You can be completely confident that God has you in His loving grip because you are connected to Jesus.

This Psalm is known as a Confidence Psalm and speaks quite boldly about God’s protection over those who love Him. But does this mean that life will never have any challenges or struggles?

We know from our own experience and the experience that Jesus had on earth, that this is not how life works.

So how then are we to understand Psalm 91? What are our options?
This is what Mark Futato suggests: (read it to the end and you will see where he is going with his argument)

Perhaps we are to understand this text literally. If we make God our refuge, will our lives will be trouble-free? This is the obvious reading of the text. The problem with this reading is that it does not seem to square with the testimony of other Scripture texts or the testimony of the lives of God’s children. For example, it does happen that good and righteous people die young (Eccl 7:15) and experience tremendous adversity (Job 1–2). Some suffer for doing good (1 Pet 2:20) and are even persecuted because of their righteousness (Matt 5:10). And in this very psalm the psalmist envisions God being with his children when they are in trouble (91:15).

Perhaps we are to understand this text symbolically? For example, maybe the first element of the promise, the hunter’s trap (91:3) is just a way of describing the schemes that our human enemies formulate against us. And, God’s wings and feathers (91:4) are not literal but an image to give us comfort. This view argues that the Bible often uses nonliteral language and the use of hyperbole in the Bible and so it is quite reasonable to interpret these promises as symbolic. But if the promises are hyperbole, one might ask, “What good are they?” To what extent will God actually protect us from trouble in this life?

Perhaps we are to understand this text eschatologically (which means this applies to the end times). For example, in 2 Timothy 4:17–18 Paul, using language similar to that of Psalm 91, says, “But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength so that I might preach the Good News in its entirety for all the Gentiles to hear. And he rescued me from certain death [lit., from the lion’s mouth]. Yes, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack and will bring me safely into his heavenly Kingdom.” Here, being delivered from the lion’s mouth and every evil attack does not mean a trouble-free life, for Paul was writing from a prison cell from which he did not expect deliverance but death (2 Tim 4:6). The protection Paul was confident he would experience seems to have been from everything that would have prevented him from entering into God’s heavenly Kingdom in the life to come. Psalm 91 could be read similarly. But are the promises of God good only for the life to come and not at all for this life?

Perhaps, we are not forced to choose among the literal, symbolic, and eschatological interpretations. If so, then the Psalm instills within us a faith in God as the ultimate source of our protection from the dangers of this life, even as we wait for the perfection of the life to come, when we will be totally free from all danger.

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