Psalms 71
Psalms 71 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 71 is the prayer of someone who has been walking with God for a long time and is still in trouble. The psalmist looks back over an entire life — leaning on God from birth, even claiming God took him "out of my mother's womb" — and forward into old age, asking not to be forsaken when he is "old and gray-haired." Enemies are accusing him and saying God has abandoned him, but instead of panicking, he pulls out the long ledger of his life and reads it: God has been a refuge before, again and again, and that history becomes the ground for hope now.
This unhurried perspective is striking when you read Psalm 71 right after Psalm 70, a short, breathless cry for God to hurry. Psalm 71 slows everything down. It also keeps returning to God's righteousness — not righteousness as a threat, but as God's commitment to set a broken world right. The psalmist appeals to that righteousness the way you appeal to a judge you trust to be fair.
The most remarkable move comes near the end, in verses 20–24. The psalmist has not been rescued yet. He is still, in his own words, someone who has seen "many and bitter troubles." But he speaks of the future as if it were already scheduled: God will revive him, bring him up "from the depths of the earth," comfort him — and then he will answer with music, with harp and lyre, singing of God's righteous acts all day long.
In other words, Psalm 71 holds two things in one breath: present distress and remembered faithfulness. The sufferer cannot praise yet, so he promises praise. The song is composed before the deliverance arrives, and that promise itself is an act of faith.
What scholars say
Beth Tanner shows how Psalm 71's long view — from birth to gray hair — answers the hurried desperation of Psalm 70, and how its picture of God's righteousness is about setting the world right rather than acting in vengeance. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp then explains why the psalmist in verses 20–24 doesn't praise God yet: like other lamenters, he hopes to praise God in the future, after deliverance, when he will acclaim God in music.
“In this way, Psalm 71 is the exact opposite of the hurried words and pleading ending of Psalm 70. Today's world travels at warp speed, and the long view of life is rarely the norm when one is struggling with accusations and fears of God's absence. The prayer's message can teach us, just as it did an ancient audience, to take the long view of God's path in our lives, to look from birth to the age of gray hair and see where God has been a refuge and protector. It also praises God's righteousness, a righteousness that will not act out of unjust anger or vengeance, but out of a desire to set the world right, this day and all the days of our lives.”
“Since sacrifice and praise of God are parallel activities, it follows that joy is associated with praising God, as is often expressed in Psalms (e.g., Pss 34:3; 35:21). The mourner, who cannot participate in public joy, is not permitted access to the temple; and his cultic double, the lamenter in psalms of lament, does not praise God during his time of trouble; rather, he hopes to be able to praise God in the future, after he has been delivered from trouble. Psalm 71:20–24 exemplifies this sequence. The psalmist relies on God to help him, to raise him from the depths and to comfort him. The psalmist, on his part, will then acclaim God in music (i.e., in temple worship), sing God’s praise, recite his righteous acts.”
What it means for you
Psalm 71 offers a discipline most of us rarely practice: taking the long view. When trouble hits, our instinct is to measure God's faithfulness by the last few weeks. This psalm invites you to widen the frame — to look across your whole life, from earliest memory to now, and name where God has actually been a refuge. That remembered history becomes fuel for present trust.
It also gives permission to those who can't summon praise today. You don't have to fake joy in the middle of grief. You can do what the psalmist does: tell God honestly where you are, and vow the song you'll sing when rescue comes.
Psalms 71 in context
Psalm 71 sits in Book Two of the Psalter, immediately after Psalm 70's urgent, compressed plea for help. It has no title of its own and even echoes lines from earlier psalms, which fits its voice: an older worshiper drawing on a lifetime of prayer. The chapter moves from petition for refuge (vv. 1–4), through a retrospect of lifelong dependence on God (vv. 5–9), past the taunts of enemies (vv. 10–13), and into a sustained declaration of hope and future praise (vv. 14–24), ending with music promised for a deliverance not yet seen.