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Prayers

A defender of widows (Psalm 68)

In these three verses of Psalm 68, God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows, Who gives the lonely a home and carries our burden day by day.

Picture: Jan Victors, Ruth Swearing Her Allegiance to Naomi, 1653

The words of the prayer

Plain English

A father to the fatherlessand a defender of widowsis God in His holy dwelling.

God settles the lonely in a home;He leads the prisoners out to prosperity,but the rebellious live in a parched land.

Blessed be the Lord,Who carries our burden day by day,the God Who saves us.

Traditional wording, 1611

A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows,is God in His holy habitation.

God setteth the solitary in families:He bringeth out those which are bound with chains:but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Blessed be the Lord,Who daily loadeth us with benefits,even the God of our salvation.

Plain English by Wiser Walk, from the Hebrew (verses 5, 6 and 19), with the King James Version beside it. How the wording is made. Traditional wording: The King James translators, The King James Version, 1611.

Where the King James Version has “in families” and “bound with chains”, the plain wording follows the Hebrew as the Jewish Publication Society read it in 1917, with “in a house” and “the prisoners into prosperity”.

When it is said

Anyone may pray these verses at any time.

They suit the days after a husband or wife has died, and any day you feel alone.

Where it comes from

Author by tradition

Who wrote it?

The Hebrew heading is “For the Leader. A Psalm of David, a Song.” The psalm runs to 35 verses. In the Greek Septuagint it is numbered 67, under a heading that also names David.

Mechon Mamre, the Hebrew Bible with the Jewish Publication Society’s English of 1917; Brenton’s English Septuagint

The whole psalm

The whole psalm is a song of God going out before His people through the wilderness and into His sanctuary. It opens with “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered.” At midnight on Easter the priest sings those first verses before the closed doors of the church, and after each one the choir answers “Christ is risen from the dead”.

The King James Version; Isabel F. Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church (1906), Easter Matins

What the words mean

Judge or defender?

In the King James Version God is “a judge of the widows”. The Hebrew word is a judge’s title, and Strong’s concordance gives its sense as “a judge or advocate”. A judge who takes up the widow’s case is her defender, so the plain wording has “a defender of widows”.

Strong’s Hebrew 1781 (Bible Hub)

Burden or benefits?

In the King James Version the Lord “daily loadeth us with benefits”. The Hebrew verb means to carry a load, here one that God carries for His people. The Jewish Publication Society’s English of 1917 has “day by day He beareth our burden”, which the plain wording follows.

Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon, amas (Bible Hub); Mechon Mamre, the Hebrew Bible with the Jewish Publication Society’s English of 1917

The Scripture in it

A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation. God settles the lonely in families; He leads the prisoners out to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land.

Psalm 68:5-6 Quoted These verses call God a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows.

Blessed be the Lord, Who daily bears our burden, the God of our salvation. Selah

Psalm 68:19 Quoted This verse blesses the Lord, Who carries our burden day by day.

Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.

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Berean Standard Bible