Book of Common Prayer
137 Weeping, we sat beside the rivers of Babylon thinking of Jerusalem. 2 We have put away our lyres, hanging them upon the branches of the willow trees, 3-4 for how can we sing? Yet our captors, our tormentors, demand that we sing for them the happy songs of Zion! 5-6 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill upon the harp. If I fail to love her more than my highest joy, let me never sing again.
7 O Jehovah, do not forget what these Edomites did on that day when the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem. “Raze her to the ground!” they yelled. 8 O Babylon, evil beast, you shall be destroyed. Blessed is the man who destroys you as you have destroyed us. 9 Blessed is the man who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks![a]
144 Bless the Lord who is my immovable Rock. He gives me strength and skill in battle. 2 He is always kind and loving to me; he is my fortress, my tower of strength and safety, my deliverer. He stands before me as a shield. He subdues my people under me.
3 O Lord, what is man that you even notice him? Why bother at all with the human race?[a] 4 For man is but a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
5 Bend down the heavens, Lord, and come. The mountains smoke beneath your touch.
6 Let loose your lightning bolts, your arrows, Lord, upon your enemies, and scatter them.
7 Reach down from heaven and rescue me; deliver me from deep waters, from the power of my enemies. 8 Their mouths are filled with lies; they swear to the truth of what is false.
9 I will sing you a new song, O God, with a ten-stringed harp. 10 For you grant victory to kings! You are the one who will rescue your servant David from the fatal sword. 11 Save me! Deliver me from these enemies, these liars, these treacherous men.
12-15 Here is my description of[b] a truly happy land where Jehovah is God:
Sons vigorous and tall as growing plants.
Daughters of graceful beauty like the pillars of a palace wall.
Barns full to the brim with crops of every kind.
Sheep by the thousands out in our fields.
Oxen loaded down with produce.
No enemy attacking the walls, but peace everywhere.
No crime in our streets.
Yes, happy are those whose God is Jehovah.
104 1-2 I bless the Lord: O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty and light! You stretched out the starry curtain of the heavens, 3 and hollowed out the surface of the earth to form the seas. The clouds are his chariots. He rides upon the wings of the wind. 4 The angels[a] are his messengers—his servants of fire!
5 You bound the world together so that it would never fall apart. 6 You clothed the earth with floods of waters covering up the mountains. 7-8 You spoke, and at the sound of your shout the water collected into its vast ocean beds, and mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed. 9 And then you set a boundary for the seas so that they would never again cover the earth.
10 He placed springs in the valleys and streams that gush from the mountains. 11 They give water for all the animals to drink. There the wild donkeys quench their thirst, 12 and the birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees. 13 He sends rain upon the mountains and fills the earth with fruit. 14 The tender grass grows up at his command to feed the cattle, and there are fruit trees, vegetables, and grain for man to cultivate, 15 and wine to make him glad, and olive oil as lotion for his skin, and bread to give him strength. 16 The Lord planted the cedars of Lebanon. They are tall and flourishing. 17 There the birds make their nests, the storks in the firs. 18 High in the mountains are pastures for the wild goats, and rock badgers burrow in among the rocks and find protection there.
19 He assigned the moon to mark the months and the sun to mark the days. 20 He sends the night and darkness, when all the forest folk come out. 21 Then the young lions roar for their food, but they are dependent on the Lord. 22 At dawn they slink back into their dens to rest, 23 and men go off to work until the evening shadows fall again. 24 O Lord, what a variety you have made! And in wisdom you have made them all! The earth is full of your riches.
25 There before me lies the mighty ocean, teeming with life of every kind, both great and small. 26 And look! See the ships! And over there, the whale you made to play in the sea. 27 Every one of these depends on you to give them daily food. 28 You supply it, and they gather it. You open wide your hand to feed them, and they are satisfied with all your bountiful provision.
29 But if you turn away from them, then all is lost. And when you gather up their breath, they die and turn again to dust.
30 Then you send your Spirit, and new life is born[b] to replenish all the living of the earth. 31 Praise God forever! How he must rejoice in all his work! 32 The earth trembles at his glance; the mountains burst into flame at his touch.
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise God to my last breath! 34 May he be pleased by all these thoughts about him, for he is the source of all my joy. 35 Let all sinners perish—all who refuse to praise him. But I will praise him. Hallelujah!
4 So Boaz went down to the marketplace[a] and found the relative he had mentioned.
“Say, come over here,” he called to him. “I want to talk to you a minute.”
So they sat down together. 2 Then Boaz called for ten of the chief men of the village and asked them to sit as witnesses.
