Book of Common Prayer
95 Come, let’s sing to Adonai!
Let’s shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation!
2 Let’s come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let’s shout for joy to him with songs of praise.
3 For Adonai is a great God,
a great king greater than all gods.
4 He holds the depths of the earth in his hands;
the mountain peaks too belong to him.
5 The sea is his — he made it —
and his hands shaped the dry land.
6 Come, let’s bow down and worship;
let’s kneel before Adonai who made us.
7 For he is our God, and we are the people
in his pasture, the sheep in his care.
If only today you would listen to his voice:
8 “Don’t harden your hearts, as you did at M’rivah,
as you did on that day at Massah in the desert,
9 when your fathers put me to the test;
they challenged me, even though they saw my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation;
I said, ‘This is a people whose hearts go astray,
they don’t understand how I do things.’
11 Therefore I swore in my anger
that they would not enter my rest.”
40 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David:
2 (1) I waited patiently for Adonai,
till he turned toward me and heard my cry.
3 (2) He brought me up from the roaring pit,
up from the muddy ooze,
and set my feet on a rock,
making my footing firm.
4 (3) He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will look on in awe
and put their trust in Adonai.
5 (4) How blessed the man who trusts in Adonai
and does not look to the arrogant
or to those who rely on things that are false.
6 (5) How much you have done, Adonai my God!
Your wonders and your thoughts toward us —
none can compare with you!
I would proclaim them, I would speak about them;
but there’s too much to tell!
7 (6) Sacrifices and grain offerings you don’t want;
burnt offerings and sin offerings you don’t demand.
Instead, you have given me open ears;
8 (7) so then I said, “Here I am! I’m coming!
In the scroll of a book it is written about me.
9 (8) Doing your will, my God, is my joy;
your Torah is in my inmost being.
10 (9) I have proclaimed what is right in the great assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, Adonai, as you know.
11 (10) I did not hide your righteousness in my heart
but declared your faithfulness and salvation;
I did not conceal your grace and truth
from the great assembly.”
12 (11) Adonai, don’t withhold your mercy from me.
Let your grace and truth preserve me always.
13 (12) For numberless evils surround me;
my iniquities engulf me — I can’t even see;
there are more of them than hairs on my head,
so that my courage fails me.
14 (13) Be pleased, Adonai, to rescue me!
Adonai, hurry and help me!
15 (14) May those who seek to sweep me away
be disgraced and humiliated together.
May those who take pleasure in doing me harm
be turned back and put to confusion.
16 (15) May those who jeer at me, “Aha! Aha!”
be aghast because of their shame.
17 (16) But may all those who seek you
be glad and take joy in you.
May those who love your salvation say always,
“Adonai is great and glorious!”
18 (17) But I am poor and needy;
may Adonai think of me.
You are my helper and rescuer;
my God, don’t delay!
54 (0) For the leader. With stringed instruments. A maskil of David, 2 when the Zifim came and told Sha’ul, “David is hiding with us”:
3 (1) God, deliver me by your name;
in your power, vindicate me.
4 (2) God, hear my prayer;
listen to the words from my mouth.
5 (3) For foreigners are rising against me,
violent men are seeking my life;
they give no thought to God. (Selah)
6 (4) But God is helping me;
Adonai is my support.
7 (5) May he repay the evil
to those who are lying in wait for me.
In your faithfulness, destroy them!
8 (6) Then I will generously sacrifice to you;
I will praise your name, Adonai,
because it is good,
9 (7) because he rescued me from all trouble,
and my eyes look with triumph at my enemies.
51 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David, 2 when Natan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bat-Sheva:
3 (1) God, in your grace, have mercy on me;
in your great compassion, blot out my crimes.
4 (2) Wash me completely from my guilt,
and cleanse me from my sin.
5 (3) For I know my crimes,
my sin confronts me all the time.
6 (4) Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil from your perspective;
so that you are right in accusing me
and justified in passing sentence.
7 (5) True, I was born guilty,
was a sinner from the moment my mother conceived me.
8 (6) Still, you want truth in the inner person;
so make me know wisdom in my inmost heart.
9 (7) Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
10 (8) Let me hear the sound of joy and gladness,
so that the bones you crushed can rejoice.
11 (9) Turn away your face from my sins,
and blot out all my crimes.
12 (10) Create in me a clean heart, God;
renew in me a resolute spirit.
13 (11) Don’t thrust me away from your presence,
don’t take your Ruach Kodesh away from me.
14 (12) Restore my joy in your salvation,
and let a willing spirit uphold me.
