Book of Common Prayer
97 Oh, how love I Your law! It is my meditation all the day.(A)
98 You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies, for [Your words] are ever before me.
99 I have better understanding and deeper insight than all my teachers, because Your testimonies are my meditation.(B)
100 I understand more than the aged, because I keep Your precepts [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them].
101 I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Your word [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying it].(C)
102 I have not turned aside from Your ordinances, for You Yourself have taught me.
103 How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!(D)
104 Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.(E)
106 I have sworn [an oath] and have confirmed it, that I will keep Your righteous ordinances [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them].(F)
107 I am sorely afflicted; renew and quicken me [give me life], O Lord, according to Your word!
108 Accept, I beseech You, the freewill offerings of my mouth, O Lord, and teach me Your ordinances.(G)
109 My life is continually in my hand, yet I do not forget Your law.
110 The wicked have laid a snare for me, yet I do not stray from Your precepts.
111 Your testimonies have I taken as a heritage forever, for they are the rejoicing of my heart.(H)
112 I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes forever, even to the end.
113 I hate the thoughts of undecided [in religion], double-minded people, but Your law do I love.
114 You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in Your word.(I)
115 Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them].(J)
116 Uphold me according to Your promise, that I may live; and let me not be put to shame in my hope!(K)
117 Hold me up, that I may be safe and have regard for Your statutes continually!
118 You spurn and set at nought all those who stray from Your statutes, for their own lying deceives them and their tricks are in vain.
119 You put away and count as dross all the wicked of the earth [for there is no true metal in them]; therefore I love Your testimonies.
120 My flesh trembles and shudders for fear and reverential, worshipful awe of You, and I am afraid and in dread of Your judgments.
Psalm 81
To the Chief Musician; set to Philistine lute, or [possibly] a particular Gittite tune. [A Psalm] of Asaph.
1 Sing aloud to God our Strength! Shout for joy to the God of Jacob!
2 Raise a song, sound the timbrel, the sweet lyre with the harp.
3 Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, at the full moon, on our feast day.
4 For this is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
5 This He ordained in Joseph [the [a]savior] for a testimony when He went out over the land of Egypt. The speech of One Whom I knew not did I hear [saying],
6 I removed his shoulder from the burden; his hands were freed from the basket.
7 You called in distress and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!(A)
8 Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you—O Israel, if you would listen to Me!
9 There shall no strange god be among you, neither shall you worship any alien god.
10 I am the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
11 But My people would not hearken to My voice, and Israel would have none of Me.
12 So I gave them up to their own hearts’ lust and let them go after their own stubborn will, that they might follow their own counsels.(B)
13 Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways!
14 Speedily then I would subdue their enemies and turn My hand against their adversaries.
15 [Had Israel listened to Me in Egypt, then] those who hated the Lord would have come cringing before Him, and their defeat would have lasted forever.
16 [God] would feed [Israel now] also with the finest of the wheat; and with honey out of the rock would I satisfy you.
Psalm 82
A Psalm of Asaph.
1 God stands in the assembly [of the representatives] of God; in the midst of the magistrates or judges He gives judgment [as] among the gods.
2 How long will you [magistrates or judges] judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
3 Do justice to the weak (poor) and fatherless; maintain the rights of the afflicted and needy.
4 Deliver the poor and needy; rescue them out of the hand of the wicked.
5 [The magistrates and judges] know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in the darkness [of complacent satisfaction]; all the foundations of the earth [the fundamental principles upon which rests the administration of justice] are shaking.
6 I said, You are gods [since you judge on My behalf, as My representatives]; indeed, all of you are children of the Most High.(C)
7 But you shall die as men and fall as one of the princes.
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth! For to You belong all the nations.(D)
24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and set them round about the Tent.
25 And the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him and put It upon the seventy elders; and when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied [sounding forth the praises of God and declaring His will]. Then they did so no more.(A)
26 But there remained two men in the camp named Eldad and Medad. The Spirit rested upon them, and they were of those who were selected and listed, yet they did not go out to the Tent [as told to do], but they prophesied in the camp.
