Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 89
A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of Ethan the Ezrahite.
1 I will sing of the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord forever; with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness from generation to generation.
2 For I have said, Mercy and loving-kindness shall be built up forever; Your faithfulness will You establish in the very heavens [unchangeable and perpetual].
3 [You have said] I have made a [a]covenant with My chosen one, I have sworn to David My servant,
4 Your Seed I will establish forever, and I will build up your throne for all generations. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!(A)
5 Let heaven (the angels) praise Your wonders, O Lord, Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones (the holy angels).
6 For who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? Who among the mighty [heavenly beings] can be likened to the Lord,
7 A God greatly feared and revered in the council of the holy (angelic) ones, and to be feared and worshipfully revered above all those who are round about Him?
8 O Lord God of hosts, who is a mighty one like unto You, O Lord? And Your faithfulness is round about You [an essential part of You at all times].
9 You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves arise, You still them.
10 You have broken Rahab (Egypt) in pieces; with Your mighty arm You have scattered Your enemies.
11 The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; the world and all that is in it, You have founded them.
12 The north and the south, You have created them; Mount Tabor and Mount Hermon joyously praise Your name.
13 You have a mighty arm; strong is Your hand, Your right hand is soaring high.
14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and loving-kindness and truth go before Your face.
15 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are the people who know the joyful sound [who understand and appreciate the spiritual blessings symbolized by the feasts]; they walk, O Lord, in the light and favor of Your countenance!
16 In Your name they rejoice all the day, and in Your righteousness they are exalted.
17 For You are the glory of their strength [their proud adornment], and by Your favor our horn is exalted and we walk with uplifted faces!
18 For our shield belongs to the Lord, and our king to the Holy One of Israel.
19 Once You spoke in a vision to Your devoted ones and said, I have endowed one who is mighty [a hero, giving him the power to help—to be a champion for Israel]; I have exalted one chosen from among the people.
20 I have found David My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him,(B)
21 With whom My hand shall be established and ever abide; My arm also shall strengthen him.
22 The enemy shall not exact from him or do him violence or outwit him, nor shall the wicked afflict and humble him.
23 I will beat down his foes before his face and smite those who hate him.
24 My faithfulness and My mercy and loving-kindness shall be with him, and in My name shall his horn be exalted [great power and prosperity shall be conferred upon him].
25 I will set his hand in control also on the [Mediterranean] Sea, and his right hand on the rivers [Euphrates with its tributaries].
26 He shall cry to Me, You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation!
27 Also I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.(C)
28 My mercy and loving-kindness will I keep for him forevermore, and My covenant shall stand fast and be faithful with him.
29 His [b]Offspring also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven.(D)
30 If his children forsake My law and walk not in My ordinances,
31 If they break or profane My statutes and keep not My commandments,
32 Then will I punish their transgression with the rod [of chastisement], and their iniquity with stripes.(E)
33 Nevertheless, My loving-kindness will I not break off from him, nor allow My faithfulness to fail [to lie and be false to him].
34 My covenant will I not break or profane, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips.
35 Once [for all] have I sworn by My holiness, which cannot be violated; I will not lie to David:
36 His Offspring shall endure forever, and his throne [shall continue] as the sun before Me.(F)
37 It shall be established forever as the moon, the faithful witness in the heavens. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!(G)
38 But [in apparent contradiction to all this] You [even You the faithful Lord] have cast off and rejected; You have been full of wrath against Your anointed.
39 You have despised and loathed and renounced the covenant with Your servant; You have profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.
40 You have broken down all his hedges and his walls; You have brought his strongholds to ruin.
41 All who pass along the road spoil and rob him; he has become the scorn and reproach of his neighbors.
42 You have exalted the right hand of his foes; You have made all his enemies rejoice.
43 Moreover, You have turned back the edge of his sword and have not made him to stand in battle.
44 You have made his glory and splendor to cease and have hurled to the ground his throne.
45 The days of his youth have You shortened; You have covered him with shame. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
46 How long, O Lord? Will You hide Yourself forever? How long shall Your wrath burn like fire?
47 O [earnestly] remember how short my time is and what a mere fleeting life mine is. For what emptiness, falsity, futility, and frailty You have created all men!
48 What man can live and shall not see death, or can deliver himself from the [powerful] hand of Sheol (the place of the dead)? Selah [pause, and calmly consider that]!
49 Lord, where are Your former loving-kindnesses [shown in the reigns of David and Solomon], which You swore to David in Your faithfulness?
50 Remember, Lord, and earnestly imprint [on Your heart] the reproach of Your servants, scorned and insulted, how I bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many and mighty peoples,
51 With which Your enemies have taunted, O Lord, with which they have mocked the footsteps of Your anointed.
52 Blessed be the Lord forevermore! Amen and Amen.
2 [Oh, I know, I have been rash to talk out plainly this way to God!] I will [in my thinking] stand upon my post of observation and station myself on the tower or fortress, and will watch to see what He will say within me and what answer I will make [as His mouthpiece] to the perplexities of my complaint against Him.
