Book of Common Prayer
70 (0) For the leader. By David. As a reminder:
2 (1) God, rescue me!
Adonai, hurry and help me!
3 (2) May those who seek my life
be disgraced and humiliated.
May those who take pleasure in doing me harm
be turned back and put to confusion.
4 (3) May those who jeer, “Aha! Aha!”
withdraw because of their shame.
5 (4) But may all those who seek you
be glad and take joy in you.
May those who love your salvation say always,
“God is great and glorious!”
6 (5) But I am poor and needy;
God, hurry for me.
You are my helper and rescuer;
Adonai, don’t delay!
71 In you, Adonai, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness, rescue me;
and help me to escape.
Turn your ear toward me,
and deliver me.
3 Be for me a sheltering rock,
where I can always come.
You have determined to save me,
because you are my bedrock and stronghold.
4 My God, help me escape from the power of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and ruthless.
5 For you are my hope, Adonai Elohim,
in whom I have trusted since I was young.
6 From birth I have relied on you;
it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
7 To many, I am an amazing example;
but you are strong protection for me.
8 My mouth is full of praise for you,
filled with your glory all day long.
9 Don’t reject me when I grow old;
when my strength fails, don’t abandon me.
10 For my enemies are talking about me,
those seeking my life are plotting together.
11 They say, “God has abandoned him;
go after him, and seize him,
because no one will save him.”
12 God, don’t distance yourself from me!
My God, hurry to help me!
13 May those who are opposed to me
be put to shame and ruin;
may those who seek to harm me
be covered with scorn and disgrace.
14 But I, I will always hope
and keep adding to your praise.
15 All day long my mouth will tell
of your righteous deeds and acts of salvation,
though their number is past my knowing.
16 I will come in the power of Adonai Elohim
and recall your righteousness, yours alone.
17 God, you have taught me since I was young,
and I still proclaim your wonderful works.
18 So now that I’m old, and my hair is gray,
don’t abandon me, God, till I have proclaimed
your strength to the next generation,
your power to all who will come,
19 your righteousness too, God,
which reaches to the heights.
God, you have done great things;
who is there like you?
20 You have made me see much trouble and hardship,
but you will revive me again
and bring me up from the depths of the earth.
21 You will increase my honor;
turn and comfort me.
22 As for me, I will praise you with a lyre
for your faithfulness, my God.
I will sing praises to you with a lute,
Holy One of Isra’el.
23 My lips will shout for joy;
I will sing your praise, because you have redeemed me.
24 All day long my tongue
will speak of your righteousness.
For those who are seeking to harm me
will be put to shame and disgraced.
74 (0) A maskil of Asaf:
(1) Why have you rejected us forever, God,
with your anger smoking against the sheep you once pastured?
2 Remember your community, which you acquired long ago,
the tribe you redeemed to be your very own.
Remember Mount Tziyon, where you came to live.
3 Hurry your steps to these endless ruins,
to the sanctuary devastated by the enemy.
4 The roar of your foes filled your meeting-place;
they raised their own banners as a sign of their conquest.
5 The place seemed like a thicket of trees
when lumbermen hack away with their axes.
6 With hatchet and hammer they banged away,
smashing all the carved woodwork.
7 They set your sanctuary on fire,
tore down and profaned the abode of your name.
8 They said to themselves, “We will oppress them completely.”
They have burned down all God’s meeting-places in the land.
9 We see no signs, there is no prophet any more;
none of us knows how long it will last.
10 How much longer, God, will the foe jeer at us?
Will the enemy insult your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand?
Draw your right hand from your coat, and finish them off!
12 God has been my king from earliest times,
acting to save throughout all the earth.
13 By your strength you split the sea in two,
in the water you smashed sea monsters’ heads,
14 you crushed the heads of Livyatan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
15 You cut channels for springs and streams,
you dried up rivers that had never failed.
16 The day is yours, and the night is yours;
it was you who established light and sun.
17 It was you who fixed all the limits of the earth,
you made summer and winter.
18 Remember how the enemy scoffs at Adonai,
how a brutish people insults your name.
19 Don’t hand over the soul of your dove to wild beasts,
don’t forget forever the life of your poor.
20 Look to the covenant, for the land’s dark places
are full of the haunts of violence.
21 Don’t let the oppressed retreat in confusion;
let the poor and needy praise your name.
22 Arise, God, and defend your cause;
remember how brutish men insult you all day.
23 Don’t forget what your foes are saying,
the ever-rising uproar of your adversaries.
11 Send your resources out over the seas;
eventually you will reap a return.
2 Divide your merchandise into seven or eight shares,
since you don’t know what disasters may come on the earth.
3 If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth.
Whether a tree falls toward the north or the south,
the place where the tree falls is where it stays.
4 He who keeps watching the wind will never sow;
he who keeps looking at the clouds will never reap.
5 Just as you don’t know the way of the wind
or how bones grow in a pregnant woman’s womb,
so you don’t know the work of God,
the maker of everything.
6 In the morning, sow your seed;
and don’t slack off until evening;
for you don’t know which sowing will succeed,
this, or that, or if both will do well.
7 Then the light will be sweet,
and it will be a pleasure to see the sun.
8 For if a person lives many years,
let him take joy in them all;
yet remembering that there will be many days of darkness,
that all to come is futile.
16 What I am saying is this: run your lives by the Spirit. Then you will not do what your old nature wants. 17 For the old nature wants what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is contrary to the old nature. These oppose each other, so that you find yourselves unable to carry out your good intentions. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, then you are not in subjection to the system that results from perverting the Torah into legalism.
19 And it is perfectly evident what the old nature does. It expresses itself in sexual immorality, impurity and indecency; 20 involvement with the occult and with drugs; in feuding, fighting, becoming jealous and getting angry; in selfish ambition, factionalism, intrigue 21 and envy; in drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you now as I have warned you before: those who do such things will have no share in the Kingdom of God!
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 humility, self control. Nothing in the Torah stands against such things.
24 Moreover, those who belong to the Messiah Yeshua have put their old nature to death on the stake, along with its passions and desires.
13 When Yeshua came into the territory around Caesarea Philippi, he asked his talmidim, “Who are people saying the Son of Man is?” 14 They said, “Well, some say Yochanan the Immerser, others Eliyahu, still others Yirmeyahu or one of the prophets.” 15 “But you,” he said to them, “who do you say I am?” 16 Shim‘on Kefa answered, “You are the Mashiach, the Son of the living God.” 17 “Shim‘on Bar-Yochanan,” Yeshua said to him, “how blessed you are! For no human being revealed this to you, no, it was my Father in heaven. 18 I also tell you this: you are Kefa,” [which means ‘Rock,’] “and on this rock I will build my Community, and the gates of Sh’ol will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” 20 Then he warned the talmidim not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.