27 And a young man ran to Moses and said, Eldad and Medad are prophesying [sounding forth the praises of God and declaring His will] in the camp.
28 Joshua son of Nun, the minister of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, My lord Moses, forbid them!
29 But Moses said to him, Are you [a]envious or jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!(B)
30 And Moses went back into the camp, he and the elders of Israel.
31 And there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall [so they flew low] beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and on the other side, all around the camp, about two cubits above the ground.
32 And the people rose all that day and all night and all the next day and caught and gathered the quails. He who gathered least gathered ten homers; and they spread them out for themselves round about the camp [to cure them by drying].
33 While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote them with a very great plague.
34 That place was called Kibroth-hattaavah [the graves of sensuous desire], because there they buried the people who lusted, whose physical appetite caused them to sin.(C)
35 The Israelites journeyed from Kibroth-hattaavah to Hazeroth, where they remained.
28 And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome,
29 Until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice. [They were] full of envy and jealousy, murder, strife, deceit and treachery, ill will and cruel ways. [They were] secret backbiters and gossipers,
30 Slanderers, hateful to and hating God, full of insolence, arrogance, [and] boasting; inventors of new forms of evil, disobedient and undutiful to parents.
31 [They were] without understanding, conscienceless and faithless, heartless and loveless [and] merciless.
32 Though they are fully aware of God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them themselves but approve and applaud others who practice them.
2 Therefore you have no excuse or defense or justification, O man, whoever you are who judges and condemns another. For in posing as judge and passing sentence on another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge are habitually practicing the very same things [that you censure and denounce].
2 [But] we know that the judgment (adverse verdict, sentence) of God falls justly and in accordance with truth upon those who practice such things.
3 And do you think or imagine, O man, when you judge and condemn those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment and elude His sentence and adverse verdict?
4 Or are you [so blind as to] trifle with and presume upon and despise and underestimate the wealth of His kindness and forbearance and long-suffering patience? Are you unmindful or actually ignorant [of the fact] that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repent ([a]to change your mind and inner man to accept God’s will)?
5 But by your callous stubbornness and impenitence of heart you are storing up wrath and indignation for yourself on the day of wrath and indignation, when God’s righteous judgment (just doom) will be revealed.
6 For He will render to every man according to his works [justly, as his deeds deserve]:(A)
7 To those who by patient persistence in well-doing [[b]springing from piety] seek [unseen but sure] glory and honor and [[c]the eternal blessedness of] immortality, He will give eternal life.
8 But for those who are self-seeking and self-willed and disobedient to the Truth but responsive to wickedness, there will be indignation and wrath.
9 [And] there will be tribulation and anguish and calamity and constraint for every soul of man who [habitually] does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek (Gentile).
10 But glory and honor and [heart] peace shall be awarded to everyone who [habitually] does good, the Jew first and also the Greek (Gentile).
11 For God shows no partiality [[d]undue favor or unfairness; with Him one man is not different from another].(B)
18 At that time the disciples came up and asked Jesus, Who then is [really] the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
2 And He called a little child to Himself and put him in the midst of them,
3 And said, Truly I say to you, unless you repent (change, turn about) and become like little children [trusting, lowly, loving, forgiving], you can never enter the kingdom of heaven [at all].
4 Whoever will humble himself therefore and become like this little child [trusting, lowly, loving, forgiving] is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5 And whoever receives and accepts and welcomes one little child like this for My sake and in My name receives and accepts and welcomes Me.
6 But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in and [a]acknowledge and cleave to Me to stumble and sin [that is, who entices him or hinders him in right conduct or thought], it would be better ([b]more expedient and profitable or advantageous) for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be sunk in the depth of the sea.
7 Woe to the world for such temptations to sin and influences to do wrong! It is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the person on whose account or by whom the temptation comes!
8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble and sin, cut it off and throw it away from you; it is better (more profitable and wholesome) for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into everlasting fire.
9 And if your eye causes you to stumble and sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you; it is better (more profitable and wholesome) for you to enter life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the hell (Gehenna) of fire.
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation