Rescue me, LORD, from evildoers; protect me from the violent. – Psalm 140:1

Today's Scripture Reading (September 11, 2025): Psalm 140 & 141

When I was young, one of the passages of Scripture that I memorized was "The Lord's Prayer." The prayer, as I recited it then, was

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Of course, since then, I have been confronted with problems in the passage. The most obvious is that the last phrase of the prayer (For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.) is missing from most modern translations. It seems overwhelmingly likely that some enterprising scribe added the closing words of the prayer during the early days of the Christian Church. It is also probable that these words were used in the liturgy of the early church and then added to the text.

But another change is in the phrase "but deliver us from evil." The New International Version uses the phrase "but deliver us from the evil one." Is it protection from a more generic evil that Jesus was telling us to pray for, or was it something more personal, something Jesus calls "the evil one."

Psalm 140 presents us with a similar question, but this time in reverse. The Hebrew transliteration of the phrase is ra adam, which the New International Version translates as "evil doers." So, the Psalm begins with "Rescue me, Lord, from evildoers," a very familiar phrase to Matthew's "but deliver us from evil." However, ra adam literally translates to "bad man." Maybe it is not surprising that the King James Version of the passage translates it as "Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man."

Which is it, maybe both, or perhaps it is to be left up to us to decide. But whether it is a general evil or Satan, or even just a bad man, there is no doubt that we need both protection and deliverance from evil, the one who brings evil, and the bad man.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 142