A Song of degrees. Of David.

124 If it had not been Jehovah who was for us—oh let Israel say—

² If it had not been Jehovah who was for us, when men rose up against us,

³ Then they had swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us;

⁴ Then the waters had overwhelmed us, a torrent had gone over our soul;

⁵ Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

⁶ Blessed be Jehovah, who gave us not up a prey to their teeth!

⁷ Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

⁸ Our help is in the name of Jehovah, the maker of heavens and earth.

7 My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.

² Keep my commandments, and live; and my teaching, as the apple of thine eye.

³ Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the tablet of thy heart.

⁴ Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister, and call intelligence [thy] kinswoman:

⁷ But to each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ.

⁸ Wherefore he says, Having ascended up on high, he has led captivity captive, and has given gifts to men.

⁹ But that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?

¹⁰ He that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things;

¹¹ and *he* has given some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers,

¹² for the perfecting of the saints; with a view to [the] work of [the] ministry, with a view to the edifying of the body of Christ;

¹³ until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at [the] full-grown man, at [the] measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ;

¹⁴ in order that we may be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of *that* teaching [which is] in the sleight of men, in unprincipled cunning with a view to systematized error;

¹⁵ but, holding the truth in love, we may grow up to him in all things, who is the head, the Christ:

¹⁶ from whom the whole body, fitted together, and connected by every joint of supply, according to [the] working in [its] measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the body to its self-building up in love.