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

Psalm 130

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

  • 8Verses
  • 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.

8 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 130

Its own heading A song of ascents.

  1. 1Out of the depths I cry to You, O LORD!
  2. 2O Lord, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.
  3. 3If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand?
  4. 4But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared.
  5. 5I wait for the LORD; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope.
  6. 6My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning— more than watchmen wait for the morning.
  7. 7O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is loving devotion, and with Him is redemption in abundance.
  8. 8And He will redeem Israel from all iniquity.

Psalm 130 is 129 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.