Book of Common Prayer
105 Thank the Lord for all the glorious things he does; proclaim them to the nations. 2 Sing his praises and tell everyone about his miracles. 3 Glory in the Lord; O worshipers of God, rejoice.
4 Search for him and for his strength, and keep on searching!
5-6 Think of the mighty deeds he did for us, his chosen ones—descendants of God’s servant Abraham, and of Jacob. Remember how he destroyed our enemies. 7 He is the Lord our God. His goodness[a] is seen everywhere throughout the land. 8-9 Though a thousand generations pass he never forgets his promise, his covenant with Abraham and Isaac 10-11 and confirmed with Jacob. This is his never-ending treaty with the people of Israel: “I will give you the land of Canaan as your inheritance.” 12 He said this when they were but few in number, very few, and were only visitors in Canaan. 13 Later they were dispersed among the nations and were driven from one kingdom to another; 14 but through it all he would not let one thing be done to them apart from his decision.[b] He destroyed many a king who tried! 15 “Touch not these chosen ones of mine,” he warned, “and do not hurt my prophets.”
16 He called for a famine on the land of Canaan, cutting off its food supply. 17 Then he sent Joseph as a slave to Egypt to save his people from starvation. 18 There in prison they hurt his feet with fetters and placed his neck in an iron collar 19 until God’s time finally came—how God tested his patience! 20 Then the king sent for him and set him free. 21 He was put in charge of all the king’s possessions. 22 At his pleasure he could imprison the king’s aides and teach the king’s advisors.
23 Then Jacob (Israel) arrived in Egypt and lived there with his sons. 24 In the years that followed, the people of Israel multiplied explosively until they were a greater nation than their rulers. 25 At that point God turned the Egyptians against the Israelis; they hated and enslaved them.
26 But God sent Moses as his representative, and Aaron with him, 27 to call down miracles of terror upon the land of Egypt. 28 They[c] followed his instructions. He sent thick darkness through the land 29 and turned the nation’s water into blood, poisoning the fish. 30 Then frogs invaded in enormous numbers; they were found even in the king’s private rooms. 31 When Moses spoke, the flies and other insects swarmed in vast clouds from one end of Egypt to the other. 32 Instead of rain he sent down murderous hail, and lightning flashes overwhelmed the nation. 33 Their grapevines and fig trees were ruined; all the trees lay broken on the ground. 34 He spoke, and hordes of locusts came 35 and ate up everything green, destroying all the crops. 36 Then he killed the oldest child in each Egyptian home, their pride and joy— 37 and brought his people safely out from Egypt, loaded with silver and gold; there were no sick and feeble folk among them then. 38 Egypt was glad when they were gone, for the dread of them was great.
39 He spread out a cloud above them to shield them from the burning sun and gave them a pillar of flame at night to give them light. 40 They asked for meat, and he sent them quail and gave them manna—bread from heaven. 41 He opened up a rock, and water gushed out to form a river through the dry and barren land; 42 for he remembered his sacred promises to Abraham his servant.
43 So he brought his chosen ones singing into the Promised Land. 44 He gave them the lands of the Gentiles, complete with their growing crops; they ate what others planted. 45 This was done to make them faithful and obedient to his laws. Hallelujah!
14 One day when Samson was in Timnah he noticed a certain Philistine girl, 2 and when he got home he told his father and mother that he wanted to marry her. 3 They objected strenuously.
“Why don’t you marry a Jewish girl?” they asked. “Why must you go and get a wife from these heathen Philistines? Isn’t there one girl among all the people of Israel you could marry?”
But Samson told his father, “She is the one I want. Get her for me.”
4 His father and mother didn’t realize that the Lord was behind the request, for God was setting a trap for the Philistines, who at that time were the rulers of Israel.
5 As Samson and his parents were going to Timnah, a young lion attacked Samson in the vineyards on the outskirts of the town. 6 At that moment the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him and since he had no weapon, he ripped the lion’s jaws apart and did it as easily as though it were a young goat! But he didn’t tell his father or mother about it. 7 Upon arriving at Timnah, he talked with the girl and found her to be just what he wanted, so the arrangements were made.[a]
8 When he returned for the wedding, he turned off the path to look at the carcass of the lion. And he found a swarm of bees in it and some honey! 9 He took some of the honey with him, eating as he went, and gave some of it to his father and mother. But he didn’t tell them where he had gotten it.
