Psalms 86:6–10

Psalms 86:6 — "Hear, Yahweh, my prayer" The imperative haqšîbâ (rendered "hear" or "give ear") is stronger in the Hebrew than a simple request: it connotes bending close to listen, as one tilts the ear toward a faint sound. This is not passive reception but active, attentive listening. The psalmist addresses Yahweh by the divine name, the personal, covenantal name revealed to Moses (Ex 3:14–15), not a generic title. This specificity matters: the psalmist is not calling into an undifferentiated divine void but invoking the God of the covenant, the God who has already committed Himself in love to Israel. The prayer is therefore grounded in relationship, not merely in desperation.

Psalms 86:7 — "In the day of my trouble I will call on you" The phrase "day of my trouble" (yôm ṣārâtî) echoes throughout the Psalter as a technical expression for moments of existential crisis — persecution, illness, spiritual aridity, or national catastrophe. The psalmist's confidence is not that trouble will be avoided, but that in the midst of it, God answers (ta'ănēnî, "you will answer me"). This is a statement of anticipated trust, not nostalgic recollection. The future tense is itself an act of faith: the prayer has not yet been answered, but the psalmist already speaks as one who expects a response. This posture of expectant petition is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies as the very structure of Christian prayer: "whether of petition or of intercession, [prayer] is characterized by a living relationship with God" (CCC 2565).

Psalms 86:8 — "There is no one like you among the gods, Lord" This verse sits at the theological center of the cluster. The Hebrew ên kāmôkā bāʾĕlōhîm does not concede the existence of other gods in a polytheistic sense but uses the rhetorical convention of the ancient Near East to make an incomparability statement. The "gods" (ʾĕlōhîm) of the nations are implicitly treated as non-entities — idols, at best spiritual powers subordinate and created — none of whom can rival Yahweh's works or character. The Septuagint renders this emphatically, and the Church Fathers consistently read verse 8 as an anticipation of monotheistic confession. St. Augustine, commenting on Psalm 86, notes that the "gods" here are the demons and idols to whom the nations paid homage, and that the Christian's confession of one God is itself the fulfillment of what the psalmist prophetically declared.

Psalms 86:9 — "All nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord" Here the psalm breaks open into eschatological vision. The participle ʾăšer ʿāśîtā — "whom you have made" — is crucial: the nations' ultimate accountability to God rests not on conquest or coercion but on creation. Because Yahweh made all peoples, all peoples belong to Him and will, in the fullness of time, acknowledge this belonging in worship (yištaḥăwû, "bow down" in prostration). This verse is one of the clearest universalist horizons in the pre-exilic Psalter. It anticipates not the destruction of the nations but their conversion — their gathering into the worship of the one true God. Typologically, the Church reads this as a direct prophecy of the Gentile mission inaugurated by Christ and carried forward by the Apostles.

Psalms 86:10 — "For you are great, and do wondrous things" The conjunction kî ("for") is the hinge of the argument: universal worship is the logical consequence of divine greatness and miraculous action. The word niplāʾôt ("wondrous things") refers throughout the Hebrew Scriptures specifically to the saving acts of God in history — the plagues of Egypt, the parting of the sea, the manna in the desert. To say God "does wondrous things" is to invoke the entire narrative of salvation. The final clause — "You alone are God" (ʾattâ ʾĕlōhîm lěbaddekā) — is the psalm's confession of strict, exclusive monotheism, the bedrock of Israel's faith and, through Israel, of the Church's.

Typological and Spiritual Senses In the fourfold sense of Scripture, verse 9 bears a clear allegorical sense: the nations coming to worship point to the gathering of the Church from every tribe and tongue (Rev 7:9). The anagogical sense points to the eschatological liturgy of heaven, when every knee will bow before Christ (Phil 2:10). St. Thomas Aquinas (STh I–II, q. 101) understood Israel's liturgy as preparation for the universal worship now offered in the Eucharist — the fulfillment of what verse 9 foresaw.

Catholic tradition reads Psalm 86:6–10 as a layered revelation of three interlocking doctrines: the uniqueness of God, the universality of salvation, and the Christological fulfillment of Israel's hope.

The Uniqueness of God (CCC 200–202): The declaration "there is no one like you among the gods" is, in Catholic teaching, not merely a relative preference but an ontological claim. The Catechism teaches that God is "the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end" (CCC 213). No creature, no spiritual being, no idol approximates this. The Fathers of the Church — Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and especially Augustine in the City of God — argued that the Psalms were the philosophical refutation of paganism, because they articulated a radical monotheism that pagan philosophy could only approach asymptotically.

Universal Salvation (CCC 836–848): Verse 9's vision of all nations worshipping before the Lord finds its doctrinal home in the Church's missionary consciousness. Lumen Gentium teaches that the Church is the "universal sacrament of salvation" (LG 48), and Ad Gentes roots the missionary mandate in precisely this scriptural pattern: God desires all peoples to come to knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). The nations are not destroyed but drawn in — an image of salvation that is ecumenical in the deepest sense.

Christological Fulfillment: The Church Fathers, following the Apostles' own interpretive practice, consistently read "wondrous things" (niplāʾôt) as referring ultimately to the supreme mirabilia Dei: the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and sending of the Spirit. Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, observed that the Psalms are ultimately the prayer of Christ Himself — and that in Psalm 86, Christ intercedes for all nations even as He declares the Father's incomparable greatness. The prayer of verse 6 thus becomes, in its deepest sense, Christ's own priestly prayer before the Father (cf. Heb 7:25).

For the contemporary Catholic, these five verses offer both a posture and a perspective. The posture is that of verse 7: calling on God in the day of trouble with concrete expectation, not vague hope. In an age of therapeutic spirituality that can dissolve prayer into self-talk or mindfulness, the psalmist's urgent, named address to Yahweh — the personal God who answers — is a corrective. Catholics are invited to recover the boldness of petition: to bring specific crises, by name, to a God who bends His ear to hear.

The perspective is that of verses 8–10: an antidote to the practical relativism of secular culture. When every belief system is treated as equally valid and all spiritual claims are reduced to personal preference, the confession "there is no one like you" is not arrogant exclusivism but liberating truth. The Catholic who prays this psalm is being shaped by a vision of reality in which the one God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is genuinely Lord of history, and in which every human being made by that God is ultimately destined for worship, not oblivion. This shapes Catholic engagement with people of other faiths: not as a mission to conquer, but as an invitation to the worship for which all nations were made.