About this print

God Is Within Her She Shall Not Be Moved, Psalm 46:5

A woman stands at an ivy-covered arch and watches the sun come up over a hill town, above a psalm line that newer Bibles open with “God is within her” and close, a few words later, with the promise that she will not fall.

At the arch, facing the dawn

We see her from behind. A cream veil covers her head and falls over long brown curls, a terracotta shawl crosses her back, and her pale dress reaches the flagstones. She rests one hand on the side of a rounded stone arch wrapped in green ivy, as if she has just stepped up to look.

Through the opening, a walled town of white houses and square towers spreads across a hillside, with cypresses and olive trees below. A lavender ridge closes the horizon and the sun is just clearing it, washing the sky in gold. On the low parapet sits a clay pot with a leafy plant. The words above read: “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.” and then Psalm 46:5.

Who is “her” in Psalm 46:5?

In its first setting, “her” is a city. The verse just before says: “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.” That city is Jerusalem, and the psalm pictures it standing firm while mountains shake and nations rage around it. God living in her midst is what keeps her walls from falling.

“And that right early” is a lovely old phrase. The Hebrew says literally “at the turning of the morning”, the moment night gives way to day. Ancient armies liked to attack at dawn, so the promise is that help arrives exactly when the danger peaks. The painter has chosen that very hour for the sky.

Newer English versions begin the line with “God is within her”, and in that shorter form it has become one of the most shared verses among Christian women, applied to a single life rather than a city. Readers do not have to choose: the image of a person as a dwelling place of God runs through the New Testament too, where Paul calls the body a temple of the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther drew his hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God from this same psalm.

A gift for her

This print is chosen for a daughter heading to college, a friend starting over, a mother, a sister going through a hard season, or a woman being baptized. Hang it in a bedroom, a dressing area or a home office where the day begins.

The same psalm also gives its most quoted line, Be still, and know that I am God, painted as a lake at sunrise. Read Psalm 46 and what it means