Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 102[a]
Prayer in Time of Distress
1 The prayer of one afflicted and wasting away whose anguish is poured out before the Lord.
I
2 Lord, hear my prayer;
let my cry come to you.
3 Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.(A)
Turn your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.
4 For my days vanish like smoke;(B)
my bones burn away as in a furnace.
5 My heart is withered, dried up like grass,
too wasted to eat my food.
6 From my loud groaning
I become just skin and bones.
7 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
8 I lie awake and moan,
like a lone sparrow on the roof.
9 All day long my enemies taunt me;
in their rage, they make my name a curse.[b]
10 I eat ashes like bread,
mingle my drink with tears.(C)
11 Because of your furious wrath,
you lifted me up just to cast me down.
12 (D)My days are like a lengthening shadow;(E)
I wither like the grass.
II
13 But you, Lord, are enthroned forever;
your renown is for all generations.(F)
14 You will again show mercy to Zion;
now is the time for pity;
the appointed time has come.
15 Its stones are dear to your servants;
its dust moves them to pity.
16 The nations shall fear your name, Lord,
all the kings of the earth, your glory,(G)
17 Once the Lord has rebuilt Zion
and appeared in glory,
18 Heeding the plea of the lowly,
not scorning their prayer.
19 Let this be written for the next generation,
for a people not yet born,
that they may praise the Lord:(H)
20 [c]“The Lord looked down from the holy heights,
viewed the earth from heaven,(I)
21 To attend to the groaning of the prisoners,
to release those doomed to die.”(J)
22 Then the Lord’s name will be declared on Zion,
his praise in Jerusalem,
23 When peoples and kingdoms gather
to serve the Lord.(K)
III
24 He has shattered my strength in mid-course,
has cut short my days.
25 I plead, O my God,
do not take me in the midst of my days.[d](L)
Your years last through all generations.
26 Of old you laid the earth’s foundations;(M)
the heavens are the work of your hands.
27 They perish, but you remain;
they all wear out like a garment;
Like clothing you change them and they are changed,
28 but you are the same, your years have no end.
29 May the children of your servants live on;
may their descendants live in your presence.(N)
Fifth Book—Psalms 107–150
Psalm 107[a]
God the Savior of Those in Distress
1 “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
his mercy endures forever!”(A)
2 Let that be the prayer of the Lord’s redeemed,
those redeemed from the hand of the foe,(B)
3 Those gathered from foreign lands,
from east and west, from north and south.(C)
I
4 Some had lost their way in a barren desert;
found no path toward a city to live in.
5 They were hungry and thirsty;
their life was ebbing away.(D)
6 In their distress they cried to the Lord,
who rescued them in their peril,
7 (E)Guided them by a direct path
so they reached a city to live in.(F)
8 Let them thank the Lord for his mercy,
such wondrous deeds for the children of Adam.
9 For he satisfied the thirsty,
filled the hungry with good things.(G)
II
10 Some lived in darkness and gloom,
imprisoned in misery and chains.
11 Because they rebelled against God’s word,
and scorned the counsel of the Most High,(H)
12 He humbled their hearts through hardship;
they stumbled with no one to help.(I)
13 In their distress they cried to the Lord,
who saved them in their peril;
14 He brought them forth from darkness and the shadow of death
and broke their chains asunder.(J)
15 Let them thank the Lord for his mercy,
such wondrous deeds for the children of Adam.
16 For he broke down the gates of bronze
and snapped the bars of iron.
III
17 Some fell sick from their wicked ways,
afflicted because of their sins.
18 They loathed all manner of food;(K)
they were at the gates of death.
19 In their distress they cried to the Lord,
who saved them in their peril,
20 Sent forth his word to heal them,(L)
and snatched them from the grave.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his mercy,
such wondrous deeds for the children of Adam.
22 Let them offer a sacrifice in thanks,
recount his works with shouts of joy.
IV
23 Some went off to sea in ships,
plied their trade on the deep waters.(M)
24 They saw the works of the Lord,
the wonders of God in the deep.
