These Bible verses for protection from evil are words you can pray when you sense danger, face temptation, or simply want to begin the day under God’s care. Many are prayers straight from the Psalms, and others are promises you can hold on to, so you can speak them aloud over yourself, your home and the people you love.
Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
Psalms 91:9-11 (KJV)
Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you and His angels are given charge over you.
Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man;
Psalms 140:1 (KJV)
David’s short, direct prayer asks God to deliver him from the evil man and preserve him from the violent.
Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the gins of the workers of iniquity.
Psalms 141:9 (KJV)
A useful prayer for anyone who feels trapped, asking God to keep them from the snares others have laid.
And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
2 Timothy 4:18 (KJV)
Near the end of his life, Paul is confident the Lord will deliver him from every evil work and bring him safely home.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Psalms 23:4 (KJV)
Even walking through the valley of the shadow of death, David fears no evil because God is with him.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
Psalms 91:5-6 (KJV)
A promise to pray at night, when fear of hidden danger in the dark can feel strongest.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.
Psalms 138:7 (KJV)
Though walking in the midst of trouble, David trusts God to revive him and save him with His right hand.
And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.
1 Chronicles 4:10 (KJV)
Jabez prays that God’s hand would be with him and that he would be kept from evil, and God grants it.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Matthew 6:13 (KJV)
Jesus gives these words so His people can ask daily to be delivered from evil.
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,
Psalms 17:8 (KJV)
A tender request to be kept as the apple of God’s eye and hidden under the shadow of His wings.
Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.
Psalms 57:1 (KJV)
Written while hiding from danger, this prayer takes refuge in God’s wings until the calamity passes.
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
Luke 10:19 (KJV)
Jesus tells His disciples He has given them authority over all the power of the enemy.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7 (KJV)
When temptation presses in, this verse gives a clear response: submit to God and resist the devil.
But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.
2 Thessalonians 3:3 (KJV)
A reassuring reminder to pray back to God that He is faithful and will keep you from evil.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
Psalms 121:7-8 (KJV)
These lines make a simple blessing to speak over yourself or someone you love before leaving home.
But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
Psalms 3:3 (KJV)
David calls the Lord his shield, his glory and the One who lifts up his head when he is under attack.
And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.
Deuteronomy 31:8 (KJV)
The Lord goes before you and will not fail you, so there is no need to fear or be dismayed.
Matthew 6:13 works well prayed by naming your specific concern, asking directly for deliverance from evil in that situation.
If you want to keep reading, Bible Verses About God Giving Strength and Bible Verses About Repentance sit close to this topic.
Quotations follow the King James Version of 1611, now in the public domain. To read any verse within its full chapter, try Blue Letter Bible.
Bible Verses For Faith in God and Bible Verses For Healthy Relationships are good companions to this page.
This subject overlaps with Bible Verses For Physical Healing and with Bible Verses For God's Faithfulness.
For a related angle, see Bible Verses For Family or Bible Verses For Salvation.
You might also turn to Bible Verses For Protection from Enemies and Bible Verses About Protection from Enemies.
To see how other translations render these lines, look them up on Bible Gateway.
Bible Hub offers commentary and cross-references for each verse.
Return to this verse as an ongoing part of your prayer life, not a one-time request.
Deliver us from evil is part of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples directly, modeled as a regular, expected part of prayer rather than an unusual or extreme request. This inclusion is worth remembering — asking directly for protection from evil is not a sign of excessive fear or unusual spiritual concern, but part of the ordinary pattern of prayer Jesus himself instructed.
If you have hesitated to pray this directly, feeling it might seem dramatic, this direct inclusion in the Lord’s Prayer offers real precedent for asking exactly this, regularly and without hesitation.
James 4:7’s instruction to resist the devil uses active, deliberate language, not passive avoidance. This distinction matters — protection from evil, biblically described, involves active engagement, not only staying away from obviously dangerous situations. If you are facing something you recognize as genuinely evil or harmful, active, deliberate resistance is the pattern Scripture describes, not only distance or avoidance.
Part of protection from evil involves genuine discernment — recognizing what is actually harmful, which is not always immediately obvious. Scripture repeatedly ties wisdom and discernment to spiritual protection, suggesting part of staying protected involves actively developing the ability to recognize evil clearly, not only reacting once it has become unmistakable.
Whatever specific evil or harm you are seeking protection from right now, these verses are meant to be prayed directly over that actual situation, not read only as general spiritual language disconnected from your real concern.
This prayer for deliverance is meant to be prayed as often as needed, not treated as something requested once and considered permanently settled.
Trust in this deliverance rests on the character of the one who promises it, not on your own ability to fully understand or explain how it works.
Share this prayer with someone else who needs it, not only holding it privately. Deliverance prayed over more than one person carries its own kind of shared strength.
These verses were never meant to sit on a page as decoration \u2014 they’re meant to shape how you actually respond the next time you sense spiritual heaviness you can’t quite explain.
