Book of Common Prayer
To the Music director. Davidic. As a memorial.
A Call for Help
70 God, come to my rescue.
Lord, hurry to help me.
2 May those who seek to kill me be publicly humiliated.
May those who take pleasure in my harm
be turned back in humiliation.
3 May those who say “Aha! Aha!”
be turned back because of their shameful deeds.[a]
4 Let those who seek you greatly rejoice in you.
Let those who love your deliverance say,
“May God be continuously exalted.”
5 As for me, I am poor and needy.
God, come quickly to me.
You are my helper and my deliverer.
Lord, please do not delay.
A Prayer for Deliverance
71 In you, Lord, I take refuge;
let me never be humiliated.
2 Rescue and deliver me,[b] because you are righteous.
Turn your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my sheltering refuge where I may go continuously;
command my deliverance
for you are my rock and fortress.
4 My God, deliver me from the power of the wicked
and the grasp of ruthless practicers of evil.
5 For you are my hope, Lord God,
my security since I was young.
6 I depended on you since birth,[c]
when you brought me[d] from my mother’s womb;
I praise you continuously.
7 I have become an example to many
that you are my strong refuge.
8 My mouth is filled with your praise
and your splendor daily.
9 Don’t throw me away when I am old;
do not abandon me when my strength fails.
10 For my enemies talk against me;
those who seek to kill me plot together
11 and say, “God has abandoned him.
Run after him and seize him,
because there’s no deliverer.”
12 God, do not be distant from me.
My God, come quickly to help me.
13 Let my adversaries be ashamed and consumed;[e]
let those who seek my destruction
be covered with scorn and disgrace.
14 As for me, I will hope continuously
and will praise you more and more.
15 I[f] will declare your righteousness
and your salvation every day,
though I do not fully understand
what the outcome will be.[g]
16 Lord God, I will come in the power of[h] your mighty acts,
remembering your righteousness—yours alone.
17 God, you taught me from my youth,
so I am still declaring your awesome deeds.
18 Also, when I reach old age and have gray hair,
God, do not forsake me,
until I have declared your power
to this generation
and your might to the next one.
19 Your many righteous deeds,[i] God, are great,
20 God, who can compare to you,
who caused me to experience[j] troubles
that were numerous and disastrous?
You will return to revive me
and lift me up from the depths of the earth.
21 You will increase my honor
and comfort me once again.
22 I also will praise you with the harp;
because of your faithfulness, my God,
I will praise you with the lyre—
Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you,
whose life you have redeemed.
24 Moreover, my tongue will speak all day about your justice;
for those who seek my destruction will be utterly humiliated.
An instruction[a] of Asaph
A Plea for Deliverance
74 Why, God? Have you rejected us forever?
Your anger is burning against the sheep of your pasture.
2 Remember your community,
whom you purchased long ago,
the tribe whom you redeemed
for your possession.
Remember[b] Mount Zion,
where you live.
3 Hurry! Look at the permanent ruins—
every calamity the enemy brought upon the Holy Place.
4 Those who are opposing you roar
where we were meeting with you;
they unfurl their war banners as signs.
5 As one blazes a trail
through a forest with an ax,
6 now they’re tearing down all its carved work
with hatchets and hammers.
7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground,
desecrating your dwelling place.
8 They say to themselves,
“We’ll crush them completely;”
They burned down all the meeting places of God in the land.
9 We see no signs for us;
there is no longer a prophet,
and no one among us knows the future.[c]
10 God, how long will the adversary scorn
while the enemy despises your name endlessly?
11 Why do you not withdraw your hand—
your right hand—from your bosom
and destroy them?[d]
12 But God is my king from ancient times,
who brings acts of deliverance throughout the earth.
13 You split the sea by your own power.
You shattered the heads of sea monsters in the water.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan.
You set it as food for desert creatures.[e]
15 You opened both the spring and the river;
you dried up flowing rivers.
16 Yours is the day, and yours is the night;
you established the moon and the sun.
17 You set all the boundaries of the earth;
you made summer and winter.
18 Remember this: The enemy scorns the Lord
and a foolish people despises your name.
19 Don’t hand over the life of your dove to beasts;
do not continuously forget your afflicted ones.
20 Pay attention to your covenant,
for the dark regions of the earth are full of violence.
21 Don’t let the oppressed return in humiliation.
The poor and needy will praise your name.
22 Get up, God, and prosecute your case—
remember that you’re being scorned
by fools all day long.
23 Don’t ignore the shout of those opposing you,
The uproar of those who rebel against you continuously.
The Murder of Ish-bosheth
4 When Saul’s son heard that Abner had died in Hebron, his courage[a] failed and all of Israel was disturbed. 2 Now Saul’s son had two officers in charge of some raiding parties. One was named Baanah and the other was named Rechab. They were sons of Rimmon, a descendant of Benjamin from Beeroth, which was considered to belong to the tribe of[b] Benjamin. 3 (The residents of Beeroth had evacuated to Gittaim and live there as resident aliens to this day.)
