Bible Verses for Nightmares: For the Moment You Wake, and the Prayers Kept for the Dark

Psalm 63:6-8, for the minutes after waking

when I remember you on my bed, and think about you in the night watches. For you have been my help. I will rejoice in the shadow of your wings.

The next verse says, "My soul stays close to you. Your right hand holds me up." Psalm 63 is written from a dry and difficult place, and the night watches are simply when the speaker is awake. It gives you company in those hours, something to turn over while you are up, whenever sleep comes back. Read verses 6 to 8 once, slowly, then ask yourself: What could you turn over in the hours you are awake? Bible verses for sleepless nights reads the psalm closely and says why Psalm 4:8 and Psalm 127:2 were set aside for this hour.

Prayers kept for this hour

Several traditions keep prayers for this hour, and you can borrow their words. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer's Evening Prayer, said as the day closes, prays: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ."

The Jewish bedtime Shema, which My Jewish Learning calls an "extended version of the traditional Shema prayer" said before sleep, asks in one English wording "that You lay me down in peace and raise me up in peace, and let not my thoughts, bad dreams, or evil imaginings disturb me." The Orthodox Church in America's Evening Prayers ask, "Grant me, O Lord, to pass through the sleep of this night in peace." On Reddit's r/TheChosenSeries, one person wrote of it, "It’s so helpful when the bad dreams do roll around… 🙏🏻"

A light on, and a few minutes before trying again.

Psalm 91, which names the terror by night

Verse 4 says, "He will cover you with his feathers. Under his wings you will take refuge," and verse 5 goes on, "You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day." The wings are the same image as "the shadow of your wings" in Psalm 63:7. Two commentaries on Bible Hub read the phrase plainly: Matthew Henry as fear of the dangers of the night, the Catholic Haydock commentary among temporal dangers. The Episcopal Church's 1979 Compline includes Psalm 91, as do some orders of the bedtime Shema. It names the terror and speaks of shelter; pray it tonight as it stands.

Job, who told God about his dreams

Job speaks to his friends and to God after losing his children, his health and everything he had. "I will speak in the anguish of my spirit," he says, and then, "When I say, ‘My bed shall comfort me. My couch shall ease my complaint;’ then you scare me with dreams, and terrify me through visions" (Job 7:11, 13-14). Matthew Henry says Job "complains of the terrors of his sleep."

In the next two verses Job says he would rather die. If you know that feeling, please reach a person now. In the United States, call or text 988. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans is on 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14. Anywhere else, Find A Helpline lists services by country. For everybody else, Job 7 is permission to tell God exactly what the night was like.

The friend who explained

Eliphaz, one of Job's friends, describes a night vision: "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear came on me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake," and "The hair of my flesh stood up" (Job 4:13-15). He tells it to explain Job's suffering, and at the end of the book Yahweh tells him, "you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has" (Job 42:7). Matthew Henry treats what the vision says of God as true, and Eliphaz's use of it against Job as wrong. If somebody has handed you an explanation of your own dream, Scripture records the shaking, and God's answer to the friend who explained.

If you have been told it is spiritual

One person wrote on Reddit's r/TrueChristian, "I feel so much fear from these dreams that I truly feel like it’s some kind of spiritual attack." A reply in another r/TrueChristian thread said, "Yeah, you opened a door to the enemy when you stated that." A reply on Reddit's r/AskAPriest said, "Nightmares are almost always nothing spiritual."

Fr John Breck, in a 2001 reflection for the Orthodox Church in America, speaks of "warfare against nightmares" and calls the Cross "an invincible weapon which has once and for all destroyed the might of Satan and his minions." The OCA's evening prayers ask for victory over "the enemies both fleshly and bodiless." GotQuestions, an evangelical site, says, "Some people think Satan or demons are infiltrating their minds during nightmares, but there is no passage in the Bible to directly substantiate this." The clinical sources below describe nightmares as dreams and, when frequent, a sleep disorder.

If you were told you opened a door, each of these traditions meets a frightened person at night with prayer, and the kept prayers above are words any of them would offer. Say one now.

When a dream feels like a message

The dreams in Scripture belong to named people in their stories. Pharaoh woke, and "In the morning, his spirit was troubled" (Genesis 41:8); Joseph read his dreams as seven years of plenty and seven of famine for Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar said, "I saw a dream which made me afraid" (Daniel 4:5), and Daniel told him, "it is you, O king." Pilate's wife "suffered many things today in a dream because of him" (Matthew 27:19), and sent word to her husband to have nothing to do with Jesus. GotQuestions says no biblical dream other than perhaps hers "can really be called a nightmare."

What a nightmare is

The APA Dictionary of Psychology calls it "a frightening or otherwise disturbing dream in which fear, sadness, despair, disgust, or some combination thereof forms the emotional content." It typically occurs in REM sleep, and the dreamer wakes suddenly, "immediately alert and aware of their surroundings." The NHS, the UK health service, separates nightmares from night terrors, in which a child may "scream and thrash about" while still asleep and usually will not remember it. The Sleep Foundation, a US health-information site, notes that nightmares can begin "at the same time that you start a new medication," worth telling whoever prescribed it.

Early light.

After trauma, or dreams of somebody who has died

One person wrote on Reddit's r/CPTSD, "every night, there’s at least one dead person (or pet) who comes back and dies again in front of me." Another, on Reddit's r/GriefSupport, wrote, "the dream was a lie, the true nightmare is reality".

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's 2018 position paper uses the term "PTSD-associated nightmares" and recommends image rehearsal therapy, "altering the content of a nightmare by creating a new set of positive images and rehearsing the rewritten dream scenario while awake." A clinician guides it. Tell a doctor or a trauma-informed therapist; how much of the dream you describe is yours to decide. For dreams of somebody who died, see grief that comes back months later and Bible verses for sudden death.

At a child's bedside

The NHS says, "Night terrors are most common in children between the ages of 3 and 8, while nightmares can affect both children and adults," and that after a nightmare a child wakes and remembers it. An NHS guide for parents in Norfolk says, "Following a trauma it is common for sleep to be disturbed by worries, fear and nightmares."

For a child who has woken and remembers, say one short line together: Psalm 56:3, "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you," or Psalm 139:12, from a psalm of David, "even the darkness doesn’t hide from you, but the night shines as the day." During a night terror the child may not respond to comfort, so any prayer then is your own, and "Lighten our darkness" fits it.

When to see a doctor

The NHS says to see a GP, a family doctor, if nightmares are "regularly affecting your sleep and everyday life," or if a child still has night terrors after the age of 12. The Sleep Foundation suggests speaking to a doctor if nightmares "happen more than once a week" or affect "sleep, mood, and/or daily activity." Elsewhere, see your own doctor.

Questions people ask

What is the bedtime Shema called in Hebrew? Kriat Shema al HaMitah, as My Jewish Learning names it.

Which psalms does Compline use? The Episcopal Church's 1979 Compline includes Psalms 4, 91 and 134.

Are nightmares common after trauma? The American Academy of Sleep Medicine calls them "a common symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder."

Where to go next

If the night has turned into thoughts of ending your life, reach a person now: 988 in the United States, 9-8-8 in Canada, Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, and Find A Helpline everywhere else.

Otherwise, one step: read Psalm 63:6-7 with the verses around it once, in the dark. If something else is keeping you up, Bible Nudge can take a few words about it and suggest one passage. Find a passage.