November 1–7, 2026 · All Saints' (Pentecost 23)
This week's readings
- Sunday, November 1 (All Saints') · 1 Kings 3:4–28 · Solomon's Wisdom
- Monday, November 2 · 1 Kings 4:20–28 · Solomon's Great Kingdom
- Tuesday, November 3 · 1 Kings 4:29–34 · Solomon's Great Wisdom
- Wednesday, November 4 · Psalm 72:1–14 · A Prayer for Israel's King
- Thursday, November 5 · Psalm 20:1–9 · A Plea for God's Aid
- Friday, November 6 · 1 Kings 11:1–13 · Solomon Goes Astray
- Saturday, November 7 · 1 Kings 12:1–24 · The Kingdom Is Divided
Psalm 72:1–14
Of Solomon.
God, give your judgments to the king. Give your righteousness to the king’s son.
Let him judge your people with righteousness and your poor ones with justice.
Let the mountains bring peace to the people; let the hills bring righteousness.
Let the king bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, but let him crush oppressors!
Let the king live as long as the sun, as long as the moon, generation to generation.
Let him fall like rain upon fresh-cut grass, like showers that water the earth.
Let the righteous flourish throughout their lives, and let peace prosper until the moon is no more.
Let the king rule from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.
Let the desert dwellers bow low before him; let his enemies lick the dust.
Let the kings of Tarshish and the islands bring tribute; let the kings of Sheba and Seba present gifts.
Let all the kings bow down before him; let all the nations serve him.
Let it be so, because he delivers the needy who cry out, the poor, and those who have no helper.
He has compassion on the weak and the needy; he saves the lives of those who are in need.
He redeems their lives from oppression and violence; their blood is precious in his eyes.
(Psalm 72:0-14 CEB)
Notes
Today is Election Day for the midterms here in the United States. When Americans read biblical literature about a king, we tend to make a too-quick one-to-one correlation between kings and presidents, which probably reveals something sick and wrong about us. But hey, we live in a democracy, and a passage about a king can apply to any governmental leader, and to what we'd hope and want and pray for them. So Psalm 72 is a good prayer for anybody who gets elected today: neighborhood commissioners and school board members, mayors, representatives and senators.
The prayer goes, "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son. May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice" (vv. 1–2).
Notice the thrust of this passage. The king will bring justice, מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat), to the poor, to the children, to the needy. The NRSVue has the king "give deliverance to the needy," but the Hebrew says he saves לִבְנֵי אֶבְיוֹן (livnei 'evyon), "the children of the needy."
Then, also in verse 4: "crush the oppressor." We can wrestle with this. On the one hand, I am not a fan of violent language for God. But as I've preached and talked about before, I am also a super privileged human being. It makes sense that those who have experienced oppression might want God to get angry, dare I say wrathful, about oppressors. So I join my voice, as a person with privilege, to this prayer. God, enable the king, enable our leaders, to crush oppressors.
And of course whoever wrote Psalm 72 was very much aware that it's often the kings and the leaders, the school board members and neighborhood commissioners and representatives and senators, who are themselves the oppressors. This week's readings make the point for us. The lectionary sets this psalm, headed "Of Solomon," in the middle of Solomon's story, and by Saturday his son Rehoboam sends out the taskmaster over the forced labor, and all Israel stones him to death (1 Kings 12:18). So we pray for government that deals with government. Government that holds government accountable.
We want the righteous to flourish (the NRSVue says "righteousness," but the Hebrew is צַדִּיק, tsaddiq, "the righteous one"). We want there to be peace. I love this line in verse 7, "until the moon is no more," which is very poetic and beautiful and, honestly, a bit random.
Verse 12 again: it's the needy who cry out, and the poor, and those who have no helper. So on this Election Day, let's remember that it's the role of government to help those who have no helper. To help the needy, the poor, and the weak. To save the lives of those in need, those who have been harmed by oppression and violence, whose blood is precious in God's sight (vv. 13–14).
It is not the job of government to say, "Oh, you're needy because it's your fault. You're needy because of your poor life choices, because you did not earn enough." Christians—worshipers of a crucified God—of all people can’t believe in the myth of a merit-based society, the myth that says good people get what they deserve and bad people get what they deserve. Bad people, like the president, who's a felon and a rapist, have not gotten what they deserve. Refugees and immigrants and trans people haven't gotten what they deserve either—they deserve far better.
I know that those of us who are ex-evangelicals or post-evangelicals, all of us who came out of conservative religious backgrounds, have a little bit of an allergy to proclaiming who you should vote for. And it sucks, because it basically means we've ceded the ground to the conservatives. They get to use their faith as a cudgel, a weapon, to say, "You have to vote Republican. You have to vote conservative." And progressives and liberals who have faith, who hold a faith-based set of values and beliefs, say, "Well, I can't use my faith to make any sort of claims about voting, because people who have caused harm have abused that, and I don't want to be in that same tradition."
To me that's like refusing to use a fork because a toddler put a fork in their hair once. Yeah, some people have misused religion to support some really bad, stupid stuff. But my faith, my religion, tells me to love my neighbor and my enemy. I don't think it's that controversial to say I'm pretty confident I know how Jesus would vote.
He would vote for policies and policymakers who would help the poor and the needy and the oppressed, the immigrant and the refugee, trans people and gay people, women and children. And I don't think it's controversial to say that Jesus would not vote for people who would strip others of their rights, or who would not create a just society and a government that provides for its people. Jesus would not support policies and policymakers who support the bombing of other nations, or who refuse to be held accountable for their crimes.
Zechariah picked up this psalm, too. The dominion Psalm 72:8 prays for, "from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth," Zechariah 9:10 gives to a king who comes "humble and riding on a donkey," who "will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem" and "command peace to the nations."
God, give your judgments to our leaders. Give your righteousness to our leaders. God, may we have leaders who judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. May it be so.
Questions for reflection
Psalm 72 asks God to help the king "crush the oppressor," and its writer knew how often the king was the oppressor. How do you pray for leaders you're afraid will do harm?
Verse 12 says the king is there for "the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper." Who are those people where you live, and who is listening to them?
