The Psalmist, monarchist that he was, could never have imagined his words would close the administration of an elected president. 

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Yet, in the post on X now pinned at the top of the archived account of former president Biden, one reads: 

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Scripture says: “I have been young and now I’m old yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken.” After all these years serving you, the American people, I have not seen the righteous forsaken. I love you all. May you keep the faith.

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And may God bless you all.

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The verse, the 25th in Psalms’ 37th chapter, expresses a desire to see a covenantal society of virtue and morality, in which the common good is the civil goal.

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Independent of one’s political affinity or thoughts on the legacy of any individual president, the citation testifies to a tradition as long as the American republic itself—presidents’ citing the Hebrew Bible, a phenomenon worth appreciating on Presidents’ Day, which in 2025 falls on February 17th.

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Tradition!

George Washington, in a letter to the Savannah, Ga., Hebrew Congregation, expressed his desire that the “wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land” would continue to bless His people in what was believed to be a new Promised Land.

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John Adams, considering his leadership aspirations in a 1776 letter to his wife Abigail, mused “Is it not a Saying of Moses, who am I, that I should go in and out before this great People?”

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Thomas Jefferson, though skeptical of accounts of biblical miracles, nonetheless demonstrated an affinity for biblical analogies. Writing to his friend, the Florentine merchant Philip Mazzei, Jefferson lamented those in the newly formed government who had signaled support for an American aristocracy. “It would give you a fever,” he fumed, “were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England,” referencing both the mighty warrior from the Book of Judges and the son of David from 1 Kings.

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John Quincy Adams, the first son to follow his father into the presidency, noted in his diary how much he had learned from a July 1840 sermon delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives that discussed the Book of Esther. The preacher, a Mr. Cookman, cited “the hanging of Haman upon the gallows, 50 feet high, which he had erected for Mordecai the Jew,” as support for the principle that “the battle is not always to the strong,” given that the civilian Mordecai had outwitted the evil, immensely more powerful vizier.

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Abraham Lincoln turned to the same story on more than one occasion. In a representative example, in an August 1855 letter to his close friend Joshua Speed, Lincoln said of his political opponents, “If, like Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners for their fate.”

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Starting Off Hebraic

The Hebrew Bible has specifically served as a particular beloved source for inaugural addresses on both sides of the aisle, especially in the last century, as Jason von Ehrenkrook has documented. 

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The Republican Warren G. Harding’s 1921 speech cited Micah—“I have taken the solemn oath of office on that passage of Holy Writ wherein it is asked: ‘What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’” The Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his 1941 inaugural, turned to Psalms amidst the Second World War. “Lives of Nations are determined not by the count of years,” he mused, “but by the lifetime of the human spirit. ‘The life of a man is threescore years and ten’ [Psalm 90:10], a little more, a little less. The life of a Nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.”

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Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson evoked the wisdom of Solomon by citing 2 Chronicles 1:10—“For myself, I ask only in the words of an ancient leader: ‘Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?” George W. Bush, a Republican, saw our communal freedom built on virtue standing at the foot of a biblical mountain, remarking in 2005, “That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai …”

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Uniquely American

Of course, the New Testament has also been cited frequently by our political leaders. But there is something uniquely American about the frequency of the Hebraic tradition serving as a well of inspiration in the White House. The earliest settlers on our shores saw themselves as Israelites surviving the wilderness, seeking to build a model covenantal society. The republic that emerged from their efforts and those of the Founders would offer protections to minorities, including the descendants of those Israelites, unlike any offered in any polity in history.

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From the founding of cities with names like Hebron and Canaan to the posting of verses by outgoing Commanders in Chief, the American story has long been Hebraically inspired, offering liberty to those who committed themselves toward doing their part in fulfilling the promise of the land. As Washington put it in another letter, “For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

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This Presidents’ Day, then, Americans—of every faith—have reason to celebrate. Ours is a country of covenant, inspired by ancient Israel, whose leaders continue to see the American story as divinely blessed as they draw from the Good Book.

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Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern, MBA, a member of the Scholar Advisory Council of the Faith and Liberty Initiative, is Senior Advisor to the Provost and Deputy Director, Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. He is editor most recently of The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada (Koren Publishers, 2024).