Return to your rest, O my soul, For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
Parallel translations
- WEB Return to your rest, my soul, for Yahweh has dealt bountifully with you.
- KJV Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.
- BSB Return to your rest, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.
- NASB Return to your rest, my soul, For the Lord has dealt generously with you.
- NLT Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The psalmist tells his soul to return to rest because God has dealt bountifully with him. It matters because remembering God's goodness restores peace to the troubled heart.
Overview
He speaks to his own soul, calling it back to rest in light of God's generous dealings. Self-counsel rooted in God's past faithfulness quiets anxiety. This rest foreshadows the deeper rest Christ offers to all who are weary and burdened, who come to him and find peace (Matt. 11:28).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Ps 13:6I will sing to Yahweh, because he has been good to me.
- Matt 11:28–29“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.
- Ps 119:17Do good to your servant. I will live and I will obey your word.
- Jer 6:16Yahweh says, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
- Jer 30:10Therefore don’t you be afraid, O Jacob my servant, says Yahweh; neither be dismayed, Israel: for, behold, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and at ease, and no one shall make him afraid.
- Ps 95:11Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They won’t enter into my rest.”
- Heb 4:8–10For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day.
- Hos 2:7She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.’
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 116:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.