Psalms 31:5

31:5 Into your hand I entrust my life; ¹ 

you will rescue ²  me, O Lord, the faithful God.

Luke 23:46

23:46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” ³  And after he said this he breathed his last.

¹ tn Heb “my spirit.” The noun רוּחַ (ruakh, “spirit”) here refers to the animating spirit that gives the psalmist life.

² tn Or “redeem.” The perfect verbal form is understood here as anticipatory, indicating rhetorically the psalmist’s certitude and confidence that God will intervene. The psalmist is so confident of God’s positive response to his prayer that he can describe his deliverance as if it had already happened. Another option is to take the perfect as precative, expressing a wish or request (“rescue me”; cf. NIV). See IBHS 494-95 §30.5.4c, d. However, not all grammarians are convinced that the perfect is used as a precative in biblical Hebrew.

³ sn A quotation from Ps 31:5. It is a psalm of trust. The righteous, innocent sufferer trusts in God. Luke does not have the cry of pain from Ps 22:1 (cf. Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), but notes Jesus’ trust instead.