Why read Psalm 101?
Read Psalm 101 when weakness, loneliness or distress weighs on you. The account of days spent in suffering is placed before God's enduring faithfulness and the hope of Zion's restoration.
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.
"O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry..." — so begins Psalm 101, twenty-nine verses from the Fourteenth Kathisma. The Psalter is read in the Orthodox Church at every service, and this psalm has its own place in the order of prayer.
The text of Psalm 101
1. O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Thee!
2. Hide not Thy face from me; in the day of mine affliction incline Thine ear unto me!
3. In whatsoever day I shall call upon Thee, hear me speedily!
4. For my days have vanished like smoke, and my bones have become dry.
5. Wounded is my heart and withered like grass, so that I even forget to eat my bread.
6. By the voice of my groaning my bone hath cleaved to my flesh.
7. I am become like to the pelican of the wilderness; I am like to the owl in the ruined places.
8. I have watched, and am become as a sparrow alone upon the housetop.
9. All the day long mine enemies have taunted me, and they that praised me have sworn against me.
10. For I have eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
11. Because of Thy wrath and Thine anger; for as I rose, Thou didst cast me down.
12. My days have declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass.
13. But Thou, O Lord, endurest for ever, and Thy memorial unto generation and generation.
14. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion, for the time is come that Thou shouldest have mercy upon it, for the time is come.
15. For Thy servants have taken pleasure in her stones, and they shall pity her dust.
16. So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.
17. For the Lord shall build up Sion, and He shall appear in His glory.
18. He hath regarded the prayer of the humble, and hath not despised their supplication.
19. Let these things be written for another generation, and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord;
20. For He hath looked out from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold upon the earth,
21. To hear the groaning of them that are in fetters, to loose the sons of the slain,
22. To declare the name of the Lord in Sion, and His praise in Jerusalem,
23. When the peoples are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.
24. I said unto God in the way of His strength: declare unto me the fewness of my days.
25. Take me not away in the midst of my days, for Thy years, O Lord, are from generation to generation.
26. In the beginning Thou, O Lord, didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands.
27. They shall perish, but Thou shalt remain; they shall all grow old like a garment, and like a robe shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed.
28. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end.
29. The children of Thy servants shall dwell in their land, and their seed shall prosper for ever.
When Psalm 101 is read
- during fasts and in personal suffering.
- 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."
Neighbouring psalms
Read also
The numbering follows the Orthodox Psalter (Septuagint). The same psalm may have a different number in other Bible editions.
