Why read Psalm 63?
Read Psalm 63 when hurtful words or hidden schemes trouble you. It portrays speech as a weapon but ends with confidence that the righteous can take refuge in God.
You can read this psalm when its themes speak to your circumstances, or as part of your regular reading of the Psalter. This explanation draws on the text itself; the psalm is not reserved for one particular need.
Psalm 63 opens the heart with the call “Hear, God, my voice when I...”. It is one of the 11-verse psalms in the 8th Kathisma and is recited both at services and in prayer at home — the Psalter being a foundational book for the Orthodox Christian.
The text of Psalm 63
1. Hear, God, my voice when I pray to You; deliver my soul from fear of the enemy.
2. Cover me from the assembly of the deceitful, from the multitude of those who work lawlessness,
3. Who sharpened their tongues like a sword and cast their poisonous words like arrows, to shoot at the innocent from hiding places.
4. Suddenly they will shoot at him and will not fear. They have strengthened themselves in evil thoughts.
5. They spoke to hide snares; they said: “Who will see us?”
6. They devised lawless deeds and perished while devising them,
7. To penetrate the inward part of the human being and the depth of his heart.
8. But God will strike them with an arrow and suddenly wound them, for they themselves will wound themselves with their tongues.
9. All who saw them were troubled, and every person feared.
10. And they proclaimed the works of God and understood His deeds.
11. The righteous will rejoice in the Lord and hope in Him, and all the upright in heart will glory.
When Psalm 63 is read
- It belongs to the 8th Kathisma and may be read daily alongside the prayer rule (see the morning and evening prayers).
- At the end of each psalm, tradition adds: «Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.».
Adjacent psalms
Read also
The numbering follows the Orthodox Psalter (Septuagint). The same psalm may have a different number in other Bible editions.
