He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place, Psalm 91:1 Print

The cave above the valley

The painting is built around a shallow cave in pale limestone, crowned with scrubby green bushes and small trees clinging to the rock. The back wall glows honey-gold, as if the stone has kept the warmth of the day. Jesus sits just inside the mouth, knees drawn up and forearms resting on them, in a cream robe with a slate-blue and rust mantle slipping from his shoulder. He is not praying with raised hands; he is simply looking out.

What he sees opens to the right: folds of blue hills, a few dark cypresses and a low sun hazy at the horizon. The lettering above reads “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High”, with Psalm 91:1 in smaller type.

What is “the secret place of the most High”?

The King James text finishes the thought in the same verse: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” The Hebrew word behind “secret place” means a hiding place or covert, somewhere you cannot easily be found. To “dwell” there is not to visit in an emergency but to live there, and the reward is to “abide”, literally to lodge overnight, in God's shade.

In two verses the psalmist uses four names for God: the Most High, the Almighty, the LORD and my God. Verse 2 then switches from “he” to “I”, as the speaker claims that shelter for himself and names God as refuge and fortress. The rest of the psalm walks through every danger of the ancient world, from the terror by night to the arrow by day, and promises protection through each.

The psalm has no title in Hebrew, and Jewish tradition has often linked it with Moses, who is named in the heading of Psalm 90 just before it. Christians pray it in the Church's night office. The painter's choice of Jesus alone in the hills recalls the Gospels, which describe him slipping away before dawn to lonely places to pray.

When someone is grieving

Psalm 91 is read at many funerals and is often the first passage people open during a long illness, so this print is frequently given in sympathy. It says, without saying too much, that the person you love is sheltered.

It also works as a daily reminder for a bedroom or a quiet reading chair, where the warm cave and the open valley give the eye somewhere restful to go.