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

Psalm 43

One of the psalms St Athanasius said to pray when you want God to judge who is in the right, in a letter from the 300s.

  • 5Verses
  • 2Situations

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. He named this one more than once.

They won't stop trying to ruin you, and you want someone to finally judge who's in the right.

When your enemies keep on, trying to drag you down and ruin you, don't let any human verdict be the last word, because everything human is open to doubt. Ask God to be the Judge, for He alone is just, and say Psalms 26, 35 and 43.

Letter to Marcellinus

Leaving the verdict with God doesn't mean staying silent: Paul himself appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11).

For this, the quiz gives Psalm 26, and this psalm beside it.

Something in you is weighed down or uneasy, and it won't settle.

Sing the Psalms: what is troubled in you is smoothed out, and what grieves you is healed, as you say to your own soul, "Why are you downcast, O my soul?"

Letter to Marcellinus

For this, the quiz gives Psalm 42, and this psalm beside it.

5 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 43

  1. 1Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation; deliver me from deceitful and unjust men.
  2. 2For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?
  3. 3Send out Your light and Your truth; let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy mountain and to the place where You dwell.
  4. 4Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the harp, O God, my God.
  5. 5Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

Psalm 43 is 42 in the Greek numbering Athanasius used, which Orthodox Bibles and some older Catholic ones still follow.

When people turn against you

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All 53 situations, in one guide.

Your turn

Which Psalm are you living right now?

A few honest taps about your life right now, and the psalm an early Church Father gave for exactly that.

  • 3 min
  • 7 questions
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Suggest a correction. Corrections that are applied are recorded in the public changelog.

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