Psalms 31:22
For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee. For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.
David in distress said in haste that he was cut off from before God's eyes, fearing that God had turned away from him, forgotten him, and forsaken him. That hasty conclusion was wrong and exaggerated his trouble, spoken from distress and small faith as an unbelieving verdict that wrongly suggested God had forgotten those who trust Him, dishonoring God and contradicting His care. Nevertheless when he cried out God heard the voice of his supplications and his pleas for help, even though his faith was small. Prayer is thereby identified as a voice of supplication, a cry asking God for help. A delayed or unnoticed answer is not proof that God has rejected the one praying, but calls for humility without despair, with continued prayer, trust in God's righteousness, and self-examination while God is truly hearing.
The psalm belongs with psalms that begin with a sense of great need and end with triumph and confidence in God. Prophetically it is one of the word pictures through which David expresses Christ's inward experience in life-and-death struggles with the enemy, showing how Christ felt in suffering and temptation. It is also among the psalms that testify to Christ's experience of human suffering and infirmity. The fear of being cut off from God's sight is applied to a fearful sense of the coming time when mercy ends and human condition is fixed, yet even then God hears the prayers of His humbled and afflicted people.
In its setting in Psalm 31, Sheol is the grave or place of the dead where the wicked are silent, the common abode of the dead rather than a place where the wicked are punished.