Psalm 50-51

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

³ Our God comes and does not keep silence,
    before him is a devouring fire,
    and a mighty tempest all around him.
⁴ He calls to the heavens above
    and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
⁵ ‘Gather to me my faithful ones,
    who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!’
⁶ The heavens declare his righteousness,
    for God himself is judge.Selah

⁷ ‘Hear, O my people, and I will speak,
    O Israel, I will testify against you.
    I am God, your God.
⁸ Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
    your burnt-offerings are continually before me.
⁹ I will not accept a bull from your house,
    or goats from your folds.
¹⁰ For every wild animal of the forest is mine,
    the cattle on a thousand hills.
¹¹ I know all the birds of the air,^[a]
    and all that moves in the field is mine.

¹² ‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
    for the world and all that is in it is mine.
¹³ Do I eat the flesh of bulls,
    or drink the blood of goats?
¹⁴ Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,^[b]
    and pay your vows to the Most High.
¹⁵ Call on me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.’

¹⁶ But to the wicked God says:
    ‘What right have you to recite my statutes,
    or take my covenant on your lips?
¹⁷ For you hate discipline,
    and you cast my words behind you.
¹⁸ You make friends with a thief when you see one,
    and you keep company with adulterers.

¹⁹ ‘You give your mouth free rein for evil,
    and your tongue frames deceit.
²⁰ You sit and speak against your kin;
    you slander your own mother’s child.
²¹ These things you have done and I have been silent;
    you thought that I was one just like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

²² ‘Mark this, then, you who forget God,
    or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.
²³ Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honour me;
    to those who go the right way^[c]
    I will show the salvation of God.’

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
    and blameless when you pass judgement.
⁵ Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶ You desire truth in the inward being;^[d]
    therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right^[e] spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and sustain in me a willing^[f] spirit.

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    and sinners will return to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
    O God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ For you have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased.
¹⁷ The sacrifice acceptable to God^[g] is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

¹⁸ Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
¹⁹ then you will delight in right sacrifices,
    in burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.