Book of Common Prayer
89 Forever and ever I will sing about the tender kindness of the Lord! Young and old shall hear about your blessings. 2 Your love and kindness are forever; your truth is as enduring as the heavens.
3-4 The Lord God says,[a] “I have made a solemn agreement with my chosen servant David. I have taken an oath to establish his descendants as kings forever on his throne, from now until eternity!”
5 All heaven shall praise your miracles, O Lord; myriads of angels[b] will praise you for your faithfulness. 6 For who in all of heaven can be compared with God? What mightiest angel[c] is anything like him? 7 The highest of angelic powers[d] stand in dread and awe of him. Who is as revered as he by those surrounding him? 8 O Jehovah, Commander of the heavenly armies, where is there any other Mighty One like you? Faithfulness is your very character.
9 You rule the oceans when their waves arise in fearful storms; you speak, and they lie still. 10 You have cut haughty Egypt[e] to pieces. Your enemies are scattered by your awesome power. 11 The heavens are yours, the world, everything—for you created them all. 12 You created north and south! Mount Tabor and Mount Hermon rejoice to be signed by your name as their maker! 13 Strong is your arm! Strong is your hand! Your right hand is lifted high in glorious strength.
14-15 Your throne is founded on two strong pillars—the one is Justice and the other Righteousness. Mercy and Truth walk before you as your attendants. Blessed are those who hear the joyful blast of the trumpet, for they shall walk in the light of your presence. 16 They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation and in your perfect righteousness. 17 You are their strength. What glory! Our power is based on your favor! 18 Yes, our protection is from the Lord himself and he, the Holy One of Israel, has given us our king.
19 In a vision you spoke to your prophet[f] and said, “I have chosen a splendid young man from the common people to be the king— 20 he is my servant David! I have anointed him with my holy oil. 21 I will steady him and make him strong. 22 His enemies shall not outwit him, nor shall the wicked overpower him. 23 I will beat down his adversaries before him and destroy those who hate him. 24 I will protect and bless him constantly and surround him with my love; he will be great because of me. 25 He will hold sway from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 26 And he will cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and my Rock of Salvation.’
27 “I will treat him as my firstborn son and make him the mightiest king in all the earth. 28 I will love him forever and be kind to him always; my covenant with him will never end. 29 He will always have an heir; his throne will be as endless as the days of heaven. 30-32 If his children forsake my laws and don’t obey them, then I will punish them, 33 but I will never completely take away my loving-kindness from them, nor let my promise fail. 34 No, I will not break my covenant; I will not take back one word of what I said. 35-36 For I have sworn to David (and a holy God can never lie) that his dynasty will go on forever, and his throne will continue to the end of time.[g] 37 It shall be eternal as the moon, my faithful witness in the sky!”
38 Then why cast me off, rejected? Why be so angry with the one you chose as king? 39 Have you renounced your covenant with him? For you have thrown his crown in the dust. 40 You have broken down the walls protecting him and laid in ruins every fort defending him. 41 Everyone who comes along has robbed him while his neighbors mock. 42 You have strengthened his enemies against him and made them rejoice. 43 You have struck down his sword and refused to help him in battle. 44 You have ended his splendor and overturned his throne. 45 You have made him old before his time and publicly disgraced him.
46 O Jehovah, how long will this go on? Will you hide yourself from me forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? 47 Oh, remember how short you have made man’s lifespan. Is it an empty, futile life you give the sons of men? 48 No man can live forever. All will die. Who can rescue his life from the power of the grave?
49 Lord, where is the love you used to have for me? Where is your kindness that you promised to David with a faithful pledge? 50 Lord, see how all the people are despising me. 51 Your enemies joke about me, the one you anointed as their king.
52 And yet—blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and amen!
30 Rachel, realizing she was barren, became envious of her sister. “Give me children or I’ll die,” she exclaimed to Jacob.
