Psalm 41 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 41 (1928 BCP) is Beatus qui intelligit in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Psalter. As the close of Book I, it joins mercy toward the weak, the prayer of one who is sick and conscious of sin, the pain of treachery, and praise of the God of Israel. The 1928 Prayer Book appoints it at Evening Prayer on the Eighth Day.

Text in the 1928 Psalter

BLESSED is he that considereth the poor and needy; * the LORD shall deliver him in the time of trouble.
2 The LORD preserve him, and keep him alive, that he may be blessed upon earth; * and deliver not thou him into the will of his enemies.
3 The LORD comfort him when he lieth sick upon his bed; * make thou all his bed in his sickness.
4 I said, LORD, be merciful unto me; * heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.

The opening blessing gives the Psalm its moral horizon. To “consider” the poor and needy is not detached sentiment: the one who attends to the afflicted is himself commended to God when trouble comes. The Psalm then makes this maxim personal. The sick speaker does not deny sin or demand healing as a right; he asks mercy, naming the healing of the whole person—“heal my soul”—as the deeper need.

5 Mine enemies speak evil of me, * When shall he die, and his name perish?
6 And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity, * and his heart conceiveth falsehood within himself; and when he cometh forth, he telleth it.
7 All mine enemies whisper together against me; * even against me do they imagine this evil.
8 An evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him; * and now that he lieth, he shall rise up no more.
9 Yea, even mine own familiar friend whom I trusted, * who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me.

The contrast is deliberate: those who should consider the sick instead exploit sickness as evidence against him. The visitor’s smooth speech becomes gossip outside the house, and the most grievous wound is the betrayal of the one who has shared bread. The Psalm thus teaches Christians to resist the easy judgment that suffering proves divine rejection.

10 But be thou merciful unto me, O LORD; * raise thou me up again, and I shall reward them.
11 By this I know thou favourest me, * that mine enemy doth not triumph against me.
12 And in my innocency thou upholdest me, * and shalt set me before thy face for ever.
13 Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, * world without end. Amen.

The final verse is the doxology that closes the first book of the Psalter. The movement is not from illness to self-vindication but from a plea for mercy to the blessing of God. “In my innocency” must therefore be read beside verse 4: the speaker confesses sin and yet entrusts his cause to the God who upholds those who walk before him.

Prayer Book use

Psalm 41 appears after Psalm 40 at Evening Prayer on the Eighth Day. Its placement makes mercy for the afflicted, honest confession, and betrayal part of the Church’s regular evening prayer rather than isolated private experiences.

The Eighth Day
Evening Prayer.
Psalm 40. Expectans expectavi.
Psalm 41. Beatus qui intelligit.
Psalm 42. Quemadmodum.

The sequence is telling. Psalm 40 ends by saying that the Lord cares for the poor and needy; Psalm 41 blesses the person who considers them. In the Office the congregation therefore answers God’s care not merely with gratitude but with merciful attention to those who are weak, sick, or socially exposed.

Betrayal and the Gospel

Jesus quotes the Psalm’s shared-bread image in speaking of Judas. John does not flatten the Psalm into a bare prediction; it identifies the betrayal at the supper with the Scriptural pattern of treachery suffered by the righteous.

I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.

Alexander F. Kirkpatrick’s historical reading preserves the Psalm’s own suffering voice while explaining its Christian use. He identifies the friend, if David is the speaker, with Ahithophel and treats that betrayal as the pattern taken up in the Gospel.

The words of the Psalm are not a direct prediction, but the treachery and the fate of Ahithophel foreshadowed the treachery and the fate of Judas.

That account guards two truths at once. Psalm 41 is first a real prayer about sickness, sin, malicious speech, and broken fellowship; John 13 receives its language as fulfilled in Christ, whose betrayal gives the Psalm’s grief its fullest weight. The Church may therefore pray it in union with the betrayed Lord without denying the Psalm’s original moral summons to mercy.

Patristic reading and Christian mercy

Augustine hears the “poor and needy” of the first verse in Christ himself and also in those in whom Christ chooses to be served. His reading makes the Psalm’s first beatitude a summons to recognize both the humility of the incarnate Lord and the neighbour in need.

Understand then upon the needy and poor One, that is, Christ: understand in Him the hidden riches, whom poor you see.

Consider also the poor, the needy, the hungry and thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoners; understand also upon such poor, for if upon such thou understand, you understand upon Him who said, I was an hungred, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, naked, sick, in prison.

Augustine also joins the Psalm’s betrayal to Christ and his members: “What Christ suffered, that suffers also the Church; what the Head suffered, that suffer also the Members.” That is not permission for suspicion or retaliation. It gives the praying Church a language for suffering truthfully while the Psalm’s first word continues to demand compassionate attention to the weak.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Holy Week