25 He commanded and roused a storm wind;
it tossed the waves on high.(N)
26 They rose up to the heavens, sank to the depths;
their hearts trembled at the danger.
27 They reeled, staggered like drunkards;
their skill was of no avail.(O)
28 In their distress they cried to the Lord,
who brought them out of their peril;
29 He hushed the storm to silence,
the waves of the sea were stilled.(P)
30 They rejoiced that the sea grew calm,
that God brought them to the harbor they longed for.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his mercy,
such wondrous deeds for the children of Adam.
32 Let them extol him in the assembly of the people,
and praise him in the council of the elders.
20 and Samson’s wife was married to the companion who had been his best man.(A)
Chapter 15
Samson Defeats the Philistines. 1 After some time, in the season of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife, bringing a young goat. But when he said, “Let me go into my wife’s room,” her father would not let him go in. 2 He said, “I thought you hated her, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is better; you may have her instead.” 3 Samson said to him, “This time I am guiltless if I harm the Philistines.” 4 So Samson went and caught three hundred jackals, and turning them tail to tail, he took some torches and tied one between each pair of tails. 5 He then kindled the torches and set the jackals loose in the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning both the shocks and standing grain, the vineyards and olive groves.
6 (B)When the Philistines asked, “Who has done this?” they were told, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because his wife was taken and given to his best man.” So the Philistines went up and destroyed her and her family by fire.(C) 7 Samson said to them, “If this is how you act, I will not stop until I have taken revenge on you.” 8 And he struck them hip and thigh—a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in a cleft of the crag of Etam.
9 The Philistines went up and encamped in Judah, deploying themselves against Lehi.(D) 10 When the men of Judah asked, “Why have you come up against us?” they answered, “To take Samson prisoner; to do to him as he has done to us.” 11 Three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the crag of Etam and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are our rulers? Why, then, have you done this to us?” He answered them, “As they have done to me, so have I done to them.” 12 They said to him, “We have come down to bind you and deliver you to the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” 13 “No,” they replied, “we will only bind you and hand you over to them. We will certainly not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the crag. 14 When he reached Lehi, and the Philistines came shouting to meet him,(E) the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him: the ropes around his arms became like flax that is consumed by fire, and his bonds melted away from his hands. 15 Coming upon the fresh jawbone of an ass, he reached out, grasped it, and with it killed a thousand men.(F) 16 Then Samson said,
“With the jawbone of an ass
I have piled them in a heap;
With the jawbone of an ass
I have slain a thousand men.”
17 As he finished speaking he threw the jawbone from him; and so that place was named Ramath-lehi.[a] 18 Being very thirsty, he cried to the Lord and said, “You have put this great victory into the hand of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God split the cavity in Lehi, and water issued from it, and Samson drank till his spirit returned and he revived. Hence it is called En-hakkore[b] in Lehi to this day.
20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.(G)
17 “When the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise that God pledged to Abraham, the people had increased and become very numerous in Egypt,(A) 18 until another king who knew nothing of Joseph came to power [in Egypt].(B) 19 He dealt shrewdly with our people and oppressed [our] ancestors by forcing them to expose their infants, that they might not survive. 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was extremely beautiful. For three months he was nursed in his father’s house;(C) 21 but when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.(D) 22 Moses was educated [in] all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds.
23 (E)“When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his kinsfolk, the Israelites. 24 When he saw one of them treated unjustly, he defended and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He assumed [his] kinsfolk would understand that God was offering them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. 26 (F)The next day he appeared to them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you harming one another?’ 27 Then the one who was harming his neighbor pushed him aside, saying, ‘Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 Moses fled when he heard this and settled as an alien in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.(G)
Return to Galilee. 43 [a]After the two days, he left there for Galilee. 44 [b](A)For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. 45 When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.
Second Sign at Cana.[c] 46 (B)Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. 48 Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”(C) 49 The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.(D) 51 While he was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. 52 He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” 53 The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe. 54 [Now] this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.(E)
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