Catholic Commentary
A Renewed Cry for Help and Confident Trust
12Give us help against the enemy, for the help of man is vain.13Through God, we will do valiantly, for it is he who will tread down our enemies.
Psalms 108:12–13 presents a communal prayer for divine help against adversaries, followed by affirmation that through God's power, Israel will act with military valor and defeat its enemies. The passage emphasizes human inadequacy apart from God and the paradox of vigorous human action that entirely depends on divine agency and strength.
The Psalmist's formula reveals the paradox God demands: admit you're helpless, then act boldly—not despite the helplessness, but through the power that only reaches those who abandon self-sufficiency.
In the moral/tropological sense, the two verses together map the structure of authentic Christian action: acknowledge inadequacy → petition God → act boldly in His strength. This is the arc of every saint's life.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates these verses at the intersection of grace, free will, and spiritual warfare.
On Human Insufficiency and Prevenient Grace: St. Augustine, commenting on parallel passages in the Psalter, insists that the confession "vain is the help of man" is not pessimism but the necessary precondition for grace: "He who trusts in himself throws God away; he who throws himself upon God finds himself" (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 60). The Council of Trent (Session VI, Chapter 5) echoes this in defining the beginning of justification as a movement initiated entirely by God's prevenient grace, to which the human will then freely cooperates.
On "Through God We Will Do Valiantly" as Synergy: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2008) teaches: "The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace." The Psalmist's formula — divine agency enabling human valor — is thus a pre-figuration of the Catholic understanding of merit: real human action, real human valor, but entirely dependent on and operative through God's power.
On Spiritual Warfare: CCC 2516 and 2853 speak of the Christian's ongoing battle against the "enemy" understood as the Devil, concupiscence, and the world. St. John Paul II (Novo Millennio Ineunte, §38) called prayer the "first form of mercy" — the very act of crying "Give us help" is itself part of the battle.
On Christ as the Perfect Psalmist: St. Thomas Aquinas (In Psalmos Davidis Expositio) reads the first-person plural voice of the Psalter as Christ speaking in the name of his Mystical Body, the Church. "Through God we will do valiantly" becomes the Church's own confession of grace-empowered mission.
Contemporary Catholics face a culture that prizes self-sufficiency, personal resilience, and human ingenuity as ultimate resources. Psalm 108:12–13 directly dismantles this assumption — not by counseling passivity, but by relocating the source of effective action. The concrete application is this: before any significant decision, ministry effort, family conflict, or moral struggle, the Catholic is invited to make the Psalmist's two-step movement their own. First, explicitly acknowledge the insufficiency of purely human resources ("give us help" — not "help me do what I've already planned"). Second, proceed with genuine boldness, not timidity, precisely because the power comes from God rather than self.
This is especially relevant for Catholics engaged in evangelization, pro-life advocacy, catechesis, or any form of apostolate that meets resistance. The pattern is not: plan thoroughly, then ask God to bless the plan. It is: cry out, receive, then act valiantly in that received strength. Practically, this psalm pair works well as a morning prayer of intention, orienting the day's work as collaborative with God rather than merely reported to Him.
Commentary
Psalms 108:12 — "Give us help against the enemy"
The Hebrew imperative hābāh-lānû ("give us") is an urgent, collective cry — not "give me" but "give us," marking the communal, liturgical nature of this prayer. The word translated "help" ('ezrāh) is the same root used in Psalm 121:2 ("My help comes from the LORD"), pointing to a thoroughly theocentric understanding of deliverance. Crucially, verse 12 opens with a stark admission: "for vain is the help of man" (implied by context and explicit in the parallel Psalm 60:11, from which Psalm 108 is partly compiled). Human military, political, or personal resources are declared radically insufficient. The "enemy" (ṣar, meaning "adversary" or "one who oppresses with narrowing pressure") can be understood historically as the nations hostile to Israel, but the breadth of the Psalter's use of this term opens it to every spiritual oppression the soul encounters.
This verse performs a spiritual movement that is structurally important: it follows immediately upon v. 11 ("Hast thou not rejected us, O God?"), the darkest point of the psalm, where God seems absent. Rather than resolving that tension with reassurance first, the Psalmist leaps directly into petition. This is itself a theology — that prayer addressed to the apparently silent God is already an act of faith, not its absence.
Psalms 108:13 — "Through God we will do valiantly"
The Hebrew bē'lōhîm na'ăśeh-ḥāyil is striking in its grammar: the verb is first-person plural future — "we will do" — and the agent is God ("through God"). This is not passive resignation but active, vigorous valor (ḥayil, a military term for strength, worth, and might) attributed entirely to the divine source. The same phrase appears verbatim in Psalm 60:12, establishing an intentional liturgical refrain across the Psalter.
The final clause, "and it is He who will tread down our enemies," shifts agency back to God with finality. The structure is chiastic: human petition (v. 12) → divine action (v. 13a) → divine victory (v. 13b). The Psalmist does not ask to be rendered invincible; he asks to act through (not independently of) God's power. This is a precise biblical articulation of what Catholic theology calls synergy — the cooperation of human agency and divine grace in which priority, initiative, and ultimate efficacy belong to God.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the typological sense, this cry finds its perfect fulfillment in Christ in Gethsemane: "Not my will but thine be done" (Luke 22:42) is the supreme "Give us help against the enemy," the enemy being sin, death, and the Adversary himself (1 Pet. 5:8). Christ, the true David and ideal Psalmist, prays this psalm in his own voice as Head of the Body. His Resurrection is the ultimate "doing valiantly through God" — not human heroism, but the Father's power working through the obedient, surrendered Son.