You don’t need polished or formal language for it \u2014 an honest, plainly worded sentence is enough, something as simple as telling God directly to stand firm in the protection God has already promised.
Paul’s description of spiritual armour in Ephesians 6:14-17 lends itself to a short morning habit. Before checking messages or the news, take five minutes to go through each piece and turn it into a sentence of prayer. The point is not to recite a ritual but to begin the day consciously relying on what God has already provided. Over time, this becomes one of the simplest ways to use Bible verses for protection from evil every single day.
Psalm 5:3 describes David directing his prayer to God in the morning and looking up. Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning. Pairing either passage with the armour list above gives the day a clear starting point. Among these Bible verses for protection from evil, the sword of the Spirit is the one piece used to strike back, which is why memorising Scripture matters so much.
If mornings are rushed, shorten the routine to a single sentence for each piece while making coffee or walking to the bus. God is not measuring the length of the prayer.
Evening can bring the routine full circle. Before bed, look back over the day and notice where the armour held and where it slipped. Confess what needs confessing, thank God for the moments He kept you, and choose one of the Bible verses for protection from evil to fall asleep on. Psalm 17:8, listed above, is a gentle one for the night.
Much of the evil people meet today does not knock on the door. It arrives through a phone, a feed or a late-night search. David made a resolution that fits this situation remarkably well: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psalm 101:3). The same psalm speaks of walking within his house with a perfect heart (Psalm 101:2), which ties personal integrity to the atmosphere of the home.
Praying Bible verses for protection from evil over a household can go hand in hand with practical choices. Some families keep devices out of bedrooms at night, use filters, or agree on shows they will not watch. None of these replaces prayer, and prayer does not replace them. Both are ways of taking evil seriously and closing doors it might use.
Paul tells believers to think on whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report (Philippians 4:8). Try using that list as a filter: before opening an app or starting a series, ask whether it will feed any of those things. When the answer is no, choose something else, or simply put the phone down. These passages become far more powerful when they shape daily decisions rather than only emergency prayers.
If you have already let something harmful in, do not hide from God in shame. James 4:8 promises, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” Confess it, change the setting or habit that opened the door, and tell a trusted friend if the struggle keeps returning. Honest accountability is one of the practical ways Bible verses for protection from evil are lived out rather than only read.
Consider writing Psalm 101:3 on a sticky note and placing it where you charge your phone. It is a small reminder at exactly the moment it is needed. For more ways to pray over the unseen battle, these verses for spiritual protection offer further prayers.
Children face their own versions of evil: bullying, pressure from friends, frightening images and fears that come at bedtime. They need simple, memorable words they can hold on to. Proverbs 1:10 speaks directly to a young person: “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” It is short enough for a child to learn and clear enough to use on the playground.
Start with the line from the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil,” and explain it in their words: asking God to keep them away from wrong things and wrong people. Let them pray it at breakfast. For younger children, Psalm 3:3, which calls the Lord a shield, can become a picture they draw and hang by the bed. Choosing a few Bible verses for protection from evil and repeating them over weeks helps them stick.
Listen first, then pray with them rather than for them from across the room. Kneel beside the bed, say one verse together and let the child finish the prayer in their own words. Assure them that telling a trusted adult about something wrong is also a way God protects them. Children learn that Bible verses for protection from evil go together with speaking up and asking for help.
Parents looking for more passages to pray over their sons and daughters can find them in Bible verses for children’s protection, which focuses on younger readers and families.
Memory is short, especially when a new trouble arrives. A deliverance journal is a simple notebook where you record what you asked God to protect you from and what happened next. David wrote, “I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4). He could say that because he remembered specific moments of rescue.
Each entry needs four short lines: the date, the situation you are worried about, one of the Bible verses for protection from evil that fits it, and a one-sentence prayer. Leave space underneath. Weeks or months later, come back and write how God answered, even when the answer looked different from what you expected.
Israel set up stones of remembrance after crossing the Jordan so that future generations would ask what they meant (Joshua 4:6-7). A journal works in a similar way for one household. Reading back through old entries builds trust for new ones, and it gives you real stories to tell your children and friends. Using the verses in this way turns scattered prayers into a record of God’s faithfulness.
Be honest in the journal. Some entries will not have tidy endings, and that is fine. The notebook is not a scorecard for God but a place to keep bringing Him your life. Over a year, it often shows a pattern of care that was hard to see one day at a time.
Couples and small groups can keep a shared journal too. Each week, read one another’s entries and pray the matching Bible verses for protection from evil over each person by name, then note any answers together.
Second Timothy is the final letter Paul wrote, and he wrote it from a Roman prison, probably chained, probably cold, and fairly sure he would not be released. Earlier in the same chapter he says his departure is at hand. Then comes a line that is easy to rush past: “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18). Read that again with the setting in mind. A man facing execution says he will be delivered.