2 Jacob flew into a rage. “Am I God?” he flared. “He is the one who is responsible for your barrenness.”
3 Then Rachel told him, “Sleep with my servant girl Bilhah, and her children will be mine.” 4 So she gave him Bilhah to be his wife, and he slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and presented him with a son. 6 Rachel named him Dan (meaning “Justice”),[a] for she said, “God has given me justice, and heard my plea and given me a son.” 7 Then Bilhah, Rachel’s servant girl, became pregnant again and gave Jacob a second son. 8 Rachel named him Naphtali (meaning “Wrestling”), for she said, “I am in a fierce contest with my sister and I am winning!”
9 Meanwhile, when Leah realized that she wasn’t getting pregnant anymore, she gave her servant girl Zilpah to Jacob, to be his wife, 10 and soon Zilpah presented him with a son. 11 Leah named him Gad (meaning “My luck has turned!”).
12 Then Zilpah produced a second son, 13 and Leah named him Asher (meaning “Happy”), for she said, “What joy is mine! The other women will think me blessed indeed!”
14 One day during the wheat harvest, Reuben found some mandrakes[b] growing in a field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel begged Leah to give some of them to her.
15 But Leah angrily replied, “Wasn’t it enough to steal my husband? And now will you steal my son’s mandrakes too?”
Rachel said sadly, “He will sleep with you tonight because of the mandrakes.”
16 That evening as Jacob was coming home from the fields, Leah went out to meet him. “You must sleep with me tonight!” she said; “for I am hiring you with some mandrakes my son has found!” So he did. 17 And God answered her prayers and she became pregnant again, and gave birth to her fifth son. 18 She named him Issachar (meaning “Wages”), for she said, “God has repaid me for giving my slave girl to my husband.” 19 Then once again she became pregnant, with a sixth son. 20 She named him Zebulun (meaning “Gifts”), for she said, “God has given me good gifts for my husband. Now he will honor me, for I have given him six sons.” 21 Afterwards she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.
22 Then God remembered about Rachel’s plight, and answered her prayers by giving her a child. 23-24 For she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. “God has removed the dark slur against my name,” she said. And she named him Joseph (meaning “May I also have another!”), for she said, “May Jehovah give me another son.”
1 Christ was alive when the world began, yet I myself have seen him with my own eyes and listened to him speak. I have touched him with my own hands. He is God’s message of life. 2 This one who is life from God has been shown to us, and we guarantee that we have seen him; I am speaking of Christ, who is eternal Life. He was with the Father and then was shown to us. 3 Again I say, we are telling you about what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may share the fellowship and the joys we have with the Father and with Jesus Christ his son. 4 And if you do as I say in this letter, then you, too, will be full of joy, and so will we.
5 This is the message God has given us to pass on to you: that God is Light and in him is no darkness at all. 6 So if we say we are his friends but go on living in spiritual darkness and sin, we are lying. 7 But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ does, then we have wonderful fellowship and joy with each other, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him,[a] he can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are lying and calling God a liar, for he says we have sinned.
9 As he was walking along, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 “Master,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?”
3 “Neither,” Jesus answered. “But to demonstrate the power of God. 4 All of us must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent me, for there is little time left before the night falls and all work comes to an end. 5 But while I am still here in the world, I give it my light.”
6 Then he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smoothed the mud over the blind man’s eyes, 7 and told him, “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam” (the word Siloam means “Sent”). So the man went where he was sent and washed and came back seeing!
8 His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Is this the same fellow—that beggar?”
9 Some said yes, and some said no. “It can’t be the same man,” they thought, “but he surely looks like him!”
And the beggar said, “I am the same man!”
10 Then they asked him how in the world he could see. What had happened?
11 And he told them, “A man they call Jesus made mud and smoothed it over my eyes and told me to go to the Pool of Siloam and wash off the mud. I did, and I can see!”
12 “Where is he now?” they asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
13 Then they took the man to the Pharisees. 14 Now as it happened, this all occurred on a Sabbath.[a] 15 Then the Pharisees asked him all about it. So he told them how Jesus had smoothed the mud over his eyes, and when it was washed away, he could see!
16 Some of them said, “Then this fellow Jesus is not from God because he is working on the Sabbath.”
Others said, “But how could an ordinary sinner do such miracles?” So there was a deep division of opinion among them.
17 Then the Pharisees turned on the man who had been blind and demanded, “This man who opened your eyes—who do you say he is?”
“I think he must be a prophet sent from God,” the man replied.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.