Psalm 12 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 12 (1928 BCP) is a prayer against deceitful speech and the oppression which it enables. In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, it is appointed for Evening Prayer on the second day of the month, immediately after Psalm 11. Its movement is from a lament over flattering lips and proud claims to the Lord's promise to arise for the needy and the pure words on which the faithful rely.

Text of the Psalm

The Latin opening in the 1928 Psalter is Salvum me fac. The text below has been compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription of the 1928 Psalter, including its verse division, punctuation, and asterisks.

HELP me, LORD, for there is not one godly man left; * for the faithful are minished from among the children of men.
2 They talk of vanity every one with his neighbour; * they do but flatter with their lips, and dissemble in their double heart.
3 The LORD shall root out all deceitful lips, * and the tongue that speaketh proud things;
4 Which have said, With our tongue will we prevail; * we are they that ought to speak; who is lord over us?

5 Now, for the comfortless troubles' sake of the needy, * and because of the deep sighing of the poor,
6 I will up, saith the LORD; * and will help every one from him that swelleth against him, and will set him at rest.
7 The words of the LORD are pure words; * even as the silver which from the earth is tried, and purified seven times in the fire.
8 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD; * thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
9 The ungodly walk on every side: * when they are exalted, the children of men are put to rebuke.

Double speech and the needy

The psalm does not oppose speech to action. Flattery, a “double heart,” and the boast that no one is lord over the speaker are forms of social power: they leave the needy and poor to sigh. The Lord's answer in verses 5–6 is therefore an act of protection, not a compliment to the eloquent. The sequence also keeps the worshipper from treating the Psalm as a weapon for naming other people's dishonesty. The person praying it asks to be delivered from the same double-heartedness.

James makes the moral weight of speech explicit. His warning connects blessing God with the obligation not to curse people made in God's likeness.

Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Read with James, Psalm 12 makes truthful speech a matter of worship and neighbor-love. It does not permit the congregation to meet falsehood with falsehood. Instead, it asks God to expose proud speech while forming a people whose mouths bless.

Augustine on truth, poverty, and pure words

Augustine reads the plural “truths” in the Septuagint and Latin tradition as participation in the one truth which enlightens holy souls. That is a patristic theological interpretation, not a replacement for the Hebrew or for the Prayer Book's English wording; it clarifies why the loss of faithful speech is a spiritual as well as a public calamity.

The truth is one, whereby holy souls are enlightened: but forasmuch as there are many souls, there may be said in them to be many truths: as in mirrors there are seen many reflections from one face.

Augustine then links the Lord's rising for the poor with the Father's sending of the Son. The connection is interpretive and Christological, but it refuses to make the poor an abstraction: their “wretchedness” and sighing occasion the divine promise of help.

But this must be taken as spoken in the person of God the Father, who, because of the needy and the poor, that is, who in need and poverty were lacking spiritual good things, vouchsafed to send His own Son.

For Augustine, “pure” names the absence of pretence in God's words. This is a useful contrast with the Psalm's flattering lips: God does not manipulate the worshipper, and the Church is called to hear and speak the word without selling it for advantage.

The words of the Lord are pure words. He says pure, without the alloy of pretence. For many preach the truth impurely; for they sell it for the bribe of the advantages of this life.

An Anglican historical reading

John Mason Neale and Richard Frederick Littledale's nineteenth-century Anglican commentary receives the Psalm through the older Latin tradition. Their comments on verse 8 distinguish the preservation of God's people from the faithfulness of God's own promise. Because their reading depends on a textual tradition different from the Prayer Book translation, it should be used as a theological witness, not as a correction of the 1928 text.

Keep them: that is, not as the passage is generally taken, Keep or guard Thy people, but Thou shalt keep, or make good, Thy words: and by so doing, shalt preserve him—him, the needy, him, the poor—from this generation.

This interpretation makes a fitting Anglican point without collapsing the Psalm's literal prayer into allegory: the vulnerable are not preserved by their own verbal mastery, but by the God whose word does what it promises. The Prayer Book's regular recitation gives that promise a corporate setting, so that those with power and those without it pray the same words under the Lord's judgment.

Prayer in the Daily Office

Psalm 12 follows Psalm 11 at the second day's Evening Prayer. Psalm 11 confesses trust when the foundations appear shaken; Psalm 12 names the corrupt speech and the wounded neighbors that make such trust necessary. The Office therefore trains the Church neither to deny evil nor to answer it in kind. After psalmody, the Prayer Book directs 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 evade the Psalm's hard words about deceit and oppression. It places them within praise of the Triune God, whose pure word judges pride, hears the poor, and calls the Church to truthful prayer.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 11 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 13 (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 Psalter, Psalms 1–50, Society of Archbishop Justus
• Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 12
• Neale and Littledale, A Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 1