Psalm 55 is the 55th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version, "Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication". The Book of Psalms forms part of the ketuvim, the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and is part of the Christian Old Testament. In the slightly different numbering system of the Greek Septuagint version of the Bible, and in the Latin Vulgate, this psalm is Psalm 54. In Latin, it is known as "Exaudi Deus orationem meam". The psalm is a lament in which the author grieves because he is surrounded by enemies, and one of his closest friends has betrayed him. The psalm forms a regular part of Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant liturgies. Metrical hymns in English and German were derived from the psalm, and it has been set to music.

Background

Psalm 55 is similar to Psalm 41, especially 41:9: "Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me" (ESV). The introduction to the psalm identifies it as a 'Maskil' (instructional piece) and associates it with David. The anonymous author may have been an Israelite living in a foreign city, and the false friend could be another Israelite living there. This interpretation may be considered especially plausible if the second part of verse 24 is translated "men of idols and figurines", as suggested by Hermann Gunkel and used in Mitchell Dahood's translation, rather than "men of blood and treachery". Jerome, in the Vulgate, entitled this psalm Vox Christi adversus magnatos Judaeorum et Judam traditorem, meaning The voice of Christ against the chiefs of the Jews and the traitor Judas.

Text

Hebrew

The following table shows the Hebrew text of the Psalm with vowels alongside an English translation based upon the JPS 1917 translation (now in the public domain).

King James Version

Structure

The psalm can be divided into three sections, which Alexander Kirkpatrick in his 1901 commentary identified with the themes of despair, indignation, and trust:

Analysis

It is unclear whether the psalm was written by a single author or not. Some scholars suggest that verses 12–14, 20–21, and 22 are fragments by a different author which were inserted into the text of the original psalm. In a 1999 article, Ulrike Bail used intertextual interpretive methods to read the psalm as a reference to the rape of Tamar.

Uses

Judaism

New Testament

Verse 22 is quoted in 1 Peter.

Book of Common Prayer

In the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer, this psalm is appointed to be read on the evening of the tenth day of the month.

Musical settings

Heinrich Schütz set Psalm 55 in a metred version in German, "Erhör mein Gebet, du treuer Gott", SWV 152, as part of the Becker Psalter, first published in 1628. The text was set to music as Hear My Prayer by Felix Mendelssohn in 1844. Antonín Dvořák set verses 1–8 in Czech to music in his Biblical Songs (1894). Zoltán Kodály set Psalm 55 in Hungarian in 1923 with interpolations and extensions of grief and lamentation full of historic associations for the Hungarian people to the paraphrase by 16th-century poet Mihály Vég, as the Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13. Alan Hovhaness set portions of the text, along with portions of Psalms 54 and 56, in his choral work Make a Joyful Noise.