Gustave Doré’s engraving of David standing crowned and bowed as he mourns Absalom

Psalm 125

One of the fifteen Songs of Ascents, which St Athanasius said to pray when you can feel yourself climbing higher.

  • 5Verses
  • 1Situation

St Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus

When to pray it

In the 300s, St Athanasius of Alexandria wrote a letter to his friend Marcellinus about praying the Psalms. In it he matched psalms to what people go through. This is what he gave this one for.

You can feel yourself climbing: forgetting what's behind you and straining toward what's ahead.

When you sense yourself climbing higher in how you live, so that you can say with Paul, "forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead", you have the fifteen Songs of Ascents to say at every step forward.

Letter to Marcellinus

He gave all fifteen Songs of Ascents for this, Psalms 120 to 134.

5 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 125

Its own heading A song of ascents.

  1. 1Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion. It cannot be moved; it abides forever.
  2. 2As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds His people, both now and forevermore.
  3. 3For the scepter of the wicked will not rest upon the land allotted to the righteous, so that the righteous will not put forth their hands to injustice.
  4. 4Do good, O LORD, to those who are good, and to the upright in heart.
  5. 5But those who turn to crooked ways the LORD will banish with the evildoers. Peace be upon Israel.

Psalm 125 is 124 in the Greek numbering Athanasius used, which Orthodox Bibles and some older Catholic ones still follow.

When life is good, and you want to thank Him and grow

Close to this

All 53 situations, in one guide.

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Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Athanasius’s advice is paraphrased from his Greek.