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

Psalm 52

What St Athanasius said to pray when someone lies about you to a person in power, in a letter from the 300s.

  • 9Verses
  • 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.

Someone has lied about you to a person with power over you who already means you harm, and the liar is gloating over it.

If you have been slandered to a wicked ruler, and you see the slanderer boasting about it, withdraw, and say Psalm 52.

Letter to Marcellinus

Psalm 52:8

Where it turns

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in the loving devotion of God forever and ever.

9 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 52

Its own heading For the choirmaster. A Maskil of David. After Doeg the Edomite went to Saul and told him, “David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.”

  1. 1Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The loving devotion of God endures all day long.
  2. 2Your tongue devises destruction like a sharpened razor, O worker of deceit.
  3. 3You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking truth. Selah
  4. 4You love every word that devours, O deceitful tongue.
  5. 5Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin; He will snatch you up and tear you away from your tent; He will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
  6. 6The righteous will see and fear; they will mock the evildoer, saying,
  7. 7“Look at the man who did not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his wealth and strengthened himself by destruction.”
  8. 8But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in the loving devotion of God forever and ever.
  9. 9I will praise You forever, because You have done it. I will wait on Your name— for it is good— in the presence of Your saints.

Psalm 52 is 51 in the Greek numbering Athanasius used, which Orthodox Bibles and some older Catholic ones still follow.

When people turn against you

Close to this

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.