Catholic Commentary
Final Petition and Profession of Faith
11Give us help against the adversary, for the help of man is vain.12Through God we will do valiantly, for it is he who will tread down our adversaries.
Psalms 60:11–12 presents a petition for God's intimate help against enemies, emphasizing that human military strength alone cannot achieve victory. The passage affirms that true courage and mighty deeds come only through God's power sustaining human action, not from human effort alone.
The warrior prays for help first, then acts with total courage—not because he doubts he'll get it, but because he refuses to act without it.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers read verses of this kind Christologically. The "adversary" (tzar) is not merely a Canaanite army but the Enemy of humanity — sin, death, and the devil. Christ himself, in his Passion, seems abandoned by God (cf. Ps 22:1), yet in that very abandonment accomplishes the supreme act of hayil — the defeat of death — entirely through the Father. The Church's liturgical tradition places precisely this Christological lens on the Passion Psalms. St. Augustine reads the vox of these petitionary psalms as the voice of the whole Christ (Christus totus) — Head and members — crying out together. When the Church prays verse 11, she speaks as the Body of Christ continuing to face "the adversary" in history, dependent on the same divine help that raised her Head from the dead.
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates these verses at the intersection of grace, freedom, and the theology of spiritual warfare. The Catechism teaches that "God's free initiative demands man's free response" (CCC 2002), and precisely this dynamic is enacted in verses 11–12: God's help is implored (divine initiative), and valiant human action follows (free human response). Neither swallows the other. This is the Catholic synthesis against both Pelagianism (which would make "we will do valiantly" independent of God) and a certain quietism (which would dissolve human action into passive waiting).
St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on the structure of prayer and petition, notes that we do not pray to change God's will but to cooperate with it — to position ourselves rightly before the source of all good (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 83, a. 2). Verse 11 is exactly this: the psalmist is not informing God of a problem God has overlooked; he is aligning Israel's will with God's by explicitly confessing dependence.
The "adversary" (tzar) receives fuller theological identity in Catholic tradition through St. Peter's warning: "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion" (1 Pet 5:8). The Church Fathers — particularly Origen in his De Principiis and St. John Chrysostom in his homilies on the Psalms — consistently interpret the tzar of the lament psalms as including the demonic adversary, making these verses a warrant for exorcistic and protective prayer. The Roman Rite has long drawn on this Psalm tradition in its prayers of deliverance.
Furthermore, hayil — valiant deeds through God — maps onto Catholic teaching on merit: that good works, genuinely wrought by the justified person, are nonetheless entirely the fruit of grace (Council of Trent, Session VI, Canon 2). The soul acts; the glory is God's.
Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with the temptation to fight spiritual, moral, and cultural battles by purely human means — better arguments, stronger institutions, more effective social media strategies. Psalm 60:11–12 is a direct rebuke and a direct invitation. The rebuke: "vain is the salvation of man." Whatever coalitions, plans, or personal resolve we bring, they cannot ultimately prevail against the adversary — be that adversary sin in one's own soul, secularism in culture, or the devil in spiritual warfare. The invitation is equally direct: through God we will do valiantly — not timidly, not passively, but with full-throated, whole-hearted action, precisely because the source of that action is inexhaustible.
Concretely: before launching any significant effort — an apostolate, a difficult conversation, a moral struggle, a work of mercy — the Catholic is called to make this prayer explicit. Begin with "Give us help against the adversary," naming the specific adversary honestly. Then act with everything you have, anchored by the confession "through God." This is how the saints operated: St. Joan of Arc prayed before battle; St. Thomas More went to his death valiantly. Neither waited for miracles that excused action; both acted with total courage that was simultaneously total dependence.
Commentary
Psalms 60:11 — "Give us help against the adversary"
The Hebrew underlying "adversary" (צָר, tzar) denotes a foe who presses in from every side, one who constricts and oppresses. The plea is stark and unadorned: Give us help (הָבָה־לָּנוּ עֶזְרָת, havah-lanu ezrat). Significantly, the word for "help" here (ezrat) is the same root used in Genesis 2:18 — ezer, a "helper" — and later applied to God himself in the Psalter (cf. Ps 121:2, "my help comes from the Lord"). The psalmist is not simply asking for military reinforcement; he is asking God to be what only God can be: Israel's ezer, the intimate, indispensable sustainer.
The second half of verse 11 in the fuller Hebrew text (v. 13 in some numbering) reads: "for vain is the salvation of man." This couplet is crucial. It is not mere poetry; it is theological diagnosis. The psalmist has catalogued in the preceding verses God's apparent withdrawal and Israel's military disaster (vv. 1–5), yet now, rather than concluding that God has failed, he concludes that human resource has failed. The adversary cannot be overcome by the arm of flesh. This anticipates the Deuteronomic theology of holy war, where Israel's victories are given precisely when human means are most obviously insufficient (cf. Gideon's three hundred, Judg 7).
Psalms 60:12 — "Through God we will do valiantly"
The Hebrew b'Elohim na'aseh hayil (בֵּאלֹהִים נַעֲשֶׂה־חָיִל) is electrifying in its grammar. Na'aseh is first-person plural cohortative — it carries the force of determined resolution, something between "we shall" and "let us!" The word hayil (חַיִל) is the same word used for an army of strength, valor, or wealth — translated variously as "valiantly," "mightily," or "great deeds." This is no meek submission; it is battle-readiness, but battle-readiness that has been entirely re-sourced. The b prefix ("through," "in," "by") is the key: the subject of the mighty action is still Israel, still the human community — but the power, the ground, and the guarantee of that action is God (Elohim).
This creates a sophisticated theological synthesis: human agency is preserved ("we will do"), but it is entirely contingent on and empowered by divine initiative ("through God"). There is no quietism here, no fatalism. The psalmist calls Israel to act — but to act as instruments of Another. This is not resignation but the highest form of courage, because it strips action of the ego that so often corrupts it.