Psalm 104

Common English Bible

Psalm 104

104 Let my whole being^[a] bless the Lord!
    Lord my God, how fantastic you are!
    You are clothed in glory and grandeur!
²You wear light like a robe;
    you open the skies like a curtain.
³You build your lofty house on the waters;
    you make the clouds your chariot,
    going around on the wings of the wind.
⁴You make the winds your messengers;
    you make fire and flame your ministers.
⁵You established the earth on its foundations
    so that it will never ever fall.
⁶You covered it with the watery deep like a piece of clothing;
    the waters were higher than the mountains!
⁷But at your rebuke they ran away;
    they fled in fear at the sound of your thunder.
⁸They flowed over the mountains,
    streaming down the valleys
    to the place you established for them.
⁹You set a boundary they cannot cross
    so they’ll never again cover the earth.

¹⁰You put gushing springs into dry riverbeds.
    They flow between the mountains,
¹¹        providing water for every wild animal—
        the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹²Overhead, the birds in the sky make their home,
    chirping loudly in the trees.
¹³From your lofty house, you water the mountains.
    The earth is filled full by the fruit of what you’ve done.
¹⁴You make grass grow for cattle;
    you make plants for human farming
        in order to get food from the ground,
¹⁵        and wine, which cheers people’s hearts,
        along with oil, which makes the face shine,
        and bread, which sustains the human heart.
¹⁶The Lord’s trees are well watered—
    the cedars of Lebanon, which God planted,
¹⁷    where the birds make their nests,
    where the stork has a home in the cypresses.
¹⁸The high mountains belong to the mountain goats;
    the ridges are the refuge of badgers.
¹⁹God made the moon for the seasons,
    and the sun too, which knows when to set.
²⁰You bring on the darkness and it is night,
    when every forest animal prowls.
²¹The young lions roar for their prey,
    seeking their food from God.
²²When the sun rises, they gather together
    and lie down in their dens.
²³Then people go off to their work,
    to do their work until evening.

²⁴Lord, you have done so many things!
    You made them all so wisely!
The earth is full of your creations!
²⁵And then there’s the sea, wide and deep,
    with its countless creatures—
    living things both small and large.
²⁶There go the ships on it,
    and Leviathan, which you made, plays in it!
²⁷All your creations wait for you
    to give them their food on time.
²⁸When you give it to them, they gather it up;
    when you open your hand, they are filled completely full!
²⁹But when you hide your face, they are terrified;
    when you take away their breath,
    they die and return to dust.
³⁰When you let loose your breath, they are created,
    and you make the surface of the ground brand-new again.

³¹Let the Lord’s glory last forever!
Let the Lord rejoice in all he has made!
³²He has only to look at the earth, and it shakes.
God just touches the mountains, and they erupt in smoke.

³³I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praises to my God while I’m still alive.
³⁴Let my praise be pleasing to him;
    I’m rejoicing in the Lord!
³⁵Let sinners be wiped clean from the earth;
    let the wicked be no more.
But let my whole being bless the Lord!
    Praise the Lord!

Footnotes

Psalm 104:1 Or soul; also in 104:35

Exodus 13:17-14:4

Common English Bible

God leads the way

¹⁷When Pharaoh let the people go, God didn’t lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, even though that was the shorter route. God thought, If the people have to fight and face war, they will run back to Egypt. ¹⁸So God led the people by the roundabout way of the Reed Sea^[a] desert. The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt ready for battle. ¹⁹Moses took with him Joseph’s bones just as Joseph had made Israel’s sons promise when he said to them, “When God takes care of you, you must carry my bones out of here with you.” ²⁰They set out from Succoth and camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. ²¹The Lord went in front of them during the day in a column of cloud to guide them and at night in a column of lightning to give them light. This way they could travel during the day and at night. ²²The column of cloud during the day and the column of lightning at night never left its place in front of the people.

Israel crossing the sea

14 Then the Lord said to Moses: ²Tell the Israelites to turn back and set up camp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea in front of Baal-zephon. You should set up camp in front of it by the sea. ³Pharaoh will think to himself, The Israelites are lost and confused in the land. The desert has trapped them. ⁴I’ll make Pharaoh stubborn, and he’ll chase them. I’ll gain honor at the expense of Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. And they did exactly that.

Footnotes

Exodus 13:18 Or Red Sea

2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10

Common English Bible

¹⁶So we aren’t depressed. But even if our bodies are breaking down on the outside, the person that we are on the inside is being renewed every day. ¹⁷Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison. ¹⁸We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal.

5 We know that if the tent that we live in on earth is torn down, we have a building from God. It’s a house that isn’t handmade, which is eternal and located in heaven. ²We groan while we live in this residence. We really want to dress ourselves with our building from heaven— ³since we assume that when we take off this tent, we won’t find out that we are naked. ⁴Yes, while we are in this tent we groan, because we are weighed down. We want to be dressed not undressed, so that what is dying can be swallowed up by life. ⁵Now the one who prepared us for this very thing is God, and God gave us the Spirit as a down payment for our home.

⁶So we are always confident, because we know that while we are living in the body, we are away from our home with the Lord. ⁷We live by faith and not by sight. ⁸We are confident, and we would prefer to leave the body and to be at home with the Lord. ⁹So our goal is to be acceptable to him, whether we are at home or away from home. ¹⁰We all must appear before Christ in court so that each person can be paid back for the things that were done while in the body, whether they were good or bad.

Mark 12:18-27

Common English Bible

A question about the resurrection

¹⁸Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, ¹⁹“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.^[a] ²⁰Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman; when he died, he left no children. ²¹The second married her and died without leaving any children. The third did the same. ²²None of the seven left any children. Finally, the woman died. ²³At the resurrection, when they all rise up, whose wife will she be? All seven were married to her.”

²⁴Jesus said to them, “Isn’t this the reason you are wrong, because you don’t know either the scriptures or God’s power? ²⁵When people rise from the dead, they won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like God’s angels. ²⁶As for the resurrection from the dead, haven’t you read in the scroll from Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?^[b] ²⁷He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. You are seriously mistaken.”