2 And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision and engrave it so plainly upon tablets that everyone who passes may [be able to] read [it easily and quickly] as he hastens by.
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time and it hastens to the end [fulfillment]; it will not deceive or disappoint. Though it tarry, wait [earnestly] for it, because it will surely come; it will not be behindhand on its appointed day.(A)
4 Look at the proud; his soul is not straight or right within him, but the [rigidly] just and the [uncompromisingly] righteous man shall [a]live by his faith and in his faithfulness.(B)
9 Woe to him who obtains wicked gain for his house, [who thinks by so doing] to set his nest on high that he may be preserved from calamity and delivered from the power of evil!
10 You have devised shame to your house by cutting off and putting an end to many peoples, and you have sinned against and forfeited your own life.
11 For the stone shall cry out of the wall [built in sin, to accuse you], and the beam out of the woodwork will answer it [agreeing with its charge against you].
12 Woe to him who builds a town with blood and establishes a city by iniquity!
13 Behold, is it not by appointment of the Lord of hosts that the nations toil only to satisfy the fire [that will consume their work], and the peoples weary themselves only for emptiness, falsity, and futility?
14 But [the time is coming when] the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.(A)
15 Woe to him who gives his neighbors drink, who pours out your bottle to them and adds to it your poisonous and blighting wrath and also makes them drunk, that you may look on their stripped condition and pour out foul shame [on their glory]!
16 You [yourself] will be filled with shame and contempt instead of glory. Drink also and be like an uncircumcised [heathen]! The cup [of wrath] in the Lord’s right hand will come around to you [O destroyer], and foul shame shall be upon your own glory!(B)
17 For the violence done to Lebanon will cover and overwhelm you; the destruction of the animals [which the violence frightened away] will terrify you on account of men’s blood and the violence done to the land, to the city and all its inhabitants.
18 What profit is the graven image when its maker has formed it? It is only a molten image and a teacher of lies. For the maker trusts in his own creations [as his gods] when he makes dumb idols.
19 Woe to him who says to the wooden image, Awake! and to the dumb stone, Arise, teach! [Yet, it cannot, for] behold, it is laid over with gold and silver and there is no breath at all inside it!
20 But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth hush and keep silence before Him.(C)
14 What is the use (profit), my brethren, for anyone to profess to have faith if he has no [good] works [to show for it]? Can [such] faith save [his soul]?
15 If a brother or sister is poorly clad and lacks food for each day,
16 And one of you says to him, Good-bye! Keep [yourself] warm and well fed, without giving him the necessities for the body, what good does that do?
17 So also faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is destitute of power (inoperative, dead).
18 But someone will say [to you then], You [say you] have faith, and I have [good] works. Now you show me your [alleged] faith apart from any [good] works [if you can], and I by [good] works [of obedience] will show you my faith.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. So do the demons believe and shudder [in terror and horror such as [a]make a man’s hair stand on end and contract the surface of his skin]!
20 Are you willing to be shown [proof], you foolish (unproductive, spiritually deficient) fellow, that faith apart from [good] works is inactive and ineffective and worthless?
21 Was not our forefather Abraham [shown to be] justified (made acceptable to God) by [his] works when he brought to the altar as an offering his [own] son Isaac?(A)
22 You see that [his] faith was cooperating with his works, and [his] faith was completed and reached its supreme expression [when he implemented it] by [good] works.
23 And [so] the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed in (adhered to, trusted in, and relied on) God, and this was accounted to him as righteousness (as conformity to God’s will in thought and deed), and he was called God’s friend.(B)
24 You see that a man is justified (pronounced righteous before God) through what he does and not alone through faith [through works of obedience as well as by what he believes].
25 So also with Rahab the harlot—was she not shown to be justified (pronounced righteous before God) by [good] deeds when she took in the scouts (spies) and sent them away by a different route?(C)
26 For as the human body apart from the spirit is lifeless, so faith apart from [its] works of obedience is also dead.
19 There was a certain rich man who [habitually] clothed himself in purple and fine linen and [a]reveled and feasted and made merry in splendor every day.
20 And at his gate there [b]was [carelessly] dropped down and left a certain [c]utterly destitute man named Lazarus, [reduced to begging alms and] covered with [[d]ulcerated] sores.
21 He [eagerly] desired to be satisfied with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the dogs even came and licked his sores.
22 And it occurred that the man [reduced to] begging died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
23 And in Hades (the realm of the dead), being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 And he cried out and said, Father Abraham, have pity and mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.
25 But Abraham said, Child, remember that you in your lifetime fully received [what is due you in] comforts and delights, and Lazarus in like manner the discomforts and distresses; but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish.
26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who want to pass from this [place] to you may not be able, and no one may pass from there to us.
27 And [the man] said, Then, father, I beseech you to send him to my father’s house—
28 For I have five brothers—so that he may give [solemn] testimony and warn them, lest they too come into this place of torment.
29 But Abraham said, They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear and listen to them.
30 But he answered, No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent ([e]change their minds for the better and heartily amend their ways, with abhorrence of their past sins).
31 He said to him, If they do not hear and listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded and convinced and believe [even] if someone should rise from the dead.
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