Psalms 118:6
“Yahweh is on my side. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
Where this sits
From the last of the psalms sung at Passover. It is very likely among the last things Jesus sang with his disciples before going out to Gethsemane.
Reflection
The logic is a subtraction, and it is worth doing slowly.
Yahweh is on my side. That is the premise, and everything depends on it being true rather than felt. I will not be afraid — the conclusion. What can man do to me? — the question that tests it.
And the honest answer is: quite a lot. Man can do a great deal to you. The psalmist is not claiming otherwise, and the psalm around this verse is full of people surrounding him like bees. What the question means is narrower and stronger than a denial of danger. It means: nothing that man can do falls outside what God has already accounted for.
That is the only version of this verse that survives contact with history, because the people who have most loved it were often people to whom a great deal was in fact done.
Which makes its place in the Passover liturgy remarkable. This psalm was sung at the end of the meal. If the traditional sequence held that night, these words were on Jesus' lips within an hour or two of the arrest — sung, not recited, in a room he knew he was about to leave. The verse was not composed for a comfortable situation, and it has never mainly been used in one.
- Theme:
- Fear
- Book:
- Psalms