Psalms 31:13
For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.
The verse pictures a man hemmed in by the slander of many with fear on every side, while his foes take counsel together against him and devise to take away his life. The word rendered life is the Hebrew neh-phesh, the Old Testament word principally rendered soul, occurring 745 times and rendered soul about 473 times and rendered life or lives in 118 places including this verse. It was because his enemies had so devised to take away his life that David uttered the committing of his spirit to God in verse 5, entrusting his life to God for safekeeping.
Prophetically the same scene portrays the inner experience of Christ amid slander and fear and a conspiracy to take His life, revealing the life-and-death struggles and suffering He endured and how He can succor those who are tempted. The spirit thus committed was the life itself, about to pass out of his control through death, given into God's keeping until brought back from unconsciousness and inactivity. Since David died without ascending into the heavens, his committing does not mean his soul went to heaven at death, but that his life remains hid with Christ in God, as with Jesus and Stephen, until Christ appears and the dead appear with Him in glory at the second coming, not at death. Malicious speech like that in the verse belongs with a counsel together that can threaten life, which applies to gossip that destroys a person's good name.