my soul, which thou hast redeemed (v. 23) - a redeemed soul that has every reason to sing, because the God it trusts is the God who raises the dead. Strength fails; the body goes down into the dust; but the One who held him from the womb will bring him up again, and the song will not end at the grave.
After the height of verse 20, the singer adds two quiet promises he is sure God will keep: Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side (v. 21). It is a remarkable thing to say at the close of a life. The world's arithmetic runs the other way - in old age, greatness is supposed to diminish, influence to shrink, the circle of life to narrow toward nothing.
But the singer expects increase, not decrease, because his greatness was never his own to begin with; it was always God's gift, and God is not constrained by failing strength. And alongside that, comfort… on every side - not comfort from one direction while trouble pours in from the rest, but God's comfort surrounding him completely, hemming him in on every side the way the enemies once tried to.
This is the deep reversal the whole psalm has been moving toward. The man who began afraid of being cast off ends expecting to be increased and surrounded with comfort. Faith has not just steadied him; it has turned his fear inside out. The very season he dreaded most has become, in God's hands, a season of increase.
The grey head has the one thing the young cannot manufacture: a long testimony. Tell it.
The second gift is for the end of the road, and beyond it. The deepest hope this psalm holds out is not a longer life but a raised one: a God who can quicken you again and bring you up again from the depths of the earth. That hope has a name now, and an empty tomb behind it.
So when you face your own decline, or stand at the grave of someone you love, you can borrow the singer's confidence and make it your own: the God who held me from the womb will not let the grave be the last word. My soul, which thou hast redeemed - that soul has every reason to sing.
Where this echoes in Scripture
My Trust From My Youth
- 1 Corinthians 10:4they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.The “rock” of verse 3 named in the New Testament - the unshakable refuge met in Christ.
- Psalm 22:9-10thou art he that took me out of the womb... I was cast upon thee from the womb.The same confidence as verse 6 - held by God from before birth - in the great passion psalm.
- Proverbs 18:10The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.God as the “strong refuge” (v. 7) one runs into - the picture behind the Hebrew machseh.
- Isaiah 46:4and even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.God's own promise to carry His people into old age - the answer to the fear this psalm voices.
Cast Me Not Off in the Time of Old Age
- Matthew 27:46My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?The Son enters the forsakenness this psalm dreads (v. 9), so His people need never be cast off.
- Hebrews 13:5I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.The direct answer to the prayer of verse 9 - the promise that God will not abandon His own.
- Matthew 27:43He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him.The mockers' taunt at the cross echoes the enemies' “God hath forsaken him” (v. 11).
- Psalm 73:26My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.When strength fails (v. 9), God Himself remains the strength of the heart.
Thou Shalt Bring Me Up Again
- John 5:21For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.Jesus claims the very power of verse 20 - to quicken, to make alive again.
- 2 Corinthians 1:9we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.Paul at the end of his strength trusts the God of verse 20 - the one who raises the dead.
- 1 Corinthians 15:20now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.The hope of being brought up from the depths (v. 20) made fact in the resurrection of Christ.
- Psalm 78:4shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength.The aging singer's charge of verse 18 - to show God's strength to the generation to come.