Deliver me from evil

Like some of the early Davidic heart-cries, this is a prayer for rescue from some very visible enemies—or if invisible, all the more dangerous. The apostle Paul includes it in his clinching catalogue of evidence against us all in Romans 3. But with the notable exception of Charles Wesley, the Psalm does not seem to have many takers among English versifiers; not even Watts attempted it. The text of this version comes from The Psalter Hymnal (1987) of the Christian Reformed Church in N America, where the 1912 Psalter is given as the source, as altered by Bert Witvoet in 1985. The tune, however, is freshly associated with these words. BLACKDOWN, composed by Andrew Maries at Cullompton following a request from the ‘Jubilate’ editors, also appears in a different arrangement at 436. The Blackdown Hills stand above the Culm Valley near the composer’s home in Devon.

A notable landmark in the line of Scottish metrical Psalters beginning with the classic 1650 collection, which remained unchallenged for nearly a century until revisions began in 1745; the 1912 book was the last significant one of its kind before Sing Psalms qv. Nos.46A, 87, 93, 94, 111, 119C, 119F, 135, 140.