Pixabay/Yedidak, adapted
God Shelters the Faithful: The Prayer of Psalm 91
Psalm 91 expresses confidence that God will protect the righteous from plagues, demons, and wild animals, while allowing the wicked to perish. How are we to understand this psalm when pandemics and other disasters often hit the weakest and most vulnerable the hardest?
Published: May 14, 2020
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
English comes from Robert Alter’s translation with slight adjustments.
In that reading, Psalm 91 may have originated as (part of) a temple liturgy in Jerusalem. Different proposals have been made about the original setting of the psalm. On the various scholarly proposals, see Matthias Henze, “Psalm 91 in Premodern Interpretation and at Qumran,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran, ed. Matthias Henze, Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 168–93. Further documentation for many of the points in this essay are found there.
The name of God used in the second stich, Shaddai is attested in the Psalter only here and in Ps 68:15. Editor’s note: For some discussion of this unusual divine name, see Carl Ehrlich, “Balaam the Seer: From the Bible to the Deir ʿAlla Inscription,” TheTorah (2018).
The LXX has: “A laudation. Of an Ode. Pertaining to David” (αἶνος ᾠδῆς τῷ Δαυιδ), which also appears in the Latin Vulgate (LAUS CANTICI DAVID).
The NJPS translation changes the first verse to the second person, “O you who dwell,” as does NRSV “You who dwell,” but this is not helpful. I follow the translation of Robert Alter, who leaves the Hebrew text unchanged. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible. Volume 3: The Writings (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), 219. The first person recurs in v. 9, where, inexplicably, Alter changes it to the second person.
See Marc Zvi Brettler, “Enallage in the Bible,” TheTorah (2018).
Erich Zenger, Psalms 2, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 430.
See Hans-Peter Müller, “פחד,” TDOT, 11:517–26 for more references.
Insofar as the first peril, דֶּבֶר, the LXX points the word differently than MT in both verses. In v. 3 it translates ἀπὸ λόγου ταραχώδους, “from a troublesome word,” implying a pointing of דִּבֻּר, or perhaps דָּבָר. In v. 6 he translates ἀπὸ πράγματος, “of a deed,” also implying that he read דָּבָר.
André Caquot, “Sur quelques demons de l’Ancient Testament: Reshep, Qeteb, Deber,” Semitica 6 (1956), 53–68, proposed that deber and qeteb were originally proper names of minor gods from the ancient Near East. See also the entries on deber and qeteb in Karel van der Toorn, et al., eds. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Second revised edition (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
Mika S. Pajunen, “How to Expel a Demon: Form- and Tradition-Critical Assessment of the Ritual of Exorcism in 11QApocryphal Psalms,” in Crossing Imaginary Boundaries: The Dead Sea Scrolls in the Context of Second Temple Judaism (Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society, 2015), 128–61
κύριε, καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια ὑποτάσσεται ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί σου.
William G. Braude, trans., The Midrash on Psalms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 102.
Alter, The Writings, 219.
Unlike his faithfulness to the grammar in the opening verses, here Robert Alter adjusts v. 9 so that the speaker does not refer to himself in the 1st person at all, but is speaking to the listener as he does in the following verses. “For you—the LORD is your refuge.” There does not appear to be any grammatical or textual basis for this rendering.
Editor’s note: For more on this, see Yitzhaq Feder, "Coronavirus: What We Can Learn from the Bible and the Ancient Near East," TheTorah (2020); idem, "Tumah: Ritual Impurity or Fear of Contagious Disease?" TheTorah (2019).
