Psalm 26 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 26 (1928 BCP) is the twenty-sixth psalm as printed in the Psalter of the American Book of Common Prayer (1928). Its Latin title, Judica me, Domine (“Judge me, O Lord”), gives the psalm its characteristic tension: it appeals to God for vindication, asks him to search the heart, and ends by asking him to redeem and show mercy.
1928 Prayer Book text
BE thou my Judge, O LORD, for I have walked innocently: * my trust hath been also in the LORD, therefore shall I not fall. 2 Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; * try out my reins and my heart. 3 For thy loving-kindness is ever before mine eyes; * and I will walk in thy truth. 4 I have not dwelt with vain persons; * neither will I have fellowship with the deceitful. 5 I have hated the congregation of the wicked; * and will not sit among the ungodly. 6 I will wash my hands in innocency, O LORD; * and so will I go to thine altar; 7 That I may show the voice of thanksgiving, * and tell of all thy wondrous works. 8 LORD, I have loved the habitation of thy house, * and the place where thine honour dwelleth. 9 O shut not up my soul with the sinners, * nor my life with the blood-thirsty; 10 In whose hands is wickedness, * and their right hand is full of gifts. 11 But as for me, I will walk innocently: * O deliver me, and be merciful unto me. 12 My foot standeth right: * I will praise the LORD in the congregations.
This transcription retains the Prayer Book’s particular language—“reins and … heart,” “loving-kindness,” “innocency,” and “the congregations”—rather than silently substituting a modern Bible translation. The claim of innocent walking is never autonomous self-congratulation: the first verse grounds it in trust in the Lord, and verse 11 joins it to the plea, “O deliver me, and be merciful unto me.”
Place in the Daily Office
The Fifth Day. Morning Prayer. Psalm 24. Domini est terra.
Psalm 26 follows Psalms 24 and 25 in the Fifth Day’s Morning Prayer sequence. Psalm 24 asks who may ascend the Lord’s hill; Psalm 25 turns that question into a prayer for mercy and instruction; Psalm 26 gives the worshipper words for a life tested before God, cleansed for thanksgiving, and kept from complicity with deceit. The sequence matters: integrity is prayed within God’s mercy, not asserted apart from it.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall rise up in his holy place? Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; * and that hath not lift up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour.
The movement from “clean hands” and a “pure heart” in Psalm 24 to washed hands and the altar in Psalm 26 therefore makes the Daily Office connection explicit. The worshipper asks that outward conduct, inward desire, and public praise belong together.
Examination, mercy, and integrity
Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; * try out my reins and my heart. For thy loving-kindness is ever before mine eyes; * and I will walk in thy truth.
The psalm asks for divine testing precisely because God’s loving-kindness is before the speaker’s eyes. Its moral language is not an evasion of judgment; it is a willingness to have hidden motives exposed by the God in whom the speaker trusts.
Augustine reads the opening appeal in this register. He does not make innocence a claim of self-reliance, but treats it as a life made possible by antecedent mercy and still dependent on the Lord.
“Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my innocence.” Judge me, O Lord, for, after the mercy which You first showed me, I have some desert of my innocence, the way whereof I have kept. “And trusting in the Lord I shall not be moved.” And yet not even so trusting in myself, but in the Lord, I shall abide in Him.
That interpretation guards an Anglican reading of “I have walked innocently” against both presumption and despair. The Prayer Book text itself moves from scrutiny to loving-kindness and from innocence to the request for deliverance and mercy.
Cleansing and the altar
I will wash my hands in innocency, O LORD; * and so will I go to thine altar; That I may show the voice of thanksgiving, * and tell of all thy wondrous works. LORD, I have loved the habitation of thy house, * and the place where thine honour dwelleth.
The washing is ordered toward worship and witness: altar, thanksgiving, the telling of God’s works, and love for his house belong in one movement. The psalm does not present ritual action as a substitute for truth; it asks for a life clean enough to give thanks truthfully.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. … If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
For Christian prayer, that biblical promise prevents the image of washed hands from becoming a declaration of sinlessness. Cleansing is God’s gift in Christ, received in confession, and it opens fellowship and thanksgiving rather than moral separation from other people.
The Church of England’s authorized Common Worship Psalter preserves the same progression from integrity, through examination and washing, to altar and praise:
I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, ♦ that I may go about your altar, To make heard the voice of thanksgiving ♦ and tell of all your wonderful deeds. Lord, I love the house of your habitation ♦ and the place where your glory abides.
This is not the source for the 1928 wording, which is given above; it is a useful official Anglican witness to the psalm’s continuing liturgical reception.
Church, conscience, and public praise
O shut not up my soul with the sinners, * nor my life with the blood-thirsty; In whose hands is wickedness, * and their right hand is full of gifts. But as for me, I will walk innocently: * O deliver me, and be merciful unto me. My foot standeth right: * I will praise the LORD in the congregations.
The contrast is ethical, not tribal. The rejected company is marked by wickedness, blood-thirstiness, and corrupt gifts; the desired congregation is the place of the Lord’s praise. The closing verb is public and plural: the psalmist does not seek private innocence for its own sake but a standing in which he may bless God among the assembled people.
“I will wash mine hands amid the innocent.” I will make clean my works among the innocent: among the innocent will I wash mine hands, with which I shall embrace Your glorious gifts. “And I will compass Your altar, O Lord.”
Augustine’s reading makes the psalm’s cultic image ethically concrete: washed hands signify works made clean, while the altar is approached in gratitude for God’s gifts. His further identification of the Lord’s house with the Church and of the final praise with praise “in the Churches” helps explain why the 1928 Psalter places this personal prayer in the common work of Morning Prayer.
See also
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), The Psalter, Psalm 26, p. 366, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Psalter, monthly Psalter table, p. 364, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Psalter, Psalm 24:3–4, p. 364, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Psalter, Psalm 26:2–3, p. 366, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 26, §2, translated by an anonymous scholar, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), revised by Kevin Knight, at New Advent.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Psalter, Psalm 26:6–8, p. 366, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized Version (Cambridge: University Press, 1611), 1 John 1:7, 9, at Bible Gateway: 1 John 1:7–9.
- ↑ Church of England, Common Worship, “Psalm 26,” authorized Psalter text, at Church of England: Psalm 26.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), The Psalter, Psalm 26:9–12, p. 366, at Justus Anglican: 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 26, §6, translated by an anonymous scholar, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), revised by Kevin Knight, at New Advent.