Make your face to shine on your servant. Save me in your loving kindness.
Parallel translations
- KJV Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake.
- BSB Make Your face shine on Your servant; save me by Your loving devotion.
- NKJV Make Your face shine upon Your servant; Save me for Your mercies’ sake.
- NASB Make Your face shine upon Your servant; Save me in Your faithfulness.
- NLT Let your favor shine on your servant. In your unfailing love, rescue 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
David asks God to make His face shine on His servant and save him in steadfast love. It seeks God's gracious favor and salvation.
Overview
Echoing the priestly blessing, David prays for the light of God's favor to rest on him. His salvation rests on God's loving kindness, not his own worth. The shining face of God is fully revealed in Christ, in whom God's gracious favor dawns on His people.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Ps 4:6Many say, “Who will show us any good?” Yahweh, let the light of your face shine on us.
- Ps 6:4Return, Yahweh. Deliver my soul, and save me for your loving kindness’ sake.
- Ps 80:3Turn us again, God. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.
- Dan 9:9To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness; for we have rebelled against him;
- Rom 9:15For he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
- Ps 67:1For the Chief Musician. With stringed instruments. A Psalm. A song. May God be merciful to us, bless us, and cause his face to shine on us. Selah.
- Num 6:25–26Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you.
- Eph 1:6–7to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved,
- Dan 9:17–18Now therefore, our God, listen to the prayer of your servant, and to his petitions, and cause your face to shine on your sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake.
- Eph 2:4–7But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us,
- Ps 30:7You, Yahweh, when you favored me, made my mountain stand strong; but when you hid your face, I was troubled.
- Ps 80:19Turn us again, Yahweh God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.
- Ps 51:1For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
- Ps 80:7Turn us again, God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.
- Rom 9:23and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory,
- Ps 106:45He remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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 31:16 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.