Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 105
1 Come, offer thanks to the Eternal; invoke His holy name.
Tell other people about the things He has done.
2 Sing songs of praise to Him;
tell stories of all His miracles.
3 Revel in His holy name.
May the hearts of the people who seek the Eternal celebrate and experience great joy.
4 Seek the Eternal and His power;
look to His face constantly.
5 Remember the wonderful things He has done,
His miracles and the wise decisions He has made,
6 O children of Abraham, His servant;
O children of Jacob, His chosen people!
7 He is the Eternal, our True God;
His justice extends to every corner of the earth.
8 He keeps His covenant promises forever
and remembers the word He spoke to a thousand generations—
9 The covenant He made with Abraham
and His sworn oath to Isaac, his son.
10 Then God confirmed it to Jacob—decreed it so—
to Israel He promised a never-ending covenant,
11 Saying, “I will give you the land of Canaan
as your part; it will be your inheritance.”
12 When God’s people were only a few in number—
indeed, very few—they were strangers in a foreign land.
13 They roamed from place to place,
from one kingdom to another.
14 God didn’t allow anyone to tyrannize them;
He rebuked kings in order to protect His people:
15 “Do not lay a hand on My anointed people;
do not do any harm to My prophets.”
16 He ordered famine to grip the land and
cut them off from their supply of bread.
17 But long before, He had sent a man ahead of them:
Joseph, who had been sold into slavery.[a]
18 At first, his masters shackled his feet with chains,
placed his neck into a collar of iron.
19 That was until the Eternal’s promises came to pass;
His word tested Joseph and proved him worthy.
20 The king sent out the order to release him from prison;
the ruler of Egypt liberated him from the chains.
21 Then he put Joseph in charge of the royal household,
made him ruler of all the royal possessions,
22 Allowed him to imprison the royal officials whenever he saw fit
and impart wisdom to the elders in the land.
23 Then, when the time was right, Israel also went to Egypt;
Jacob resided as an alien in the land of Ham.
24 And while they were there, the Eternal made His people prosperous;
He made them stronger than their enemies.
25 He turned the Egyptians’ hearts against His people[b]
to cheat and scheme against His servants.
26 Then, He sent His servant Moses
and Aaron, the men He had chosen.
27 They did all the signs He planned for them to do among the Egyptians,
and they performed miracles in the land of Ham.
28 He sent darkness to cover the land;
they did not stray from His word.
29 At His command, their waters turned to blood;
their fish began to die.
30 Throngs of frogs covered the land,
invading even in the chambers of their kings.
31 At His command, a swarm of flies arrived,
and gnats came over all their land.
32 He caused hail to fall instead of rain;
lightning flashed over all their land.
33 He struck their vines and their fig trees;
He destroyed the trees over all their land.
34 At His command, locusts came;
young locusts marched beyond number,
35 And they ate up all the plants that grew
and all the fruits over their land.
36 He also brought death to the firstborn in all their land,
the first offspring of each man.
37 Then He brought His people out of slavery, weighed down with silver and gold;
and of all His tribes,
not one of them stumbled, not one was left behind.
38 Egypt was glad to see them go,
for Pharaoh’s people had been overcome with fear of them.
39 He spread out a cloud to cover His people
and sent a fire to light their way at night.
40 They asked, and He sent them coveys of quail,
satisfying their hunger with the food of heaven.
41 He split the rock and water poured out;
it flowed like a river through the desert.
42 For He remembered His holy covenant
with Abraham, His servant.
43 That’s why He rescued His people joyously
and why His chosen ones celebrated with shouts and singing.
44 When the time was right, He gave them land from other nations
so that they might possess the works of their hands,
45 So that they would be able to keep His commands
and obey His laws.
Praise the Eternal!
8 Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah,
sound the trumpet in Ramah, and raise a war cry in Beth-aven.
Even as your cities fall, Benjamin, more armies are behind you!
9 Ephraim will be devastated when they are punished with this invasion from the south.
(This is sure to happen, and I’m announcing it to all the tribes of Israel!)
10 But I’ll also punish the leaders of Judah—
I’ll pour out My wrath on them like water—
Because they’re trying to snatch this territory of Benjamin’s.
They’ve become like the dishonest people who move boundary-stones.
11 Ephraim is oppressed, crushed by punishment,
because he insists on pursuing empty ways and trusting others to save him.
12 In My judgments I’m like a disease that devours Ephraim as a moth eats wool,
like an infected wound to the people of Judah.
13 But when Ephraim saw how sick he was
and Judah saw his open sore,
Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king for relief.
But a foreign ruler can’t cure you; he can’t heal your sore.
The great king is the king of Assyria from whom both Israel and Judah eventually seek help.
14 I’ll be like a lion to Ephraim,
like a young lion to the people of Judah.
I’ll tear them to pieces myself and make off with My kill.
I’ll carry it away, and no one will be able to take it from Me.
15 I’ll go back to My lair and stay there until they admit their guilt and come looking for Me.
In their distress, they’ll desperately try to find Me.
6 Come on, let’s renew our loyalty to the Eternal One!
He tore us like a lion, but He’ll heal us;
He wounded us, but He’ll bandage us.
2 He’ll bring us back to life after two days;
He’ll raise us up on the third day, and we’ll live with Him.
