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

Psalm 128

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

  • 6Verses
  • 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.

6 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 128

Its own heading A song of ascents.

  1. 1Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in His ways!
  2. 2For when you eat the fruit of your labor, blessings and prosperity will be yours.
  3. 3Your wife will be like a fruitful vine flourishing within your house, your sons like olive shoots sitting around your table.
  4. 4In this way indeed shall blessing come to the man who fears the LORD.
  5. 5May the LORD bless you from Zion, that you may see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life,
  6. 6that you may see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!

Psalm 128 is 127 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.