Psalm 108 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 108 (1928 BCP) is the Psalm Paratum cor meum (“My heart is ready”) in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (1928). Appointed for Evening Prayer on the Twenty-second Day of the month, it joins a resolved summons to praise with a plea for help when human strength has failed. Its final confidence—“Through God we shall do great acts”—is not self-confidence: it follows the confession that “vain is the help of man.”

Prayer Book Text: Praise among the Nations

O GOD, my heart is ready, my heart is ready; * I will sing, and give praise with the best member that I have. 2 Awake, thou lute and harp; * I myself will awake right early. 3 I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the peoples; * I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. 4 For thy mercy is greater than the heavens, * and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. 5 Set up thyself, O God, above the heavens, * and thy glory above all the earth; 6 That thy beloved may be delivered: * let thy right hand save them, and hear thou me.

The Psalm begins with a heart made ready for praise, but its horizon is public and wide: thanksgiving is sung “among the peoples” and “among the nations.” Mercy and truth are not private possessions; the prayer asks that God's glory be known “above all the earth.” In the Daily Office this gives the congregation words both for morning resolve and for the Church's witness before the world.

The Psalm's opening is substantially the latter part of Psalm 57; its latter movement corresponds to the latter part of Psalm 60. John Calvin explicitly notes the literary fact:

Because this psalm is composed of parts taken from the fifty-seventh and sixtieth psalms, it would be superfluous to repeat, in this place, what we have already said by way of exposition in those psalms.

That reuse is itself instructive. Praise born from danger (Psalm 57) and trust amid national defeat (Psalm 60) are not rival devotions. Psalm 108 places them together: worship is ready praise that still asks to be heard and delivered.

God's Promise and the Limits of Human Help

God hath spoken in his holiness; * I will rejoice therefore, and divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth. 8 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; * Ephraim also is the strength of my head; Judah is my lawgiver; 9 Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe; * upon Philistia will I triumph.

The language of Shechem, Succoth, Gilead, Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah, Moab, Edom, and Philistia belongs to Israel's concrete geography and political conflict. It is grounded not in the speaker's grasp of territory, but in “God hath spoken in his holiness.” Christians praying the Psalm should not turn these lines into a warrant for national conquest; the Psalm first disciplines political confidence by locating judgment and hope in God's own speech.

Who will lead me into the strong city? * and who will bring me into Edom? 11 Hast not thou forsaken us, O God? * and wilt not thou, O God, go forth with our hosts? 12 O help us against the enemy: * for vain is the help of man. 13 Through God we shall do great acts; * and it is he that shall tread down our enemies.

The closing prayer refuses easy triumphalism. It names the experience of abandonment and asks who can lead into the fortified city. Only after “vain is the help of man” does it say that through God “we shall do great acts.” The Church can therefore pray these verses in every form of peril without baptizing its own power: help, victory, and the defeat of evil belong to God.

A Historic Christian Reading

Augustine notes both the Psalm's composition and the small verbal changes from Psalms 57 and 60:

I have not thought that the CVIIIth Psalm required an exposition; since I have already expounded it in the LVIIth Psalm, and in the LXth, of the last divisions of which this Psalm consists. For the last part of the LVIIth is the first of this, as far as the verse, “Your glory is above all the earth.” Henceforth to the end, is the last part of the LXth.

Augustine's observation corroborates the Psalm's deliberate joining of two earlier prayers. He does not use that joining merely as a literary curiosity: for him, its reordered phrases invite a prophetic and Christ-centered hearing.

We are taught by this Psalm, that those titles which seem to refer to history are most rightly understood prophetically, according to the object of the composition of the Psalms.... [T]he words of the Prophets might be fulfilled: for all the promises of God in Him are yea.

This is a historic Christian interpretation, not a denial of the Psalm's Israelite setting. It helps explain why Anglican prayer receives Israel's praise and plea as Scripture fulfilled in Christ: the Church prays for deliverance through the beloved Son and gives praise among the nations in whom God has made his promises sure.

Use in the Daily Office

Psalm 108 follows Psalm 107 in the 1928 Psalter's Twenty-second Day cycle. Psalm 107 repeatedly calls the delivered to give thanks; Psalm 108 answers with a heart ready to sing, then reminds the worshipper that praise does not abolish need. At Evening Prayer its movement—from song, through remembered promise, to a candid plea for help—forms a fitting conclusion to a day in which the congregation has learned again both God's mercy and the inadequacy of merely human aid.

See Also

• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Psalm 57 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 60 (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 BCP Psalter: Psalms 101–150 (Justus Anglican)
• Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 108:1–13
• Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 108