Psalm 27 in the King James Version

The text below is the King James Version, which anyone may reprint. Most printed King James Bibles set words the translators supplied in italics. In this psalm two of those additions matter later on this page: "When thou saidst" in verse 8 and "I had fainted" in verse 13.

Heading: A Psalm of David.

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

3 Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.

4 One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.

6 And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD.

7 Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

8 When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.

9 Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.

10 When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.

11 Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.

12 Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.

13 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

14 Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

The heading in Hebrew is a single word, ledavid. The King James prints it as "A Psalm of David," and Benjamin Segal, writing for My Jewish Learning, renders it "To David." The superscription is part of the Hebrew text itself, not something English translators added. What it carries is a name. It gives no event and no year.

The Greek Septuagint adds a phrase: before he was anointed. Ellicott notes that the Vatican manuscript of the Greek and the Latin Vulgate both carry it, and says the words "only serve to make the question of date of composition still more perplexing." The Cambridge Bible reads the addition as pointing at Saul's pursuit of David, or at the wars of his first seven years as king.

Commentators do not agree on the occasion. The Cambridge Bible assigns at least the first half to Absalom's rebellion, because verses 2 and 3 sound like a soldier and verse 4 echoes David sending the ark back into Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 15. Spurgeon proposed the days when Doeg the Edomite informed on David to Saul. Matthew Henry reported two older guesses, one early in David's troubles and a Jewish one late in his life, and allowed that it may have had no particular occasion. Ellicott heard in verses 4 and 6 a priest or Levite speaking for a nation cut off from the Temple.

Keil and Delitzsch accept that the first half resembles David's situation under Absalom, then say verse 10 "is not in favour of its being composed by David." So the honest answer is that Jewish and Christian tradition attach the psalm to David, the heading supports that link, and nothing in the text settles the occasion. Anyone who tells you the exact day David wrote it is guessing.

Read straight through, the psalm changes direction at verse 7. The Cambridge Bible puts it bluntly: "Suddenly all is changed: the jubilant rhythm is abandoned; anxious supplication takes the place of joyous faith." Verses 1 to 6 talk about God in the third person and expect victory. Verses 7 to 12 talk to God directly and ask not to be abandoned, and the last two verses turn inward.

John Paul II called the psalm a hymn of trust, and the first half fits that label: confidence in God stated in the face of danger. The second half has the marks of an individual lament. One person cries to God directly, complains of enemies and false accusers, and ends by resolving to wait. The New Catholic Commentary, as summarised on Wikipedia, describes the first poem as confidence and devotion to the Temple and the second as a cry for help.

Whether those are two poems is a live argument. The Cambridge Bible calls it "not improbable that two independent Psalms are here combined," or that a later poet added verses 7 to 14. Ellicott says many regard it as the work of two minds. Keil and Delitzsch admit they are tempted to treat verse 7 onward as another writer's addition, yet they note that whoever placed it after Psalm 26 already had both halves together.

Benjamin Segal takes the other side and says "the two psalms are indeed one." He points to Hebrew roots repeated across both halves, and to the divine name opening and closing each one. Pope John Paul II, teaching on the second half in 2004, noted that the Liturgy of Vespers divides the psalm in two and compared its structure to a diptych, two hinged panels that belong to one piece.

The form matters when you pray it. If you read only verses 1 to 6, you get a speaker who is never shaken. Read as a whole, it puts fear after confidence. The man who said "whom shall I fear?" is asking a few lines later not to be handed over to his enemies. Keil and Delitzsch call this a reversed order, triumphant faith first and pleading faith second.

Verse 1 is the line on mugs and on the arms of the University of Oxford, whose Latin motto, Dominus illuminatio mea, is the opening of this verse in the Vulgate. The Pulpit Commentary says calling God "my light" in this way "does not occur in any other place in the Old Testament," and Keil and Delitzsch compare only Isaiah 60:1. The word the King James renders "strength" is maoz, which Ellicott and the Cambridge Bible both prefer to read as stronghold or bulwark. The verse asks two questions and expects the answer nobody.

Verse 4 is the other line people lift out. The one thing the speaker asks for is to live in the house of the LORD for life. The Cambridge Bible says this "can hardly be understood literally of a lifelong residence in the Temple" and reads it as the picture of a guest under a royal host's protection, perhaps with the right of asylum in view. The word behind "beauty" can also mean pleasantness, and Ellicott records that the meaning of "enquire" is disputed.

Verses 8 and 9 are about the face of God. Ellicott thinks the image comes from seeking admission to a king to ask a favour, and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown glosses seeking God's face as seeking his favour. The Pulpit Commentary connects "Seek ye my face" with the psalm David gave when the ark came to Jerusalem in 1 Chronicles 16. Verse 9 then asks, four times over, not to be turned away.

