Book of Common Prayer
5 1-2 O Lord, hear me praying; listen to my plea, O God my King, for I will never pray to anyone but you. 3 Each morning I will look to you in heaven and lay my requests before you, praying earnestly.
4 I know you get no pleasure from wickedness and cannot tolerate the slightest sin. 5 Therefore, proud sinners will not survive your searching gaze, for how you hate their evil deeds. 6 You will destroy them for their lies; how you abhor all murder and deception.
7 But as for me, I will come into your Temple protected by your mercy and your love; I will worship you with deepest awe.
8 Lord, lead me as you promised me you would; otherwise my enemies will conquer me. Tell me clearly what to do, which way to turn. 9 For they cannot speak one truthful word. Their hearts are filled to the brim with wickedness. Their suggestions are full of the stench of sin and death. Their tongues are filled with flatteries to gain their wicked ends. 10 O God, hold them responsible. Catch them in their own traps; let them fall beneath the weight of their own transgressions, for they rebel against you.
11 But make everyone rejoice who puts his trust in you. Keep them shouting for joy because you are defending them. Fill all who love you with your happiness. 12 For you bless the godly man, O Lord; you protect him with your shield of love.
6 No, Lord! Don’t punish me in the heat of your anger. 2 Pity me, O Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, for my body is sick, 3 and I am upset and disturbed. My mind is filled with apprehension and with gloom. Oh, restore me soon.
4 Come, O Lord, and make me well. In your kindness save me. 5 For if I die, I cannot give you glory by praising you before my friends.[a] 6 I am worn out with pain; every night my pillow is wet with tears. 7 My eyes are growing old and dim with grief because of all my enemies.
8 Go, leave me now, you men of evil deeds, for the Lord has heard my weeping 9 and my pleading. He will answer all my prayers. 10 All my enemies shall be suddenly dishonored, terror-stricken, and disgraced. God will turn them back in shame.
10 Lord, why are you standing aloof and far away? Why do you hide when I need you the most?
2 Come and deal with all these proud and wicked men who viciously persecute the poor. Pour upon these men the evil they planned for others! 3 For these men brag of all their evil lusts; they revile God and congratulate those the Lord abhors, whose only goal in life is money.
4 These wicked men, so proud and haughty, seem to think that God is dead.[a] They wouldn’t think of looking for him! 5 Yet there is success in everything they do, and their enemies fall before them. They do not see your punishment awaiting them. 6 They boast that neither God nor man can ever keep them down—somehow they’ll find a way!
7 Their mouths are full of profanity and lies and fraud. They are always boasting of their evil plans. 8 They lurk in dark alleys of the city and murder passersby. 9 Like lions they crouch silently, waiting to pounce upon the poor. Like hunters they catch their victims in their traps. 10 The unfortunate are overwhelmed by their superior strength and fall beneath their blows. 11 “God isn’t watching,” they say to themselves; “he’ll never know!”
12 O Lord, arise! O God, crush them! Don’t forget the poor or anyone else in need. 13 Why do you let the wicked get away with this contempt for God? For they think that God will never call them to account. 14 Lord, you see what they are doing. You have noted each evil act. You know what trouble and grief they have caused. Now punish them. O Lord, the poor man trusts himself to you; you are known as the helper of the helpless. 15 Break the arms of these wicked men. Go after them until the last of them is destroyed.
16 The Lord is King forever and forever. Those who follow other gods shall be swept from his land.
17 Lord, you know the hopes of humble people. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort their hearts by helping them. 18 You will be with the orphans and all who are oppressed, so that mere earthly man will terrify them no longer.
11 How dare you tell me, “Flee[b] to the mountains for safety,” when I am trusting in the Lord?
2 For the wicked have strung their bows, drawn their arrows tight against the bowstrings, and aimed from ambush at the people of God. 3 “Law and order have collapsed,”[c] we are told. “What can the righteous do but flee?”
