Why read Psalm 68?
Psalm 68 offers words for deep suffering, humiliation or rejection. Its image of waters reaching the soul conveys distress, while the plea for mercy keeps hope alive.
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 68 opens the heart with the call “Save me, God, for waters have entered...”. It is one of the 40-verse psalms in Kathisma 9 and is recited both in church services and in prayer at home — the Psalter being the Orthodox Christian’s essential book.
Text of Psalm 68
1. Save me, God, for waters have entered as far as my soul.
2. I sank into the mud of the deep, which has no bottom;
3. I entered the depths of the sea, and the storm overwhelmed me.
4. I grew weary with crying, my throat grew numb, my eyes weakened as I hoped in my God.
5. Those who hate me without cause multiplied beyond the hairs of my head.
6. My enemies grew strong, those who persecute me unjustly; what I had not taken, I paid back.
7. God, You have known my lack of understanding, and my transgressions were not hidden from You.
8. Let those who wait for You not be put to shame because of me, Lord, Lord of powers, nor those who seek You be disgraced on my account, God of Israel.
9. For on Your account I suffered reproach; mockery covered my face.
10. I became estranged from my brothers and a stranger to the sons of my mother,
11. For zeal for Your house consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach You fell upon me.
12. And I humbled my soul with fasting, and it became a reproach to me.
13. And I clothed myself in sackcloth and became an object of mockery to them.
14. Those who sat in the gates spoke against me, and those who drank wine sang about me.
15. But in my prayer to You, Lord, I cried at a well-pleasing time.
16. God, in the abundance of Your mercy hear me, in the truth of Your mercy.
17. Save me from the mud, that I may not sink; deliver me from those who hate me and from the depths of the waters,
18. That the whirlpool of water may not drown me, nor the deep swallow me, nor the deep close its mouth over me.
19. Hear me, Lord, for Your mercy is good; according to the abundance of Your compassion, look toward me.
20. Do not turn Your face away from Your faithful one when I am afflicted. Hear me quickly.
21. Attend to my soul and save it; deliver me from the hands of my enemies,
22. For You know my reproach and my shame and my disgrace;
23. All who afflict me are before You. My soul was crushed by reproaches and affliction,
24. And I waited for someone who would have mercy on me, and there was no one, and for those who would comfort me, and I did not find them.
25. And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
26. Let their table before them become a snare, a recompense and a stumbling block;
27. Let their eyes grow dark, that they may not see, and bend their backs continually;
28. Pour Your wrath upon them, and let the anger of Your wrath seize them;
29. Let their courtyard become desolate, and let there be no inhabitants in their dwellings;
30. For the one You struck, they persecuted, and they increased the pain of his wounds.
31. Add lawlessness to their lawlessness, and let them not enter into Your righteousness;
32. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written among the righteous.
33. I am poor and in pain; let Your salvation, God, support me!
34. I will praise the name of my God with song and magnify Him with praise;
35. And it will please God more than a young calf whose horns and hooves are growing.
36. Let the poor laugh and rejoice; sing to God, and your soul will live!
37. For the Lord heard the poor, and did not reject in wrath His own who are bound in shackles.
38. Let the heavens and the earth praise Him, the sea and all that creep in it.
39. For God will save Zion, and the cities of Judah will be built, and they will dwell there and inherit it;
40. And the offspring of His faithful ones will rule over it, and those who love His name will dwell in it.
When Psalm 68 is read
- a major penitential psalm — a cry from the depths.
- At the end of each psalm, the tradition adds: "Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen."
Neighboring psalms
Read also
The numbering follows the Orthodox Psalter (Septuagint). The same psalm may have a different number in other Bible editions.
