Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 45
To the Chief Musician; [set to the tune of] “Lilies” [probably a popular air. A Psalm] of the sons of Korah. A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem. A song of love.
1 My heart overflows with a [a]goodly theme; I address my psalm to a King. My tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.
2 You are fairer than the children of men; graciousness is poured upon Your lips; therefore God has blessed You forever.
3 Gird Your sword upon Your thigh, O mighty One, in Your glory and Your majesty!
4 And in Your majesty ride on triumphantly for the cause of truth, humility, and righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God); and let Your right hand guide You to tremendous things.
5 Your arrows are sharp; the peoples fall under You; Your darts pierce the hearts of the King’s enemies.
6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.
7 You love righteousness, uprightness, and right standing with God and hate wickedness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows.(A)
8 Your garments are all fragrant with myrrh, aloes, and cassia; stringed instruments make You glad.
9 Kings’ daughters are among Your honorable women; at Your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.
10 Hear, O daughter, consider, submit, and consent to my instruction: forget also your own people and your father’s house;
11 So will the King desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, be submissive and reverence and honor Him.
12 And, O daughter of Tyre, the richest of the people shall entreat your favor with a gift.
13 The King’s daughter in the inner part [of the palace] is all glorious; her clothing is inwrought with gold.(B)
14 She shall be brought to the King in raiment of needlework; with the virgins, her companions that follow her, she shall be brought to You.
15 With gladness and rejoicing will they be brought; they will enter into the King’s palace.
16 Instead of Your fathers shall be Your sons, whom You will make princes in all the land.
17 I will make Your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore shall the people praise and give You thanks forever and ever.
Psalm 47
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
1 O clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of triumph and songs of joy!
2 For the Lord Most High excites terror, awe, and dread; He is a great King over all the earth.
3 He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet.
4 He chose our inheritance for us, the glory and pride of Jacob, whom He loves. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!(A)
5 God has ascended amid shouting, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!
7 For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises in a skillful psalm and with understanding.
8 God reigns over the nations; God sits upon His holy throne.
9 The princes and nobles of the peoples are gathered together, a [united] people for the God of Abraham, for the shields of the earth belong to God; He is highly exalted.
Psalm 48
A song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah.
1 Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,
2 Fair and beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth—[a]Mount Zion [the City of David], to the northern side [Mount Moriah and the temple], the [whole] city of the Great King!(B)
3 God has made Himself known in her palaces as a Refuge (a High Tower and a Stronghold).
4 For, behold, the kings assembled, they came onward and they passed away together.
5 They looked, they were amazed; they were stricken with terror and took to flight [affrighted and dismayed].
6 Trembling took hold of them there, and pain as of a woman in childbirth.
7 With the east wind You shattered the ships of Tarshish.
8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it forever. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
9 We have thought of Your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of Your temple.
10 As is Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness (rightness and justice).
11 Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of Your [righteous] judgments!
12 Walk about Zion, and go round about her, number her towers (her lofty and noble deeds of past days),
13 Consider well her ramparts, go through her palaces and citadels, that you may tell the next generation [and cease recalling disappointments].
14 For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide [even] until death.
16 For of the wise man, the same as of the fool, there is no permanent remembrance, since in the days to come all will be long forgotten. And how does the wise man die? Even as the fool!
17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a striving after the wind and a feeding on it.
18 And I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will succeed me.(A)
19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have dominion over all my labor in which I have toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!
20 So I turned around and gave my heart up to despair over all the labor of my efforts under the sun.
21 For here is a man whose labor is with wisdom and knowledge and skill; yet to a man who has not toiled for it he must leave it all as his portion. This also is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility) and a great evil!
22 For what has a man left from all his labor and from the striving and vexation of his heart in which he has toiled under the sun?
23 For all his days are but pain and sorrow, and his work is a vexation and grief; his mind takes no rest even at night. This is also vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)!
24 There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and make himself enjoy good in his labor. Even this, I have seen, is from the hand of God.
25 For who can eat or who can have enjoyment any more than I can—[a]apart from Him?
26 For to the person who pleases Him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and heaping up, that he may give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after the wind and a feeding on it.
18 Then three years later, I did go up to Jerusalem to become [personally] acquainted with Cephas (Peter), and remained with him for fifteen days.
19 But I did not see any of the other apostles (the special messengers of Christ) except James the brother of our Lord.
20 Now [note carefully what I am telling you, for it is the truth], I write this as if I were standing before the bar of God; I do not lie.
21 Then I went into the districts (countries, regions) of Syria and Cilicia.
22 And so far I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea (the country surrounding Jerusalem).
23 They were only hearing it said, He who used to persecute us is now proclaiming the very faith he once reviled and which he set out to ruin and tried with all his might to destroy.
24 And they glorified God [as the Author and Source of what had taken place] in me.
2 Then after [an interval] of fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem. [This time I went] with Barnabas, taking Titus along with [me] also.
2 I went because it was specially and divinely revealed to me that I should go, and I put before them the Gospel [declaring to them that] which I preach among the Gentiles. However, [I presented the matter] privately before those of repute, [for I wanted to make certain, by thus at first confining my communication to this private conference] that I was not running or had not run in vain [guarding against being discredited either in what I was planning to do or had already done].
3 But [all went well!] even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled [as some had anticipated] to be circumcised, although he was a Greek.
4 [My precaution was] because of false brethren who had been secretly smuggled in [to the Christian brotherhood]; they had slipped in to spy on our liberty and the freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might again bring us into bondage [under the Law of Moses].
5 To them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the Gospel might continue to be [preserved] for you [in its purity].
6 Moreover, [no new requirements were made] by those who were reputed to be something—though what was their individual position and whether they really were of importance or not makes no difference to me; God is not impressed with the positions that men hold and He is not partial and recognizes no external distinctions—those [I say] who were of repute imposed no new requirements upon me [had nothing to add to my Gospel, and from them I received no new suggestions].(A)
7 But on the contrary, when they [really] saw that I had been entrusted [to carry] the Gospel to the uncircumcised [Gentiles, just as definitely] as Peter had been entrusted [to proclaim] the Gospel to the circumcised [Jews, they were agreeable];
8 For He Who motivated and fitted Peter and worked effectively through him for the mission to the circumcised, motivated and fitted me and worked through me also for [the mission to] the Gentiles.
9 And when they knew (perceived, recognized, understood, and acknowledged) the grace (God’s unmerited favor and spiritual blessing) that had been bestowed upon me, James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who were reputed to be pillars of the Jerusalem church, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, with the understanding that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised (Jews).
10 They only [made one stipulation], that we were to remember the poor, which very thing I was also eager to do.
53 When Jesus had finished these parables (these comparisons), He left there.
54 And coming to His own country [Nazareth], He taught in their synagogue so that they were amazed with bewildered wonder, and said, Where did this [a]Man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?
55 Is not this the carpenter’s Son? Is not His mother called Mary? And are not His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?
56 And do not all His sisters live here among us? Where then did this Man get all this?
57 And they took offense at Him [they were repelled and hindered from acknowledging His authority, and caused to stumble]. But Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.
58 And He did not do many works of power there, because of their unbelief (their lack of faith [b]in the divine mission of Jesus).
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