4 But the Lord is still in his holy temple; he still rules from heaven. He closely watches everything that happens here on earth. 5 He puts the righteous and the wicked to the test; he hates those loving violence. 6 He will rain down fire and brimstone on the wicked and scorch them with his burning wind.
7 For God is good, and he loves goodness; the godly shall see his face.[d]
19 So they both came to Bethlehem, and the entire village was stirred by their arrival.
“Is it really Naomi?” the women asked.
20 But she told them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” (Naomi means “pleasant”; Mara means “bitter”) “for Almighty God has dealt me bitter blows. 21 I went out full and the Lord has brought me home empty; why should you call me Naomi when the Lord has turned his back on me and sent such calamity!”
22 (Their return from Moab and arrival in Bethlehem was at the beginning of the barley harvest.)
2 Now Naomi had an in-law there in Bethlehem who was a very wealthy man. His name was Boaz.
2 One day Ruth said to Naomi, “Perhaps I can go out into the fields of some kind man to glean the free grain[a] behind his reapers.”
And Naomi said, “All right, dear daughter. Go ahead.”
3 So she did. And as it happened, the field where she found herself belonged to Boaz, this relative of Naomi’s husband.
4-5 Boaz arrived from the city while she was there. After exchanging greetings with the reapers he said to his foreman, “Hey, who’s that girl over there?”
6 And the foreman replied, “It’s that girl from the land of Moab who came back with Naomi. 7 She asked me this morning if she could pick up the grains dropped by the reapers, and she has been at it ever since except for a few minutes’ rest over there in the shade.”
8-9 Boaz went over and talked to her. “Listen, my child,” he said to her. “Stay right here with us to glean; don’t think of going to any other fields. Stay right behind my women workers; I have warned the young men not to bother you; when you are thirsty, go and help yourself to the water.”
10-11 She thanked him warmly. “How can you be so kind to me?” she asked. “You must know I am only a foreigner.”
“Yes, I know,” Boaz replied, “and I also know about all the love and kindness you have shown your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you left your father and mother in your own land and have come here to live among strangers. 12 May the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge, bless you for it.”
13 “Oh, thank you, sir,” she replied. “You are so good to me, and I’m not even one of your workers!”
18 Now, Timothy, my son, here is my command to you: Fight well in the Lord’s battles, just as the Lord told us through his prophets that you would. 19 Cling tightly to your faith in Christ and always keep your conscience clear, doing what you know is right. For some people have disobeyed their consciences and have deliberately done what they knew was wrong. It isn’t surprising that soon they lost their faith in Christ after defying God like that. 20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are two examples of this. I had to give them over to Satan to punish them until they could learn not to bring shame to the name of Christ.
2 Here are my directions: Pray much for others; plead for God’s mercy upon them; give thanks for all he is going to do for them.
2 Pray in this way for kings and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quietness, spending our time in godly living and thinking much about the Lord.[a] 3 This is good and pleases God our Savior, 4 for he longs for all to be saved and to understand this truth: 5 That God is on one side and all the people on the other side, and Christ Jesus, himself man, is between them to bring them together, 6 by giving his life for all mankind.
This is the message that at the proper time God gave to the world. 7 And I have been chosen—this is the absolute truth—as God’s minister and missionary to teach this truth to the Gentiles and to show them God’s plan of salvation through faith.
8 So I want men everywhere to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from sin and anger and resentment.
10 One Sabbath as he was teaching in a synagogue, 11 he saw a seriously handicapped woman who had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to straighten herself.
12 Calling her over to him Jesus said, “Woman, you are healed of your sickness!” 13 He touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised and thanked God!
14 But the local Jewish leader in charge of the synagogue was very angry about it because Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week to work,” he shouted to the crowd. “Those are the days to come for healing, not on the Sabbath!”
15 But the Lord replied, “You hypocrite! You work on the Sabbath! Don’t you untie your cattle from their stalls on the Sabbath and lead them out for water? 16 And is it wrong for me, just because it is the Sabbath day, to free this Jewish woman from the bondage in which Satan has held her for eighteen years?”
17 This shamed his enemies. And all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.