What does Psalm 91 mean?

What does “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High” mean?

In Psalm 91:1, which reads “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High” on this page, the psalm opens on a God who shelters, rescues and gives refuge. Nancy deClaissé-Walford’s own translation places the one who trusts in the “shelter” of the Most High.³ Jeff Levin quotes an older Jewish translation of the verse that has “covert.”¹

The title “Almighty” at the end of verse 1 belongs mostly to Genesis and Job. In the book of Psalms it appears only here and in Psalm 68. Nancy deClaissé-Walford reads the title beside Psalm 90:2, where God gives birth to the earth and the world. In that reading, the Almighty of Psalm 91 is a God who now nurses that world. The root of the title can mean “breast,” and it can also mean “mountain.”³

Verses 3 and 4 use the dangers that threaten young birds, the fowler’s snare and the predator. Against them the verses set God’s sheltering wings. The picture of God’s sheltering wings appears six times in the Psalms, Psalm 91:4 among them. The same study reads the wings as the protection a mother gives the child she has borne.³

What is “the terror by night”?

In Psalm 91:5, “the terror by night” is the first of four dangers from which God will rescue the faithful.⁴ The four come in pairs: terror and pestilence belong to the night, the arrow and destruction to the day.³

Psalm 92, the psalm that follows, sets out “to proclaim your loving kindness in the morning, and your faithfulness every night”. Nancy deClaissé-Walford reads that line as confirming the promise of verse 5.³

Verse 6 names the other two dangers, “the pestilence that walks in darkness” and “the destruction that wastes at noonday.” The word for pestilence is the most common term for it in the Bible, used nearly 50 times. The word for the noonday destruction appears only four times in the Hebrew Bible.⁴

Verse 5 also names “the arrow that flies by day.” Jozef Jancovic reads the arrow of verse 5 as a real object that strikes people and carries illness into the body. The arrow may echo prayers to Nergal, a Mesopotamian god of pestilence and the burning sun, who was represented by arrows. Arrows were also a picture of the fevers sent by Resheph, a plague god worshiped from Anatolia to Egypt.⁴

Jancovic reports scholars who read the pestilence and the noonday destruction as demon-like agents of plague. The same study urges caution with that reading. The ancient Greek translation rendered the noonday destruction as an “accident.” The Vulgate, a Latin translation, turned the same word into a demon.⁴

A rabbinic commentary on the Psalms pictures the noonday destruction as a demon covered in scales and shaggy hair. The demon has one eye, in the middle of its heart, and whoever sees it falls on his face. The Babylonian Talmud, a work of the rabbinic sages, counts two such demons, one before noon and one after. The one after noon looks like a goat’s horn, with wings around it.¹

An ancient Aramaic rendering of the Psalms turns the terror by night into demons. The same rendering makes the arrow by day the arrow of the angel of death.¹

What does “he shall give his angels charge over thee” mean?

In Psalm 91:11, which reads “For he will put his angels in charge of you” on this page, the angels carry on a promise of protection running through verses 7 to 13. Verse 10 promises that no evil will come near the tent of the one who has taken refuge in God. In verse 12, the one who trusts will not dash a foot against a stone. In verse 13, the same person treads on the lion and the snake.³

Jacquelyn Tuerk-Stonberg finds that Psalm 91 is by far the most frequent psalm on amulets.⁵

One bronze amulet, made between the second and fifth centuries and bought in Syria, shows the lion and the snake. On one side, a horseman threatens a baby-snatching demon with a pointed blade. The opening words of Psalm 91 run around that image. The other side shows Jesus at the top and, at the bottom, a lion and a snake, as in Psalm 91. Around that side runs a command to guard the wearer from all evil. The amulet is in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan.⁵

Why is Psalm 91 read in times of plague?

Psalm 91 has been prayed by Jews for centuries in times of epidemic, as a promise of protection from pestilence and plague. The Babylonian Talmud, a work of the rabbinic sages, gives it two names, one of them the song against plagues. The Talmud ties that name to verse 10: “neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.” The same passage says Rabbi Joshua ben Levi recited the psalm’s verses as he went to sleep.¹

Jeff Levin follows the psalm through later epidemics. In the Black Death of the 14th century, surviving Jewish communities relied in part on reciting psalms, Psalm 91 above all. A Hebrew prayer for averting a cholera epidemic, from 1831, refers to Psalm 91. During COVID-19, verse 6 appeared on memes, t-shirts, bumper stickers and coffee mugs.¹

For traditionally religious Jews, reciting the psalm is no substitute for a physician’s care.¹

In 2014, a doctor in Nigeria, Adaora Okoli-Igonoh, caught Ebola while treating the first known case there. Ayokunle and Omololu Fagunwa report that during her treatment, Okoli-Igonoh began each morning by reading Psalm 91. Okoli-Igonoh recovered, and the Fagunwas count her among those whom the psalm’s words comforted and helped to recover.⁶

When was Psalm 91 written?

Psalm 91 was composed no later than 50 to 70 CE. Karol Švarc gives that date to a scroll from Qumran that holds a form of the psalm.² Psalms appear among texts from Qumran meant to ward off demons and illness, that scroll among them.¹ Švarc finds that the psalm moves between voices like a dialogue. That movement makes verses 1 and 2, and verse 9, hard to read.²

Inside the book of Psalms, Psalm 91 stands near the opening of Book IV, Psalms 90 to 106. Book IV opens with Psalm 90, the only psalm credited to Moses. Moses is named seven times in Book IV, and only once in the rest of the Psalms. In the story the five books of Psalms tell, Book IV is set in the Babylonian exile but shaped for readers after the exile.³ The first deportation to Babylon came in 597 BCE.⁷ In 587 BCE, Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and took much of Judah’s population into captivity. In 539 BCE, the Persian army under Cyrus II captured Babylon. In 538 BCE, Cyrus allowed captive peoples to return home.³

Nancy deClaissé-Walford studies Psalms 90, 91 and 92 together, as one connected group. The same study reads Psalm 91 as an answer to the plea of Psalm 90:14, that God would satisfy the people in the morning. The last verse of Psalm 91 makes that promise: “I will satisfy him with long life.”³