'So help me God': What Biblical quotes should Trump use?

George Washington relied on the Psalms. Lincoln quoted Matthew. And FDR quoted Exodus. With a few exceptions, incoming U.S. presidents have always raised their right hand and placed their left on a Bible while taking the oath of office. So when President-elect Donald Trump does so on the steps of the Capitol Building at noon on Friday, Jan. 20, it’s anybody’s guess what words he’ll look to for inspiration.

Given the nation’s current security concerns and the President-Elect’s promise of a wall on our southern border, Psalm 122:7 might be a good choice for the freshly minted 45th president to recite: “Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.”

Or perhaps Trump could address the distressingly deep ideological divisions in our country: “Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8).

Some presidents have opened the Bible and noted the verses on the page for the official record of the day’s events. In 2013, President Barack Obama used two Bibles — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible on loan from the King Center in Atlanta, and the Bible Abraham Lincoln used. Both were kept closed because of their fragile condition.

Obama paraphrased St. Paul at his First Inaugural in 2009 when he used the Lincoln Bible: “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways”).

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Here are four other presidents and the biblical references they used in their inauguration speeches:

George Washington, First Inaugural, 1789: Washington didn’t quote Scripture directly, but his avowal that “It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations” relies on these passages from the Psalms: “For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding. God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness” (Psalm 47:7-8). “For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations” (Psalm 22:8).

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, 1865: Regarding slavery’s supporters, Lincoln quoted Matthew 18:7: “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom offence comes!” Lincoln followed this with a guarded hope that the war might end soon, concluding with a quote from Psalm 19:9: “if God wills that (the war) continue until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural, 1933: “We are stricken by no plague of locusts (alluding to Exodus 10:1-20)…Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply,” said Roosevelt, indicating that nature’s bounty had not been stripped bare by some disaster as the locusts of Exodus had stripped the bread basket of Egypt. Rather, bankers and financiers were to blame for the financial horrors of the Great Depression. Roosevelt continued, “Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed…The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization,” alluding to Jesus’ expulsion of financiers from the precincts of the Jerusalem temple as recorded in Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48; and John 2:13-22.

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961: After sounding a challenge to Soviet Communism, JFK quoted St. Paul to take on more nebulous enemies: “Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ (Romans 12:12) — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”