Psalm 122

Song of Praise and Prayer for Jerusalem

A Song of Ascents. Of David.

7 ¹ So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. ² On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.”^{(A) 3} Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request.^{(B) 4} For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace, but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.”^{[a](C) 5} Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?” ⁶ Esther said, “A foe and an enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.^{(D) 7} The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. ⁸ When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining, and the king said, “Will he even violate the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face.^{(E) 9} Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Look, the very pole that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king,^[b] stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.”^{(F) 10} So they hung Haman on the pole that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

A Vision of Christ

⁹ I, John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.^{[a](A) 10} I was in the spirit^[b] on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet^{(B) 11} saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”

¹² Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,^{(C) 13} and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest.^{(D) 14} His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire;^{(E) 15} his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters.^{(F) 16} In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.^(G)

¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last^{(H) 18} and the Living One. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.^{(I) 19} Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. ²⁰ As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.^(J)