Verse 14 uses the same two Hebrew verbs as Joshua 1:9, be strong and be courageous, and the Cambridge Bible draws that line itself. In Joshua, God speaks them to a commander about to cross the Jordan. In this psalm, the Cambridge Bible and the Pulpit Commentary both say, the speaker is saying them to himself.

Verse 3 is conditional from the start. "Though an host should encamp against me" plans for the army. The confidence is located in the speaker's heart, and the war is still a live possibility in the sentence. Nothing in the verse says the army stays home.

Verse 2 can be read two ways. The Cambridge Bible says the line about enemies who stumbled and fell may describe something already past, or it may be confident expectation using a Hebrew idiom that speaks of a coming event as done. Keil and Delitzsch take the second view. Either way, the verse reports this speaker's experience and makes no rule about enemies in general.

The confidence of the first half does not stop the fear in the second. By verse 12 false witnesses have risen up and people are breathing out cruelty. The final verse is an instruction to wait, given twice, and the poem ends there. Whatever happened next is outside the text.

"The land of the living" in verse 13 also divides readers. Matthew Poole and the Pulpit Commentary read it as this present life, before death. Matthew Henry's concise commentary reaches for the hope of eternal life. The verse expresses an expectation of seeing God's goodness, and it attaches no date to that expectation.

Verse 10 is the hardest line. Keil and Delitzsch read it as something that has already happened, and the Cambridge Bible offers the Revised Version's past tense: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me." Ewald and Barnes read it as a supposition, and the Cambridge Bible and the Pulpit Commentary both call the line proverbial. What the verse promises is that the LORD will "take me up," a phrase Barnes notes is used for taking a stranger into one's house. It does not say the parents will come back.

Put the two public domain translations side by side. The King James reads: "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." The World English Bible reads: "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living." The American Standard Version keeps the King James shape and prints "I had fainted" in brackets.

The reason is a broken sentence. The Hebrew opens with lule, "unless" or "if not," and never says what would have happened. Barnes states plainly that "I had fainted" was supplied by the translators. The Pulpit Commentary calls the device aposiopesis, a sentence the speaker cannot bring himself to finish. Brown-Driver-Briggs lists Psalm 27:13 among the places the word appears in this form.

The word itself is in question. In the Masoretic text, lule carries extra dots above and below it. The Cambridge Bible says this marks it "as probably spurious." Keil and Delitzsch describe the dots, point to the Talmud tractate Berakhot, and still call the word "indispensably necessary," finding support for it in the Targum and a trace of it at the end of the Septuagint's verse 12. The Septuagint's verse 13 itself opens with a plain "I believe." The World English Bible gives a confident sentence, and the King James keeps the unfinished one and fills the gap.

Verse 3 has a smaller split. The King James says "in this will I be confident," and the World English Bible says "even then I will be confident." Keil and Delitzsch read the Hebrew as "in spite of this" and reject the reading of Rashi and Hitzig, which points "this" back to verse 1. The Cambridge Bible prefers "even then."

Verse 14 changes who does the strengthening. The King James says "he shall strengthen thine heart," with God as the subject. The World English Bible says "Be strong, and let your heart take courage," and the American Standard agrees. Ellicott calls "let thy heart be strong" the better rendering, and the Pulpit Commentary defends the King James sense. In verse 8 the King James supplies "When thou saidst" to make the Hebrew word order readable, and the Cambridge Bible gives the literal order as "Unto thee my heart hath said."

In most Ashkenazi communities Psalm 27 is said twice a day from the first of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah, until Shemini Atzeret, or Hoshana Rabbah in Israel. Wikipedia's summary dates the custom to no earlier than the seventeenth century. Segal calls it about 200 years old. Many Sephardic communities say it every weekday at the end of the morning service.

In the Roman Liturgy of the Hours the psalm is split in two and prayed at Vespers on Wednesday of the first week, and it is often used as the responsorial psalm at Mass. The Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer appoints it for the evening of the fifth day of the month. The Coptic Agpeya places it in the office of Prime.

Outside the liturgy, particular verses fit particular rooms. Someone walking into a hearing where people are lying about them reads verse 12. An adult whose parents stopped calling years ago reads verse 10. Someone waiting on a biopsy result reads verse 14. Someone who was brave last spring and is not now finds both halves of the psalm describe them.

The psalm does not replace the practical step. False witnesses mean you need a lawyer. A teenager put out of the house needs an adult who can arrange a safe bed tonight. If the fear has run your days for weeks, a physician or a licensed therapist belongs in the picture, and saying so is no failure of faith.

If the thought is about not being here, treat that as urgent. Anywhere in the United States, a call or text to 988 reaches the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, free at any hour, and 911 is for immediate danger. For the psalm itself, go to your own pastor, priest, or rabbi, a person with a name who answers the phone. PrayWithJesus.ai is a product made by a company, and no church has signed off on it. On any point where your church teaches otherwise, trust your church.