4 Meanwhile, Saul’s son Jonathan had a son whose feet were crippled. When he was five years old, news had arrived about Saul and Jonathan from Jezreel, and his nurse picked him up to flee, but in her hurry to leave, he happened to fall and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.[c]
5 Rechab and Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, left and arrived during the hottest part of the day at the home of Ish-bosheth while he was taking a noon day nap. 6 They entered the house as though they intended to obtain some grain and stabbed him in the abdomen. Then Rechab and his brother Baanah escaped. 7 While they were in the house, they struck him, killed him, and cut off his head while he was lying on his bed in his bedroom. They took his head, and traveled all night along the Arabah road.
David Punishes the Killers of Ish-bosheth
8 They brought Ish-bosheth’s head to David at Hebron and told the king, “Look! Here’s the head of your enemy Ish-bosheth, Saul’s son, who sought your life. Today the Lord has given your majesty the king vengeance on Saul and his descendants.”[d]
9 David responded to Rechab and his brother Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite: “As the Lord lives, who has saved my life in every adversity, 10 when the man who told me ‘Look! Saul is dead!’ thought he was bringing me good news, I arrested him and had him killed at Ziklag as the reward I gave him for his news. 11 How much worse will it be, then, when evil men kill an innocent man on his own bed in his own house! Shouldn’t I avenge his blood—which you are responsible for shedding[e]—by removing you from the earth?” 12 So David commanded his personal guards,[f] and they killed Rechab and Baanah,[g] cut off their hands and feet, and hung up their bodies beside the pool at Hebron. They took Ish-bosheth’s head and buried it in Abner’s tomb at Hebron.
25 Around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly, there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken. All the doors immediately flew open, and everyone’s chains were unfastened.
27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Don’t hurt yourself, because we are all here!”
29 The jailer[a] asked for torches and rushed inside. Trembling as he knelt in front of Paul and Silas, 30 he took them outside and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you and your family will be saved.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord[b] to him and everyone in his home.
33 At that hour of the night, he took them and washed their wounds. Then he and his entire family were baptized immediately. 34 He brought Paul and Silas[c] upstairs into his house and set food before them. He was thrilled, as was his household, to believe in God.
35 When day came, the magistrates sent guards, who commanded, “Release those men.”
36 The jailer reported these words to Paul, and added, “The magistrates have sent word to release you. So come out now and go in peace.”
37 But Paul told the guards,[d] “The magistrates[e] have had us beaten publicly without a trial and have thrown us into jail, even though we are Roman citizens. Now are they going to throw us out secretly? Certainly not! Have them come and escort us out.”
38 The guards reported these words to the magistrates, and they became afraid when they heard that Paul and Silas[f] were Roman citizens. 39 So the magistrates[g] came, apologized to them, and escorted them out. Then they asked them to leave the city. 40 Leaving the jail, Paul and Silas[h] went to Lydia’s house. They saw the brothers, encouraged them, and then left.
Jesus Challenges the Tradition of the Elders(A)
7 The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus.[a] 2 They noticed that some of his disciples were eating[b] with unclean hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (The Pharisees—and indeed all the Jewish people—don’t eat unless they wash their hands properly,[c] following the tradition of their elders. 4 They don’t eat anything from the marketplace unless they dip it in water. They also observe many other traditions, such as the proper washing of washing cups, jars, brass pots, and dinner tables.)[d] 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus,[e] “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders? Instead, they eat[f] with unclean hands.”
6 He told them, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written,
‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7 Their worship of me is worthless,
because they teach human rules as doctrines.’[g]
8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
9 Then he told them, “You have such a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your own tradition! 10 Because Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’[h] and, ‘Whoever curses his father or mother must certainly be put to death.’[i] 11 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or mother, “Whatever support you might have received from me is Corban,”’ (that is, an offering to God) 12 ‘you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother.’ 13 You are destroying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many other things like that.”
14 Then he called to the crowd again and told them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand! 15 Nothing that goes into a person from the outside can make him unclean. It’s what comes out of a person that makes a person unclean. 16 If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen!”[j]
17 When he had left the crowd and gone home, his disciples began asking him about the parable. 18 He asked them, “Are you so ignorant? Don’t you know that nothing that goes into a person from the outside can make him unclean? 19 Because it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then into the sewer,[k] thereby expelling[l] all foods.” 20 Then he continued, “It’s what comes out of a person that makes a person unclean, 21 because it’s from within, from the human heart, that evil thoughts come, as well as sexual immorality, stealing, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, cheating, shameless lust, envy, slander,[m] arrogance, and foolishness. 23 All these things come from inside and make a person unclean.”
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