What does he mean? Clearly not that the sentence will be cancelled. Paul has just described being abandoned by friends at his first defence, and he knows how the story is likely to end. His confidence is aimed at something else, that no evil work will succeed in turning him from Christ before the end. He expects to arrive at the kingdom with his faith intact. The deliverance he names is about where he finishes, not about whether he is comfortable on the way.
That gives a sturdier handle for anyone who prays for rescue from wrongdoing and does not see an immediate change. You may be asking to be kept from a bitterness that has been growing since a divorce, or from a lie you are tempted to tell your boss. The request is real and God hears it. Yet the answer may look like a quiet strength to keep going, delivered a day at a time, in a place you would never have chosen.
Psalm 23:4 is read at funerals so often that its details blur. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” A shepherd in the Judean hills knew these valleys well, narrow ravines where the sun barely reached the floor and wolves or thieves could wait around any bend. The sheep could not see far. They only knew whether the shepherd was close enough to hear.
The two tools matter. The rod was a short club, carried to drive off a predator, so it stands for defence. The staff was the long crook, used to pull a stray back from a ledge or to nudge a lamb along, so it stands for guidance. Evil, in the Bible, has both faces too. Sometimes it attacks from outside, and sometimes it simply leads a person off the path a few steps at a time. The psalm says the shepherd carries something for each.
Notice that David does not say he will avoid the valley. He says he will walk through it, and that he will not fear evil there because of who walks beside him. If you are in a dark stretch right now, a layoff, a family fight, a long illness, you do not have to pretend it is bright. Walk, keep your eyes on the one nearby, and let ordinary people help carry the load.
Seventy disciples come back from their first mission trip nearly breathless. “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name,” they report (Luke 10:17). Jesus answers with one of the most quoted lines about authority: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19). Taken alone, it can sound like a charm against all harm, and some people have treated it exactly that way, with painful results.
The next verse corrects the reading. “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). Jesus pulls their attention off their own success and onto their standing with God. The authority is real, but it is lent, and it is not the main thing. The disciples had no business building an identity out of how much power they felt that week.
The practical lesson is gentle. Authority over evil in the New Testament is never a licence to take foolish risks or to test God with danger. It lives alongside humility, prayer, and ordinary caution. A person who wants to stand against darkness will do better looking for faithful friends and a regular rhythm of worship than chasing dramatic spiritual victories. Boring consistency has outlasted a lot of flashy confidence.
Tucked inside a long genealogy in 1 Chronicles 4 is a small, abrupt story about a man named Jabez, whose mother gave him a name that sounds like the Hebrew word for pain. He prays: “Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me!” The text then says, “And God granted him that which he requested” (1 Chronicles 4:10).
There is a surprising amount of human feeling in those few lines. A man marked by pain from birth asks not to be defined by it, and he asks God to keep evil from causing him more grief. Notice that the request is specific about the result he fears, which is grief. He is not asking for a trouble-free world. He is asking that when wrongdoing comes near, it will not wound him as it might have.
A word of care. Some teaching has turned this verse into a formula for getting bigger territory and a bigger life, and that is a stretch the text does not support. It is one man, one prayer, one sentence of response. What can be said safely is that short, honest prayers are welcome, and that asking God to guard you from evil is a request he has been glad to hear since long before Jesus taught the same thing in the Lord’s Prayer.
More verse collections related to this page: Bible Verses About Protection from Evil, Bible Verses For Protection from Enemies, Bible Verses About Protection from Enemies, Bible Verses About Children's Protection and Bible Verses About Protection for Family.
If you want to dig further, Blue Letter Bible, Bible Gateway and Bible Hub are good places to start.
Psalm 5:3 describes David directing his prayer to God in the morning and looking up. Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that the Lord's mercies are new every morning. Pairing either passage with the armour list above gives the day a clear starting point. Among these Bible verses for protection from evil, the sword of the Spirit is the one piece used to strike back, which is why memorising Scripture matters so much.
Paul tells believers to think on whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report (Philippians 4:8). Try using that list as a filter: before opening an app or starting a series, ask whether it will feed any of those things. When the answer is no, choose something else, or simply put the phone down. These Bible verses for protection from evil become far more powerful when they shape daily decisions rather than only emergency prayers.
Listen first, then pray with them rather than for them from across the room. Kneel beside the bed, say one verse together and let the child finish the prayer in their own words. Assure them that telling a trusted adult about something wrong is also a way God protects them. Children learn that Bible verses for protection from evil go together with speaking up and asking for help.
Israel set up stones of remembrance after crossing the Jordan so that future generations would ask what they meant (Joshua 4:6-7). A journal works in a similar way for one household. Reading back through old entries builds trust for new ones, and it gives you real stories to tell your children and friends. Using Bible verses for protection from evil in this way turns scattered prayers into a record of God's faithfulness.
