Psalm 83 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 83 (1928 BCP) is appointed at Evening Prayer on the Sixteenth Day of the month in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Psalter. Its Latin title, Deus, quis similis?, gives voice to a people threatened by a confederacy and turns that danger into prayer to the God who alone is Most High over all the earth.

Prayer Book Text

HOLD not thy tongue, O God, keep not still silence: * refrain not thyself, O God.
2 For lo, thine enemies make a murmuring; * and they that hate thee have lift up their head.
3 They have imagined craftily against thy people, * and taken counsel against thy secret ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us root them out, that they be no more a people, * and that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they have cast their heads together with one consent, * and are confederate against thee:
6 The tabernacles of the Edomites, and the Ishmaelites; * the Moabites, and Hagarenes;
7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; * the Philistines, with them that dwell at Tyre.
8 Assyria also is joined with them; * they have holpen the children of Lot.
9 But do thou to them as unto the Midianites; * unto Sisera, and unto Jabin at the brook of Kishon;
10 Who perished at Endor, * and became as the dung of the earth.
11 Make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeëb; * yea, make all their princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna;
12 Who say, Let us take to ourselves * the houses of God in possession.
13 O my God, make them like unto the whirling dust, * and as the stubble before the wind;
14 Like as the fire that burneth up the forest, * and as the flame that consumeth the mountains;
15 Pursue them even so with thy tempest, * and make them afraid with thy storm.
16 Make their faces ashamed, O LORD, * that they may seek thy Name.
17 Let them be confounded and vexed ever more and more; * let them be put to shame, and perish.
18 And they shall know that thou, whose Name is JEHOVAH, * art only the Most Highest over all the earth.

The prayer is corporate from beginning to end. The enemies’ scheme is not merely against Israel: their hostility to God’s people is named hostility to God, and their claimed possession of “the houses of God” is resisted by asking God, rather than the congregation, to act. The named peoples belong to the Psalm’s own historical lament; they are not a roster by which Christians may designate present-day enemies. The ending also matters for its theological direction: the desired outcome is that the adversaries may seek God’s Name and know his universal lordship.

Israel’s Memory and the Prayer for Judgment

Verses 9–12 remember God’s former deliverances in the period of the Judges. The Psalm does not provide a licence for private retaliation; it anchors petition in the God who has acted justly in Israel’s history.

So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel prospered, and prevailed against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.

The reference to Sisera, Jabin, and Kishon makes the Psalm’s appeal historically specific rather than an abstract wish for harm. It asks the covenant God to judge those who seek to erase his people; it leaves that judgment in God’s hands.

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. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

For Christians praying Psalm 83, Romans supplies an indispensable rule of reception: the Psalm’s appeal to divine judgment cannot be converted into personal vengeance. Prayer tells the truth about violence and conspiracy while refusing to make the worshipper the executor of vengeance; it binds the Church to practical peace and care even for an enemy. Thus the historic names in the Psalm are heard as part of Israel’s remembered distress, while the Church asks God to oppose evil without turning the text into a weapon against a contemporary people.

Historic Christian Interpretation

John Calvin’s summary attends closely to the Psalm’s public and ecclesial character:

The prophet implores the divine aid against the enemies of the Church, and, as an argument for obtaining this the more easily, he enumerates the many nations which had conspired together for the express purpose of exterminating the people of Israel, and thereby extinguishing the very name of the Church of God. To stir up himself and others to greater earnestness and confidence in prayer, he shows, by many examples, how mightily God had been wont to succor his servants.

Calvin’s account helps keep together what the Psalm itself keeps together: the list of nations is evidence of real danger, and the memories of Midian and Kishon are reasons for confidence in God, not warrants for a congregation to treat contemporary peoples as biblical enemies.

Augustine, reading the Psalm christologically, explicitly distinguishes the prayer’s prophetic language from a desire for personal malice:

We must take care, however, to understand, that the anger of God is free from any turbulent emotion; for His anger is an expression for His just method of taking vengeance: as the law might be said to be angry when its ministers are moved to punish by its sanction.

That is a historic Christian interpretation, not a denial of the Psalm’s lament. It names the petition’s moral gravity while locating judgment in God’s righteousness rather than in a worshipper’s passion. Augustine also notices that verse 16 opens the prayer toward conversion:

“Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek Your name, O Lord.” Good and desirable is this which he prophesies for them: and he would not prophesy thus, unless there were even in that company of the enemies of God's people, some men of such kind that this would be granted to them before the last judgment.

The distinction between shame that leads to seeking God and shame that hardens into ruin is already generated by the Psalm’s final movement. Christian use should therefore pray for the exposure and overthrow of evil, for the protection of those threatened, and for repentance where repentance is given.

Augustine’s final comment on verse 18 also guards the Psalm’s ending from being heard as a tribal claim. The Name and the title “Most Highest” confess that no human coalition, ruler, or worshipper stands above the God whose dominion is over all the earth:

“Let them know,” he says, “that Your name is the Lord:” as if whoever else are called lords are named so not truly but by falsehood, for they rule but as servants, and compared with the true Lord are not lords.... He adds, “You only are the Most Highest in all the earth.”

Use in the Daily Office

In the Sixteenth-Day Evening Prayer sequence, Psalm 83 follows Psalm 82, whose final petition is “Arise, O God, and judge thou the earth.” The juxtaposition carries the Church from God’s judgment of unjust rulers to Israel’s plea against a coalition that would dispossess God’s people. Read and sung in the Daily Office, Psalm 83 teaches neither denial of evil nor vengeful action: it forms candour before God, remembrance of his acts, confidence in his judgment, and hope that even enemies may seek his Name.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 82 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 84 (1928 BCP)