15 (13) Then I will teach the wicked your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
16 (14) Rescue me from the guilt of shedding blood,
God, God of my salvation!
Then my tongue will sing
about your righteousness —
17 (15) Adonai, open my lips;
then my mouth will praise you.
18 (16) For you don’t want sacrifices, or I would give them;
you don’t take pleasure in burnt offerings.
19 (17) My sacrifice to God is a broken spirit;
God, you won’t spurn a broken, chastened heart.
20 (18) In your good pleasure, make Tziyon prosper;
rebuild the walls of Yerushalayim.
21 (19) Then you will delight in righteous sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then they will offer bulls on your altar.
40 (vii) Some time later it came about that the Egyptian king’s cupbearer and baker gave offense to their lord the king of Egypt. 2 Pharaoh became angry with his two officers the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. 3 So he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison, in the same place where Yosef was kept. 4 The captain of the guard charged Yosef to be with them, and he became their attendant while they remained in prison.
5 One night the two of them, the king of Egypt’s cupbearer and his baker, there in prison, both had dreams, each dream with its own meaning. 6 Yosef came in to them in the morning and saw that they looked sad. 7 He asked Pharaoh’s officers there with him in the prison of his master’s house, “Why are you looking so sad today?” 8 They said to him, “We each had a dream, and there’s no one around who can interpret it.” Yosef said to them, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell it to me, please.”
9 Then the chief cupbearer told Yosef his dream: “In my dream, there in front of me was a vine, 10 and the vine had three branches. The branches budded, then it suddenly began to blossom, and finally clusters of ripe grapes appeared. 11 Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, so I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and gave the cup to Pharaoh.” 12 Yosef said to him, “Here is its interpretation: the three branches are three days. 13 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office: you will be giving Pharaoh his cup as you used to when you were his cupbearer. 14 But remember me when it goes well with you; and show me kindness, please; and mention me to Pharaoh, so that he will release me from this prison. 15 For the truth is that I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and here too I have done nothing wrong that would justify putting me in this dungeon.”
16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Yosef, “I too saw in my dream: there were three baskets of white bread on my head. 17 In the uppermost basket there were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds ate them out of the basket on my head.” 18 Yosef answered, “Here is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days. 19 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from off of you — he will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh off you.”
(Maftir) 20 On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he gave a party for all his officials, and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his officials. 21 He restored the chief cupbearer back to his position, so that he again gave Pharaoh his cup. 22 But he hanged the chief baker, as Yosef had interpreted to them. 23 Nevertheless, the chief cupbearer didn’t remember Yosef, but forgot him.
Haftarah Vayeshev: ‘Amos (Amos) 2:6–3:8
B’rit Hadashah suggested reading for Parashah Vayeshev: Acts 7:9–16 (specifically vv. 9–10)
16 Don’t you know that you people are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17 So if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you yourselves are that temple.
18 Let no one fool himself. If someone among you thinks he is wise (by this world’s standards), let him become “foolish,” so that he may become really wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is nonsense, as far as God is concerned; inasmuch as the Tanakh says, “He traps the wise in their own cleverness,”[a] 20 and again, “Adonai knows that the thoughts of the wise are worthless.”[b] 21 So let no one boast about human beings, for all things are yours — 22 whether Sha’ul or Apollos or Kefa or the world or life or death or the present or the future: they all belong to you, 23 and you belong to the Messiah, and the Messiah belongs to God.
13 Yeshua went out again by the lake. All the crowd came to him, and he began teaching them. 14 As he passed on from there, he saw Levi Ben-Halfai sitting in his tax-collection booth and said to him, “Follow me!” And he got up and followed him.
15 As Yeshua was in Levi’s house eating, many tax-collectors and sinners were sitting with Yeshua and his talmidim, for there were many of them among his followers. 16 When the Torah-teachers and the P’rushim saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his talmidim, “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?” 17 But, hearing the question, Yeshua answered them, “The ones who need a doctor aren’t the healthy but the sick. I didn’t come to call the ‘righteous’ but sinners!”
18 Also Yochanan’s talmidim and the P’rushim were fasting; and they came and asked Yeshua, “Why is it that Yochanan’s talmidim and the talmidim of the P’rushim fast, but your talmidim don’t fast?” 19 Yeshua answered them, “Can wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, fasting is out of the question. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them; and when that day comes, they will fast. 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old coat; if he does, the new patch tears away from the old cloth and leaves a worse hole. 22 And no one puts new wine in old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine is for freshly prepared wineskins.”
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.