3 Boaz said to his relative, “You know Naomi, who came back to us from Moab. She is selling our brother Elimelech’s property. 4 I felt that I should speak to you about it so that you can buy it if you wish, with these respected men as witnesses. If you want it,[b] let me know right away, for if you don’t take it, I will. You have the first right to purchase it and I am next.”
The man replied, “All right, I’ll buy it.”
5 Then Boaz told him, “Your purchase of the land from Naomi requires your marriage to Ruth so that she can have children to carry on her husband’s name and to inherit the land.”
6 “Then I can’t do it,” the man replied. “For her son would become an heir to my property too;[c] you buy it.”
7 In those days it was the custom in Israel for a man transferring a right of purchase to pull off his sandal and hand it to the other party; this publicly validated the transaction. 8 So, as the man said to Boaz, “You buy it for yourself,” he drew off his sandal.
9 Then Boaz said to the witnesses and to the crowd standing around, “You have seen that today I have bought all the property of Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon, from Naomi, 10 and that with it I have purchased Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, to be my wife, so that she can have a son to carry on the family name of her dead husband.”
11 And all the people standing there and the witnesses replied, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make this woman, who has now come into your home, as fertile as Rachel and Leah, from whom all the nation of Israel descended! May you be a great and successful man in Bethlehem, 12 and may the descendants the Lord will give you from this young woman be as numerous and honorable as those of our ancestor Perez, the son of Tamar and Judah.”
13 So Boaz married Ruth, and when he slept with her, the Lord gave her a son.
14 And the women of the city said to Naomi, “Bless the Lord who has given you this little grandson; may he be famous in Israel. 15 May he restore your youth and take care of you in your old age; for he is the son of your daughter-in-law who loves you so much, and who has been kinder to you than seven sons!”
16-17 Naomi took care of the baby, and the neighbor women said, “Now at last Naomi has a son again!”
And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse and grandfather of King David.
13 We boldly say what we believe, trusting God to care for us,[a] just as the psalm writer did when he said, “I believe and therefore I speak.” 14 We know that the same God who brought the Lord Jesus back from death will also bring us back to life again with Jesus and present us to him along with you. 15 These sufferings of ours are for your benefit. And the more of you who are won to Christ, the more there are to thank him for his great kindness, and the more the Lord is glorified.
16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our inner strength in the Lord is growing every day. 17 These troubles and sufferings of ours are, after all, quite small and won’t last very long. Yet this short time of distress will result in God’s richest blessing upon us forever and ever! 18 So we do not look at what we can see right now, the troubles all around us, but we look forward to the joys in heaven which we have not yet seen. The troubles will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever.
5 For we know that when this tent we live in now is taken down—when we die and leave these bodies—we will have wonderful new bodies in heaven, homes that will be ours forevermore, made for us by God himself and not by human hands. 2 How weary we grow of our present bodies. That is why we look forward eagerly to the day when we shall have heavenly bodies that we shall put on like new clothes. 3 For we shall not be merely spirits without bodies. 4 These earthly bodies make us groan and sigh, but we wouldn’t like to think of dying and having no bodies at all. We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will, as it were, be swallowed up by everlasting life. 5 This is what God has prepared for us, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
6 Now we look forward with confidence to our heavenly bodies, realizing that every moment we spend in these earthly bodies is time spent away from our eternal home in heaven with Jesus. 7 We know these things are true by believing, not by seeing. 8 And we are not afraid but are quite content to die, for then we will be at home with the Lord. 9 So our aim is to please him always in everything we do, whether we are here in this body or away from this body and with him in heaven. 10 For we must all stand before Christ to be judged and have our lives laid bare—before him. Each of us will receive whatever he deserves for the good or bad things he has done in his earthly body.
6 “Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, for then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. 2 When you give a gift to a beggar, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you in all earnestness, they have received all the reward they will ever get. 3 But when you do a kindness to someone, do it secretly—don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. 4 And your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.
5 “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who pretend piety by praying publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. Truly, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6 But when you pray, go away by yourself, all alone, and shut the door behind you and pray to your Father secretly, and your Father, who knows your secrets, will reward you.
7-8 “Don’t recite the same prayer over and over as the heathen do, who think prayers are answered only by repeating them again and again. Remember, your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!
9 “Pray along these lines: ‘Our Father in heaven, we honor your holy name. 10 We ask that your kingdom will come now. May your will be done here on earth, just as it is in heaven. 11 Give us our food again today, as usual, 12 and forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. 13 Don’t bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.[a] Amen.’ 14-15
16 “And now about fasting. When you fast, declining your food for a spiritual purpose, don’t do it publicly, as the hypocrites do, who try to look wan and disheveled so people will feel sorry for them. Truly, that is the only reward they will ever get.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.