Book of Common Prayer
120 In my troubles I pled with God to help me and he did!
2 Deliver me, O Lord, from liars. 3 O lying tongue, what shall be your fate? 4 You shall be pierced with sharp arrows and burned with glowing coals.[a]
5-6 My troubles pile high among these haters of the Lord, these men of Meshech and Kedar. I am tired of being here among these men who hate peace. 7 I am for peace, but they are for war, and my voice goes unheeded in their councils.
121 Shall I look to the mountain gods for help? 2 No! My help is from Jehovah who made the mountains! And the heavens too! 3-4 He will never let me stumble, slip, or fall. For he is always watching, never sleeping.
5 Jehovah himself is caring for you! He is your defender.[b] 6 He protects you day and night. 7 He keeps you from all evil and preserves your life. 8 He keeps his eye upon you as you come and go and always guards you.
122 I was glad for the suggestion of going to Jerusalem, to the Temple of the Lord. 2-3 Now we are standing here inside the crowded city. 4 All Israel—Jehovah’s people—have come to worship as the law requires, to thank and praise the Lord. 5 Look! There are the judges holding court beside the city gates, deciding all the people’s arguments.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. 7 O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. 8 This I ask for the sake of all my brothers and my friends who live here; 9 and may there be peace as a protection to the Temple of the Lord.
123 O God enthroned in heaven, I lift my eyes to you.
2 We look to Jehovah our God for his mercy and kindness just as a servant keeps his eyes upon his master or a slave girl watches her mistress for the slightest signal.
3-4 Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy. For we have had our fill of contempt and of the scoffing of the rich and proud.
124 If the Lord had not been on our side (let all Israel admit it), if the Lord had not been on our side, 2-3 we would have been swallowed alive by our enemies, destroyed by their anger. 4-5 We would have drowned beneath the flood of these men’s fury and pride.
6 Blessed be Jehovah who has not let them devour us. 7 We have escaped with our lives as a bird from a hunter’s snare. The snare is broken and we are free!
8 Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
125 Those who trust in the Lord are steady as Mount Zion, unmoved by any circumstance.
2 Just as the mountains surround and protect Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds and protects his people. 3 For the wicked shall not rule the godly, lest the godly be forced to do wrong. 4 O Lord, do good to those who are good, whose hearts are right with the Lord; 5 but lead evil men to execution. And let Israel have quietness and peace.
126 When Jehovah brought back his exiles to Jerusalem, it was like a dream! 2 How we laughed and sang for joy. And the other nations said, “What amazing things the Lord has done for them.”
3 Yes, glorious things! What wonder! What joy! 4 May we be refreshed[c] as by streams in the desert.
5 Those who sow tears shall reap joy. 6 Yes, they go out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, and return singing, carrying their sheaves.
127 Unless the Lord builds a house, the builders’ work is useless. Unless the Lord protects a city, sentries do no good. 2 It is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, fearing you will starve to death; for God wants his loved ones to get their proper rest.
3 Children are a gift from God; they are his reward. 4 Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows to defend him.
5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. That man shall have the help he needs when arguing with his enemies.[d]
21 So the next morning he saddled his donkey and started off with them. 22-23 But God was angry about Balaam’s eager attitude,[a] so he sent an Angel to stand in the road to kill him. As Balaam and two servants were riding along, Balaam’s donkey suddenly saw the Angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword. She bolted off the road into a field, but Balaam beat her back onto the road. 24 Now the Angel of the Lord stood at a place where the road went between two vineyard walls. 25 When the donkey saw him standing there, she squirmed past by pressing against the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot in the process. So he beat her again. 26 Then the Angel of the Lord moved farther down the road and stood in a place so narrow that the donkey couldn’t get by at all. 27 So she lay down in the road! In a great fit of temper Balaam beat her again with his staff.
28 Then the Lord caused the donkey to speak! “What have I done that deserves your beating me these three times?” she asked.
