Psalm 50-51

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

³ Our God comes, he does not keep silence,
    before him is a devouring fire,
    round about him a mighty tempest.
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 I do not reprove you for your sacrifices;
    your burnt offerings are continually before me.
⁹ I will accept no bull from your house,
    nor he-goat from your folds.
¹⁰ For every beast 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 and call upon 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 If you see a thief, you are a friend of his;
    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 brother;
    you slander your own mother’s son.
²¹ These things you have done and I have been silent;
    you thought that I was one like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

²² “Mark this, then, you who forget God,
    lest I rend, and there be none to deliver!
²³ He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me;
    to him who orders his way aright
    I will show the salvation of God!”

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
    and done that which is evil in thy sight,
so that thou art justified in thy sentence
    and blameless in thy judgment.
⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
    and in sin did my mother conceive me.

⁶ Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being;
    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 Fill^[d] me with joy and gladness;
    let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.
⁹ Hide thy 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 Cast me not away from thy presence,
    and take not thy holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,
    and uphold me with a willing spirit.

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors thy ways,
    and sinners will return to thee.
¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodguiltiness,^[f] O God,
    thou God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of thy deliverance.

¹⁵ O Lord, open thou my lips,
    and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.
¹⁶ For thou hast no delight in sacrifice;
    were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
¹⁷ The sacrifice acceptable to God^[g] is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

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