People are plotting against you, and someone has just told you.
If people are plotting against you, as Ahithophel plotted against David, and someone tells you about it, sing Psalm 7 and take courage in God, Who rescues you.
Letter to Marcellinus
Psalm 7
What St Athanasius said to pray when you find out people are plotting against you, in a letter from the 300s.
- 17Verses
- 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.
Psalm 7:10
Where it turns
My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.
17 verses, Berean Standard Bible
The whole psalm
Psalm 7
Its own heading A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjamite.
- 1O LORD my God, I take refuge in You; save me and deliver me from all my pursuers,
- 2or they will shred my soul like a lion and tear me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
- 3O LORD my God, if I have done this, if injustice is on my hands,
- 4if I have rewarded my ally with evil, if I have plundered my foe without cause,
- 5then may my enemy pursue me and overtake me; may he trample me to the ground and leave my honor in the dust. Selah
- 6Arise, O LORD, in Your anger; rise up against the fury of my enemies. Awake, my God, and ordain judgment.
- 7Let the assembled peoples gather around You; take Your seat over them on high.
- 8The LORD judges the peoples; vindicate me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and integrity.
- 9Put an end to the evil of the wicked, but establish the righteous, O righteous God who searches hearts and minds.
- 10My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart.
- 11God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation each day.
- 12If one does not repent, God will sharpen His sword; He has bent and strung His bow.
- 13He has prepared His deadly weapons; He ordains His arrows with fire.
- 14Behold, the wicked man travails with evil; he conceives trouble and births falsehood.
- 15He has dug a hole and hollowed it out; he has fallen into a pit of his own making.
- 16His trouble recoils on himself, and his violence falls on his own head.
- 17I will thank the LORD for His righteousness and sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.
When people turn against you
Close to this
- Someone is set on rattling you, and part of you wants to run.
- They keep trying to frighten you, lying in wait and digging up whatever they can against you.
- You've been hiding from someone who is after you, and now they've come right into your hiding place.
- They're ganging up on you, more of them all the time, looking down on you as if you're nobody yet.
All 53 situations, in one guide.
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.