While not clearly a reference to the Anointed One, this is a remarkable prefiguring of the time and consequence of His death and resurrection.
3 So let’s know Him; let’s strive to know the Eternal.
As surely as the sun rises, He’ll come out from His lair.
As surely as the rains come each year—
those spring rains that drench the earth—He’ll come back to us.
4 Eternal One: What am I supposed to do with you, Ephraim?
What am I supposed to do with you, Judah?
Your loyalty to Me is like fog in the morning,
like dew that evaporates at sunrise.
5 This is why I cut them with the words of the prophets
and destroyed them with the words of My mouth.
My judgment went forth like the light of the rising sun.
6 For I want not animal sacrifices, but mercy.[a]
I don’t want burnt offerings; I want people to know Me as God!
27 The seven days of purification were almost completed when some Jews from Asia recognized Paul in the temple. They grabbed him.
Asian Jews (shouting): 28 Help! Fellow Israelites! This man is an enemy of our people, our religion, our law, and this temple! He travels around the world subverting our holiest customs! He is at this moment desecrating this holy temple by bringing outsiders into this sacred place.
29 In this accusation, they were confused—they had seen Paul elsewhere in the city with Trophimus the Ephesian, and they assumed that one of his current companions was Trophimus. 30 It was too late to clarify, though, because word spread and soon a huge crowd rushed to the temple. They held Paul and dragged him from the temple and shut the doors behind them. 31 They beat Paul, and it was clear they intended to kill him. By this time, word of the uproar reached the commandant of the Roman guard assigned to Jerusalem.
32 He led a group of soldiers and officers to the scene. When the mob looked up and saw the soldiers running toward them, they stopped beating Paul. 33 The commandant took him into custody and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He conducted a preliminary interrogation—asking Paul’s name, what he had done. 34 Members of the crowd were shouting over each other, and the tribune couldn’t hear a thing, so he ordered Paul to be taken back to the barracks. 35 When they came to the steps leading down from the temple, the crowd was seething with such violence toward Paul that the soldiers had to pick him up and carry him. 36 Then the crowd followed.
Crowd: Away with him! Away with him!
6 1-2 One Sabbath Day,[a] some Pharisees confronted Jesus again. This time, they saw the disciples picking some grain as they walked through the fields. The disciples would dehusk the grain by rubbing the kernels in their hands, and then they would eat it raw.
Jesus certainly has His detractors. They watch Him closely and voice their opposition to His words and actions. Sometimes they even try to stump Him with questions or publicly humiliate Him. But Jesus refuses to be intimidated. For every charge they level, He has an answer. To the charge of blasphemy, He responds, “I have the authority to forgive sins.” To the charge that He befriends sinners and parties too much, He answers, “These are My people; I’ve come for them.” To the accusation that He breaks Sabbath law, He quips, “The Sabbath is a great servant, but it’s not your master. I am Lord of the Sabbath.” The crowds are amazed at the tense give-and-take between Jesus and His opponents. They seem to respect the Pharisees for their strict observance of God’s law, or perhaps they fear them because they don’t want to become targets of Pharisaic criticism. Yet the people are attracted to Jesus because of the peculiar moral authority He exhibits. As time goes on, Jesus crosses more and more lines drawn in the sand. The tension between Jesus and the Pharisees now becomes a major plotline of Luke’s story.
Pharisees: Don’t You know the sacred law says You can’t harvest and mill grain on the Sabbath Day—the day on which all work is forbidden? Why do You think You can ignore the sacred law?
The Pharisees think they have God all figured out. They claim to be experts in the sacred writings—the Hebrew Scriptures. But Jesus doesn’t fit in with their assumptions and expectations, and He doesn’t submit to their presumed expertise. So they are constantly criticizing Him and trying to trap Him in some obvious wrongdoing or unorthodoxy. But Jesus responds with questions instead of answers. He seems to decide that the best way to help them is by challenging them to think, to question their assumptions, to see things from a higher or deeper perspective. For example, they argue about what is permissible on the Sabbath Day (the seventh day, the day of rest); this is how Jesus gets them thinking about the deeper purpose of the Sabbath Day.
Jesus: 3 Speaking of the sacred law, haven’t you ever read about the time when David and his companions were hungry? 4 Don’t you remember how he went into the house of God and took the sacred bread of the presence—which, you may recall, only the priests were lawfully permitted to eat? Remember that he not only ate it, but he also gave it to his companions?[b] 5 Likewise, the Son of Man has authority over the Sabbath.
6 On another Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught there. In the congregation was a man who had a deformed right hand. 7 The religious scholars and Pharisees watched Jesus; they suspected that He might try to perform a healing on that day, which they would use as evidence to convict Him of Sabbath-breaking.
8 Jesus knew about their plan, and He told the man with the deformed hand to come and stand in front of everyone. The man did so. 9 Then Jesus spoke directly to the religious scholars and Pharisees.
Jesus: Here’s a question for you: On the Sabbath Day, is it lawful to do good or to do harm? Is it lawful to save life or to destroy it?
10 He turned His gaze to each of them, one at a time. Then He spoke to the man.
Jesus: Stretch your hand out.
As the man did, his deformed hand was made normal again. 11 This made the Pharisees and religious scholars furious. They began discussing together what they would do to Jesus.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.