Before surgery: prayers in Protestant Christianity

Texts from their published editions. Guidance on what this tradition does at this moment is on the occasion page, and background on the tradition is at /traditions/protestant.

Texts from their published editions

Each text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. Where the two disagreed by even one character, the text is not shown here. That is a claim about wording only: these are not selected or endorsed for any particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed them. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it. The full record, including the texts we held back because the two transcriptions disagreed, is at the verification record.

Psalm 121 (Coverdale)

A song of ascents used across Protestant and Anglican practice at departures, surgery, travel and deathbeds. It appears in the monthly Prayer Book psalm cycle and in most Protestant funeral and hospital orders, and it is among the psalms most frequently chosen by families asked to pick one.

English · The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, 1662Read twice, independently

I will lift vp mine eyes vnto the hills : from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.

Behold, he that keepeth Jsrael : shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord himself is thy keeper : the Lord is thy defence vpon thy right hand.

So that the sun shall not burn thee by day : neither the Moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : yea it is even he that shall keep thy soule.

The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in from this time forth for evermore.

Church of England, 1662. Published 1662, long before 1929, US public domain. UK Crown patent applies within the United Kingdom, so this edition is used here on the US basis only. Source

Out of copyright in the United States on the basis stated here, and free to reuse there. Please keep the citation with it.

This prayer’s own page · How this text was verified

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