Book of Common Prayer
Pilgrim Road to Adonai’s Courts
Psalm 84
1 For the music director, upon the Gittite lyre, a psalm of the sons of Korah.
2 How lovely are Your tabernacles,
Adonai-Tzva’ot!
3 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of Adonai.
My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
4 Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young
—near Your altars, Adonai-Tzva’ot—
my King and my God!
5 Blessed are they who dwell in Your House
—they are ever praising You. Selah
6 Blessed is one whose strength is in You,
in whose heart are the pilgrim roads.
7 Passing through the valley of Baca,
they make it a spring.
The early rain covers it with blessings.
8 They go from strength to strength—
every one of them appears before God in Zion.
9 Adonai-Tzva’ot, hear my prayer,
give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah
10 O God, look at our shield,
and look upon the face of Your anointed.
11 For a day in Your courts is better
than a thousand anywhere else.
I would rather stand at the threshold of the House of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
12 For Adonai Elohim is a sun[a] and a shield.
Adonai gives grace and glory.
No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
13 Adonai-Tzva’ot,
blessed is the one
who trusts in You.
Whisper at the Cave
19 Then Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, “So let the gods do to me and worse if by this time tomorrow I don’t make your life like the life of one of them.” 3 Frightened, he got up and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, he left his servant there. 4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom bush. He prayed that he might die. “It’s too much!” he said. “Now, Adonai, take my life! For I’m no better than my fathers.”
5 Then he lay down and slept under the broom bush. Then behold, an angel touched him, and said to him, “Get up, and eat.” 6 So he looked, and to his surprise, there by his head was a cake baked on the hot stones and a jar of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 Then the angel of Adonai came again a second time, touched him and said. “Get up and eat, because the journey is too much for you.” 8 So he arose and ate and drank, and in the strength of that meal forty days and forty nights went to Horeb, the mountain of God.
9 When he arrived there at the cave, he spent the night there. Then behold, the word of Adonai came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
10 “I have been very zealous for Adonai-Tzva’ot,” he said, “for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and slain Your prophets with the sword—and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it!”[a]
11 Then He said, “Come out and stand on the mount before Adonai.”[b] Behold, Adonai was passing by—a great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and shattering cliffs before Adonai. But Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but Adonai was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake a fire, but Adonai was not in the fire. After the fire there was a soft whisper of a voice.
A New Covenant on Hearts of Flesh
3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 It is clear that you are a letter from Messiah delivered by us—written not with ink but with the Ruach of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.[a]
4 Such is the confidence we have through Messiah toward God— 5 not that we are competent in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God. 6 He also made us competent as servants of a new covenant[b]—not of the letter, but of the Ruach. For the letter kills, but the Ruach gives life.
7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that Bnei-Yisrael could not look intently upon Moses’ face because of its glory[c]—although it was passing away— 8 how will the ministry of the Ruach not be even more glorious? 9 For if there is glory in the ministry of condemnation,[d] the ministry of righteousness overflows even more in glory.
[a] 18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory—just as from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.