A Prayer for National Safety

¹ Of David.¹ Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, the one who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war—

1. The Hebrew Bible counts the superscription as the first verse of the psalm

² my loyal love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, and one in whom I take refuge, the one who subdues peoples¹ under me.

1. Reading with many Hebrew manuscripts and versions; MT reads “my people”

³ O Yahweh, what is humankind that you take knowledge of him, or the son of man that you take thought of him?

⁴ Humankind is like a breath, his days like a passing shadow.

⁵ O Yahweh, bow the heavens and come down; touch the mountains so that they smoke.

⁶ Flash forth lightning and scatter them; dispatch your arrows and rout them.

⁷ Stretch out your hands from on high; Rescue me and deliver me from many waters, from the hand of foreigners,

⁸ whose mouth speaks falsely, and their right hand is a false right hand.

⁹ O God, I will sing a new song to you. With a lyre of ten strings I will sing praise to you,

¹⁰ who gives victory to kings, who rescues David his servant from the evil sword.

¹¹ Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, whose mouth speaks falsely, and whose right hand is a false right hand,

¹² that our sons may be like plants, full grown in their youth, our daughters like corner pillars, carved in the style of a palace,

¹³ that our granaries may be full, providing produce of all kinds,¹ that our sheep may produce by the thousands, by the tens of thousands in our open fields,

1. Hebrew “from kind to kind”

¹⁴ that our cattle may be pregnant; that there be no breach in our walls, and no going out in exile, and no outcry in our plazas.

¹⁵ Blessed are the people who have it thus. Blessed are the people whose God is Yahweh.