Psalms 66:20

Psalm 66 closes with a resounding doxology: the psalmist, having led the community in praising God for His mighty deeds and having offered his personal vows, now blesses God precisely because God has not rejected his prayer. This single verse is a thunderclap of gratitude — the entire drama of petition, waiting, and answered prayer collapses into one act of praise. The blessing is not merely for what was received, but for the fact of being heard at all, revealing that intimacy with God is itself the deepest gift.

Verse 20 — "Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer"

The psalm has moved in three distinct movements: a universal summons to praise God for His works in creation and history (vv. 1–7), a communal reflection on Israel's trials as a refining crucible (vv. 8–12), and finally a deeply personal account of the psalmist's vows, offerings, and petition (vv. 13–20). Verse 20 is the keystone that seals the arch.

"Blessed be God" (bārûk ʾĕlōhîm): The Hebrew bārûk — "blessed" — when directed toward God, is an act of benediction in the strict sense: the creature acknowledges and proclaims the source of all goodness. This is not wishing God well (as if He needed it), but rather a liturgical declaration that God is blessed, that His nature overflows with blessedness. In the Septuagint (eulogētos ho theos), this language flows directly into the New Testament doxologies (cf. Eph 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3), cementing the psalm's role as a template for Christian prayer.

"Who has not turned away my prayer": The negative construction is striking and theologically rich. The psalmist does not say simply "who answered me," but rather "who did not turn away." This framing reflects the felt experience of prayer: the deepest anxiety of the one who prays is not merely that the request may be denied, but that the prayer itself — the relationship, the cry, the outstretched hand — might be dismissed. To have one's prayer "not turned away" is to have been received as a person, not merely processed as a petitioner. The Hebrew idiom of "turning away" (sûr) evokes the terrifying divine silence that the Psalter elsewhere dreads (cf. Ps 22:24; 88:14).

The closing phrase, "nor his steadfast love from me" (ḥasdô): Though this second clause is sometimes rendered separately, it is grammatically parallel: God has not withheld His prayer or His hesed — His covenant love, His merciful faithfulness. This is the great Old Testament term for the bond of committed love that defines the covenant relationship. By pairing "my prayer" with "His hesed," the psalmist reveals that answered prayer is itself an expression of covenant fidelity. God hears because He loves; He loves because He is faithful to His covenant self.

Typological and spiritual senses: The entire dynamic of Psalm 66 — suffering, testing, vows, and confident praise — is read by the Fathers as a figure of Christ's own paschal journey. Just as Israel passed through fire and water and came to abundance (v. 12), so Christ passed through death into resurrection. Verse 20 then becomes, in the spiritual sense, Christ's own blessing of the Father who "heard him because of his reverent submission" (Heb 5:7). The prayer of Christ in Gethsemane was not "turned away" — not because the cup was removed, but because the Father was present through it, and the hesed of the Trinity was never withheld.

Catholic tradition illuminates this verse along several distinct lines.

The theology of petition and divine condescension: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "God thirsts that we may thirst for him" (CCC 2560), and that prayer is above all the living relationship between God and man (CCC 2558). Psalm 66:20 reveals the telos of this relationship: not merely that requests are fulfilled, but that the conversation itself is sustained. God's not "turning away" prayer is a profound affirmation of human dignity — God takes the creature's cry seriously.

Augustine reads the Psalms as the voice of the whole Christ (totus Christus), Head and Body together. In his Enarrationes in Psalmos, he notes that when the Church prays and finds herself heard, it is because Christ's prayer undergirds and inhabits her petition. Psalm 66:20 is thus a guarantee: the prayer of the Body is inseparable from the prayer of the Head, and the Head's prayer is never rejected.

Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 83) insists that the efficacy of prayer derives not from human merit but from the mercy of God who draws us to pray in the first place. The psalmist's benediction — "Blessed be God" — is itself the fruit of grace: the very gratitude with which the verse closes is a gift.

The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium recovers the Psalms as the Church's essential prayer, noting that in the Liturgy of the Hours the Church "continues to offer to the Father a sacrifice of praise" (SC 83). Psalm 66:20 captures perfectly why the Church perseveres in this offering: because the Father never turns it away.

For Catholics today, Psalm 66:20 offers a corrective to two common distortions of prayer. The first is the transactional view — praying only to obtain outcomes, and measuring God's faithfulness by whether specific requests are granted. The psalmist's benediction centers not on what was received but on the fact of being heard. When a prayer seems unanswered, this verse invites the question: has God truly turned away, or is His hesed still present in a form I haven't recognized?

The second distortion is discouragement. Many Catholics quietly give up on prayer after perceived silence. This verse — placed deliberately at the psalm's climax, after the psalmist has described being "tested," "brought into the net," and "laid burdens on our backs" (vv. 10–11) — insists that God's attentiveness persists through the darkness, not only after it.

Concretely: conclude your personal prayer, whether consoled or dry, with a deliberate act of blessing God simply for receiving your prayer. Make verse 20 a daily doxology. This practice slowly reshapes prayer from demand to dialogue, from transaction to communion.