Psalm 11 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 11 (1928 BCP) is a confession of trust when counsel of flight meets the threat of violence. In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, it completes the Psalms appointed for Morning Prayer on the second day of the month (Psalms 9–11). Its movement is deliberate: the speaker refuses panic, names the assault on the upright, and confesses that the Lord sees, tests, judges, and loves righteousness.

Text of the Psalm

The 1928 Psalter gives the Latin opening In Domino confido. The text below has been compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription of the 1928 Psalter, including the Prayer Book's verse division and asterisks.

IN the LORD put I my trust; * how say ye then to my soul, that she should flee as a bird unto the hill?
2 For lo, the ungodly bend their bow, and make ready their arrows within the quiver, * that they may privily shoot at them which are true of heart.
3 If the foundations be destroyed, * what can the righteous do?
4 The LORD is in his holy temple; * the LORD'S seat is in heaven.

5 His eyes consider the poor, * and his eyelids try the children of men.
6 The LORD approveth the righteous: * but the ungodly, and him that delighteth in wickedness, doth his soul abhor.
7 Upon the ungodly he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest: * this shall be their portion to drink.
8 For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; * his countenance will behold the thing that is just.

Trust when the foundations shake

“Flee as a bird” is counsel offered to a soul under threat, not a romantic picture of retreat. The Psalm first faces what the threatened person sees: weapons prepared in secret and foundations apparently ruined. Yet verse 4 does not treat God’s heavenly throne as an excuse to ignore earthly fear. It is the ground on which the petitioner can refuse both despair and retaliation. God’s eyes “consider the poor,” a phrase that keeps divine judgment close to those made vulnerable by violence.

The Epistle to the Hebrews gives this posture a Christian articulation: confidence is not bravado but endurance before the God who promises life.

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith.

This does not make the Psalm’s question easier than it is. Instead, it directs the faithful person’s action: continue in the will of God, resist the temptation to abandon trust, and wait for judgment that belongs to God. The final line, “the righteous LORD loveth righteousness,” means that the Psalm’s hope is moral as well as consoling; the faithful are not invited to borrow the oppressor’s weapons.

Christological and ecclesial reading

Augustine’s exposition is rooted in a fourth-century anti-schismatic controversy, so its polemical application should not simply be transferred to every disagreement among Christians. Its central theological insight is nevertheless pertinent: confidence rests in the Lord rather than in a party or an apparently secure human refuge.

I keep to one mountain wherein I trust, how say ye that I should pass over to you, as if there were many Christs? Or if through pride you say that you are mountains, I had indeed need to be a sparrow winged with the powers and commandments of God: but these very things hinder my flying to these mountains, and placing my trust in proud men.

For Augustine, the first verse is not an invitation to flee from the Church into a supposedly purer enclave; it is a confession that the Lord is the refuge. That historical reading should be held alongside the literal force of the Psalm: prayer is addressed to God amid danger, and the upright remain accountable to the God who sees poor and powerful alike.

John Mason Neale and Richard Frederick Littledale offer a nineteenth-century Anglican medieval and patristic commentary. They identify a traditional Christian reading of the first verse, but it should be received as a theological reading in light of Christ rather than as a replacement for Israel’s own prayer.

But it is rather the voice of our LORD before His Passion. How say ye then to my soul. “Be it far from Thee, LORD, this shall not happen unto Thee.” Unto the hill. For though for a while, before His time was fully come, He walked in the hill country near the wilderness, yet as soon as the day of His Passion had arrived, the only hill which He sought, was the hill of Calvary.

The Gospel records Jesus refusing Peter’s attempt to turn him aside from the suffering to which he has been called:

Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Neale and Littledale’s interpretation therefore turns on Christ’s steadfastness, not on a promise that disciples will avoid suffering. The one who trusts the Lord is freed to obey even where faithfulness is costly, because the Lord’s rule is not overthrown by the apparent destruction of foundations.

Divine judgment and the poor

The Psalm connects the heavenly throne with searching judgment: God considers the poor and tries the children of men. Augustine draws attention to that paired language, treating Scripture’s difficulty and clarity as a discipline for readers rather than an occasion for pride.

For these, by certain obscure passages of Scripture, as it were the closed eyes of God, are exercised that they may seek: and again, by certain clear passages, as it were the open eyes of God, are enlightened that they may rejoice.

The image is Augustine’s, not a lexical claim about the Hebrew Psalm. It can still help Prayer Book readers resist two opposite mistakes: presuming that obscure passages license private certainty, and supposing that difficulty removes Scripture from the Church’s prayer. Psalm 11 calls for the humility of people who are themselves examined by the Lord.

The New Testament gives the Church a similarly searching rule for its conduct under hostility:

Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Thus the Psalm’s severe images of judgment are not authorization for private revenge. In the Daily Office they train the Church to name evil truthfully, seek protection for the poor, and entrust final judgment to the righteous Lord.

Prayer in the Daily Office

Psalm 11 is appointed after Psalms 9 and 10 at the second day’s Morning Prayer. In sequence, Psalm 9 praises God’s judgment, Psalm 10 laments the apparent success of oppression, and Psalm 11 answers the counsel of panic with trust in the Lord’s throne and justice. The Office therefore makes Psalm 11 corporate prayer, not merely a text for individual reassurance. After the psalmody, the Prayer Book supplies the ancient doxology:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The doxology does not soften the Psalm’s concern for the poor or its realism about violence. It places the plea within praise of the Triune God, whose enduring righteousness is the reason that confidence is possible.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 9 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 10 (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 Psalter, Psalms 1–50, Society of Archbishop Justus
• Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 11
• Neale and Littledale, A Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 1