Psalm 55 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 55 (1928 BCP) (Exaudi, Deus) is appointed in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (1928), on the tenth day at Evening Prayer. It gives the Church a prayer in which fear, civic disorder, the wound of betrayed friendship, and trust in God are spoken without disguise. The psalm's movement is not an escape from suffering but a turning of the sufferer's cry into prayer.
Prayer Book Text
Psalm 55. Exaudi, Deus.
HEAR my prayer, O God, * and hide not thyself from my petition.
2 Take heed unto me, and hear me, * how I mourn in my prayer, and am vexed;
3 The enemy crieth so, and the ungodly cometh on so fast; * for they are minded to do me some mischief, so maliciously are they set against me.
4 My heart is disquieted within me, * and the fear of death is fallen upon me.
5 Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, * and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me.
6 And I said, O that I had wings like a dove! * for then would I flee away, and be at rest.
7 Lo, then would I get me away far off, * and remain in the wilderness.
8 I would make haste to escape, * because of the stormy wind and tempest.
This is the complete Prayer Book form of the opening movement. “Wings like a dove” is neither a command to abandon responsibility nor a denial of fear: it registers the desire for refuge when violence and pressure have made the city uninhabitable. A. F. Kirkpatrick's historical caution is useful here: the traditional association with David, Absalom, and Ahithophel is possible, but the text itself does not allow the occasion to be fixed with certainty.
Despair, sorrow, indignation, faith, find expression by turns in this pathetic record of persecution embittered by the treachery of an intimate friend.... Much of the Psalm is sufficiently appropriate to David’s circumstances to account for its having been regarded as an expression of his feelings at that bitter crisis: but a closer examination makes it difficult, if not impossible, to suppose that it was actually written by him.
The Prayer Book's monthly cycle makes this particular lament public prayer, not a private claim that every worshipper has an identifiable traitor. Its recurring use teaches a congregation how to name genuine anguish before God and how to refrain from pretending to know more than the text establishes.
A city in strife and a wounded friendship
Destroy their tongues, O Lord, and divide them; * for I have spied unrighteousness and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go about within the walls thereof: * mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.
11 Wickedness is therein; * deceit and guile go not out of her streets.
12 For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour; * for then I could have borne it;
13 Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me; * for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him;
14 But it was even thou, my companion, * my guide, and mine own familiar friend.
15 We took sweet counsel together, * and walked in the house of God as friends.
The language moves from public disorder (“strife in the city”) to the intimate pain of a companion with whom the psalmist worshipped. Kirkpatrick describes this progression as a formal feature of the poem, not merely a sequence of scattered complaints.
The Psalm falls into three nearly equal divisions. In the first of these, despair, in the second, indignation, in the third, trust, is the dominant note.... What makes their hostility most intolerable is that the leader of the faction was once his intimate friend.
The psalm therefore permits Christians to call betrayal what it is. But it makes that recognition a petition addressed to God; it does not turn grief into a warrant for personal vengeance.
Prayer at the hours of the Office
As for me, I will call upon God, * and the LORD shall save me.
18 In the evening, and morning, and at noon-day will I pray, and that instantly; * and he shall hear my voice.
19 It is he that hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me; * for there were many that strove with me.
Verse 18 makes an unusually direct connection with the Church's habitual prayer. Psalm 55 is placed on the tenth day at Evening Prayer, and its “evening, and morning, and at noon-day” gives a biblical rationale for an ordered rhythm of intercession. The psalm does not promise a painless life; it calls the worshipper to return to God at the hours of prayer and to receive deliverance as God's work.
Of one earnest, anxious, of one set in tribulation, are these words. He is praying, suffering many things, from evil yearning to be delivered: it remains that we hear in what evil he is, and when he begins to speak, let us acknowledge there ourselves to be; in order that the tribulation being shared, we may conjoin prayer.
Augustine's interpretation is theological rather than a reconstruction of the psalm's original occasion. It helps explain why a lament of one threatened person can become the prayer of the gathered Church: worshippers do not appropriate someone else's trauma cheaply, but join their petitions to the afflicted and to Christ's Body.
Burden, judgment, and Christian hope
He laid his hands upon such as be at peace with him, * and he brake his covenant.
22 The words of his mouth were softer than butter, having war in his heart; * his words were smoother than oil, and yet be they very swords.
23 O cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall nourish thee, * and shall not suffer the righteous to fall for ever.
24 And as for them, * thou, O God, shalt bring them into the pit of destruction.
25 The blood-thirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days: * nevertheless, my trust shall be in thee, O Lord.
“Cast thy burden upon the LORD” is spoken in the same psalm that names deceit and asks God to judge it. The burden is transferred to God precisely because the sufferer is not competent to take final judgment into his own hands. The Prayer Book text concludes not with confidence in the psalmist's power, but “my trust shall be in thee.”
Every evil man either on this account lives that he may be corrected, or on this account lives that through him a good man may be exercised.... Nevertheless, so long as they are such as to exercise, let us not hate them: because in that wherein any one of them is evil, whether unto the end he is to persevere, we know not.
Augustine does not minimize the psalm's anguish; he reads its petition for deliverance alongside Christ's command to love enemies. This is a disciplined Christian use of the imprecatory language: evil may be named and its defeat entrusted to God, while the person praying refuses hatred and continues to seek mercy.
In a MS. of Jerome’s Latin Version the Psalm bears the title, Vox Christi adversus magnatos Judaeorum et Judam traditorem, “The voice of Christ against the chiefs of the Jews and the traitor Judas.” It is not indeed, any more than Psalms 41, a prediction of the treachery of Judas; but every such experience of the faithlessness of trusted friends was a foreshadowing of the experience of the Son of Man.
That distinction matters. Christian readers may hear the psalm in relation to Christ's betrayal and passion without calling it a simple prediction or erasing Israel's own prayer. In the Daily Office, Psalm 55 forms Christians in truthful lament, regular intercession, dependence upon God, and enemy-love.
See Also
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), The Psalter, Psalm 55:1–8; Society of Archbishop Justus, “The Psalter from the 1789, 1892 and 1928 U. S. Books of Common Prayer”.
- ↑ A. F. Kirkpatrick, The Book of Psalms with Introduction and Notes: Books II and III, Psalms XLII–LXXXIX, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1901), Psalm 55, introductory note; Bible Hub transcription of the Cambridge commentary.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), The Psalter, Psalm 55:9–15; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription.
- ↑ A. F. Kirkpatrick, The Book of Psalms with Introduction and Notes: Books II and III, Psalms XLII–LXXXIX, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1901), Psalm 55, introductory note; Bible Hub transcription of the Cambridge commentary.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), The Psalter, Psalm 55:17–19; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 55, §4, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888); New Advent transcription.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), The Psalter, Psalm 55:21–25; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 55, §§4–5, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888); New Advent transcription.
- ↑ A. F. Kirkpatrick, The Book of Psalms with Introduction and Notes: Books II and III, Psalms XLII–LXXXIX, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1901), Psalm 55, introductory note; Bible Hub transcription of the Cambridge commentary.