10-11 As his father was making final arrangements for the marriage, Samson threw a party for thirty young men of the village, as was the custom of the day. 12 When Samson asked if they would like to hear a riddle, they replied that they would.
“If you solve my riddle during these seven days of the celebration,” he said, “I’ll give you thirty plain robes and thirty fancy robes. 13 But if you can’t solve it, then you must give the robes to me!”
“All right,” they agreed, “let’s hear it.”
14 This was his riddle: “Food came out of the eater, and sweetness from the strong!” Three days later they were still trying to figure it out.
15 On the fourth day they said to his new wife, “Get the answer from your husband, or we’ll burn down your father’s house with you in it. Were we invited to this party just to make us poor?”
16 So Samson’s wife broke down in tears before him and said, “You don’t love me at all; you hate me, for you have told a riddle to my people and haven’t told me the answer!”
“I haven’t even told it to my father or mother; why should I tell you?” he replied.
17 So she cried whenever she was with him and kept it up for the remainder of the celebration. At last, on the seventh day, he told her the answer and she, of course, gave the answer to the young men. 18 So before sunset of the seventh day they gave him their reply.
“What is sweeter than honey?” they asked, “and what is stronger than a lion?”
“If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have found the answer to my riddle!” he retorted.
19 Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he went to the city of Ashkelon, killed thirty men, took their clothing, and gave it to the young men who had told him the answer to his riddle. But he was furious about it and abandoned his wife and went back home to live with his father and mother.
15 At this point everyone in the Council chamber saw Stephen’s face become as radiant as an angel’s!
7 Then the High Priest asked him, “Are these accusations true?”
2 This was Stephen’s lengthy reply: “The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Iraq[a] before he moved to Syria, 3 and told him to leave his native land, to say good-bye to his relatives and to start out for a country that God would direct him to. 4 So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, in Syria, until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land of Israel, 5 but gave him no property of his own, not one little tract of land.
“However, God promised that eventually the whole country would belong to him and his descendants—though as yet he had no children! 6 But God also told him that these descendants of his would leave the land and live in a foreign country and there become slaves for 400 years. 7 ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God told him, ‘and afterwards my people will return to this land of Israel and worship me here.’
8 “God also gave Abraham the ceremony of circumcision at that time, as evidence of the covenant between God and the people of Abraham. And so Isaac, Abraham’s son, was circumcised when he was eight days old. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Jewish nation. 9 These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, 10 and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.
11 “But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan, and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, 12 Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons[b] to buy some. 13 The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. 14 Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. 15 So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. 16 All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.
27 Just then his disciples arrived. They were surprised to find him talking to a woman, but none of them asked him why, or what they had been discussing.
28-29 Then the woman left her waterpot beside the well and went back to the village and told everyone, “Come and meet a man who told me everything I ever did! Can this be the Messiah?” 30 So the people came streaming from the village to see him.
31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus to eat. 32 “No,” he said, “I have some food you don’t know about.”
33 “Who brought it to him?” the disciples asked each other.
34 Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God who sent me, and from finishing his work. 35 Do you think the work of harvesting will not begin until the summer ends four months from now? Look around you! Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us, and are ready now for reaping. 36 The reapers will be paid good wages and will be gathering eternal souls into the granaries of heaven! What joys await the sower and the reaper, both together! 37 For it is true that one sows and someone else reaps. 38 I sent you to reap where you didn’t sow; others did the work, and you received the harvest.”
39 Many from the Samaritan village believed he was the Messiah because of the woman’s report: “He told me everything I ever did!” 40-41 When they came out to see him at the well, they begged him to stay at their village; and he did, for two days, long enough for many of them to believe in him after hearing him. 42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe because we have heard him ourselves, not just because of what you told us. He is indeed the Savior of the world.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.