29 “Because you have made me look like a fool!” Balaam shouted. “I wish I had a sword with me, for I would kill you.”
30 “Have I ever done anything like this before in my entire life?” the donkey asked.
“No,” he admitted.
31 Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes and he saw the Angel standing in the roadway with drawn sword, and he fell flat on the ground before him.
32 “Why did you beat your donkey those three times?” the Angel demanded. “I have come to stop you because you are headed for destruction. 33 Three times the donkey saw me and shied away from me; otherwise I would certainly have killed you by now and spared her.”
34 Then Balaam confessed, “I have sinned. I didn’t realize you were there. I will go back home if you don’t want me to go on.”
35 But the Angel told him, “Go with the men, but say only what I tell you to say.” So Balaam went on with them. 36 When King Balak heard that Balaam was on the way, he left the capital and went out to meet him at the Arnon River, at the border of his land.
37 “Why did you delay so long?” he asked Balaam. “Didn’t you believe me when I said I would give you great honors?”
38 Balaam replied, “I have come, but I have no power to say anything except what God tells me to say; and that is what I shall speak.”
7 Don’t you understand yet, dear Jewish brothers[a] in Christ, that when a person dies the law no longer holds him in its power?
2 Let me illustrate: when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, she is no longer bound to him; the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. 3 Then she can marry someone else if she wants to. That would be wrong while he was alive, but it is perfectly all right after he dies.
4 Your “husband,” your master, used to be the Jewish law; but you “died,” as it were, with Christ on the cross; and since you are “dead,” you are no longer “married to the law,” and it has no more control over you. Then you came back to life again when Christ did and are a new person. And now you are “married,” so to speak, to the one who rose from the dead, so that you can produce good fruit, that is, good deeds for God. 5 When your old nature was still active, sinful desires were at work within you, making you want to do whatever God said not to and producing sinful deeds, the rotting fruit of death. 6 But now you need no longer worry about the Jewish laws and customs[b] because you “died” while in their captivity, and now you can really serve God; not in the old way, mechanically obeying a set of rules, but in the new way, with all of your hearts and minds.
7 Well then, am I suggesting that these laws of God are evil? Of course not! No, the law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known the sin in my heart—the evil desires that are hidden there—if the law had not said, “You must not have evil desires in your heart.” 8 But sin used this law against evil desires by reminding me that such desires are wrong, and arousing all kinds of forbidden desires within me! Only if there were no laws to break would there be no sinning.
9 That is why I felt fine so long as I did not understand what the law really demanded. But when I learned the truth, I realized that I had broken the law and was a sinner, doomed to die. 10 So as far as I was concerned, the good law which was supposed to show me the way of life resulted instead in my being given the death penalty. 11 Sin fooled me by taking the good laws of God and using them to make me guilty of death. 12 But still, you see, the law itself was wholly right and good.
23 When he had returned to the Temple and was teaching, the chief priests and other Jewish leaders came up to him and demanded to know by whose authority he had thrown out the merchants the day before.[a]
24 “I’ll tell you if you answer one question first,” Jesus replied. 25 “Was John the Baptist sent from God or not?”
They talked it over among themselves. “If we say, ‘From God,’” they said, “then he will ask why we didn’t believe what John said. 26 And if we deny that God sent him, we’ll be mobbed, for the crowd all think he was a prophet.” 27 So they finally replied, “We don’t know!”
And Jesus said, “Then I won’t answer your question either.
28 “But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work on the farm today.’ 29 ‘I won’t,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. 30 Then the father told the youngest, ‘You go!’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ But he didn’t. 31 Which of the two was obeying his father?”
They replied, “The first, of course.”
Then Jesus explained his meaning: “Surely evil men and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom before you do. 32 For John the Baptist told you to repent and turn to God, and you wouldn’t, while very evil men and prostitutes did. And even when you saw this happening, you refused to repent, and so you couldn’t believe.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.