Psalm 73:25-26 vs. “Be Thou My Vision”

Audrey Assad · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassagePsalm 73:25-26 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumInheritance · 2016

Words addressed toGod, person unspecified

Teaching or experienceexperience (the singer’s story)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Nearly every line looks at God: the hymn is one long address asking Him to be everything, and one stanza sets riches and human praise below Him in so many words
Presents itself honestly as a prayer, not as scripture, with no citation and no scripture framing anywhere
The inheritance stanza's request sits as close to Psalm 73:25-26 as a petition can sit to a declaration: same portion, same none-but-You posture
The transmission chain is unusually well documented: Byrne's 1905 prose translation and Hull's 1912 versification are both published and checkable

⚠ Cautions

No passage is cited, so the connection to Psalm 73 is a hymnal index's pairing and ours, not one the hymn makes
Sung alone, a petition can leave the impression that God's being your portion is still pending. The psalm states it as fact. Ask with the declaration in hand
Hull's text has been edited between hymnals for a century, so the stanzas in your hymnal may not match the stanzas Assad sings

Verse Proof

Psalm 73:25-26

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And on earth I desire no one besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Psalm 73 is Asaph's, and it is a confession with a story in it. He envied the arrogant, watched the wicked prosper, and says his feet had almost slipped, until he entered God's sanctuary and saw how it ends. Verses 25 and 26 are where the psalm lands: having nearly traded God for what the wealthy had, Asaph declares that God is all he has and all he wants. Notice the pivot inside the passage itself: verse 25 speaks to God ("Whom have I in heaven but You?") and verse 26 turns to speak about Him ("God is the strength of my heart"). Address and declaration sit side by side in one breath.

What the song says, described not quoted

Assad sings the full five-stanza English hymn: Eleanor Hull's 1912 versification of Mary Byrne's 1905 prose translation of an Old Irish poem. Nearly every line is a petition. The singer asks God to be their vision, their wisdom and true word, their father in relation to a child, their shield and defence, their dignity, their shelter, their treasure and inheritance, and the heart of their own heart. One stanza sets riches and human praise aside in so many words. The last stanza looks toward heaven and asks that God remain the singer's vision whatever comes. God is addressed throughout in the second person, under titles like Lord of the singer's heart, High King of Heaven, and Ruler of all, but no person of the Trinity is singled out. Roughly three quarters of the lines ask God to be something; the rest declare what He is.

The hymn quotes nothing and cites nothing. It reached English two removes from its source: an Old Irish poem, attributed to Dallán Forgaill but dated by manuscript scholars centuries later, was translated into literal prose by Mary Byrne in the journal Ériu in 1905, then versified by Eleanor Hull in 1912. The pairing with Psalm 73 is thematic, not one the song makes. The inheritance stanza asks God to be the singer's treasure and inheritance, first in the heart, with no one else able to take that place. That is the psalm's confession made into a request, and Hymnary's own scripture index points the text at Psalm 73:24-28. What shifted is the speech-act. The psalm declares what God is. The hymn asks God to be it.

· Not a quote: The hymn never says it is quoting and cites no passage. Its petitions ask God to be what Psalm 73:25-26 declares He already is. Nothing it asks for is something the psalm denies.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The hymn asks God to be what the psalm declares He already is. Both are prayer; neither is quotation.

Why it matters

A prayer to God is a different kind of sentence than a statement about God, and this hymn is wall-to-wall prayer: it asks, line after line, with almost nothing left over. Psalm 73:25-26 is the other kind of sentence, a declaration made by a man who nearly walked away and came back sure. The two belong together, but they do different work. A congregation that only ever asks may never notice that the psalm's answer is already on the table, and a singer who knows the psalm sings the hymn differently: not wondering whether God will be their portion, but asking to want what is already theirs.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a ranked list with God at the top of it. The my-words are dense in this hymn, but count what the lines are about: every one of them names something God is or is asked to be, and the singer appears only as the one asking. That is why the dwelling tag is God. Looped, the hymn rehearses a posture of wanting God more than riches, praise, or safety, which is exactly the posture Psalm 73 arrives at the hard way. The one thing the hymn cannot plant on its own is the psalm's certainty, because asking is not the same act as knowing. Sing the hymn until it is memorised, and let verse 26 stand behind it: flesh and heart fail, and God is the strength of the heart and the portion forever. The prayer asks for what the confession holds.

Helpful comparison

Two things are worth holding next to each other. First, the passage itself contains both speech-acts the entry is about: verse 25 is addressed to God and verse 26 speaks about Him, so the psalm models the very move from prayer to confession that a singer of this hymn has to make on their own. Second, the hymn's genre is documented: hymnologists class the Old Irish original as a lorica, a protection prayer, which is why it runs on petitions rather than statements. The English text is two documented hands from the original, prose in 1905 and verse in 1912, and hymnal editors have kept adjusting Hull's wording since, so the hymn is a good reminder that "traditional" words still have a paper trail. Assad's recording keeps the full five-stanza Hull text rather than a shortened modern selection.

Sources

Audrey Assad — Be Thou My Vision, official music video · (the recording checked for this proof; upload verified on the Audrey Assad channel)
Wikipedia — Inheritance (Audrey Assad album) · (released February 12, 2016 on Fortunate Fall Records; a hymns collection with Be Thou My Vision as track 3)
Hymnology Archive — Be Thou My Vision · (the Old Irish poem, its attribution to Dallán Forgaill and later scholarly dating; Byrne's prose translation in Ériu vol. 2, 1905; Hull's versification in The Poem-Book of the Gael, 1912; the SLANE pairing in the 1919 Church Hymnal; hymnal compilers' ongoing adjustments to Hull's text)
Hymnary.org — Be Thou My Vision · (translator and versifier credits; the scripture index linking the text to Psalm 73:24-28 among other passages)
UMC Discipleship — History of Hymns: Be Thou My Vision · (the original as a lorica, an Irish protection prayer; the tune SLANE drawn from Joyce's 1909 folk-music collection; later hymnals' edits to the text)

Corrections

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