Book of Common Prayer
33 The Lord made rivers dry up completely
and stopped springs from flowing.
34 (A)He made rich soil become a salty wasteland
because of the wickedness of those who lived there.
35 He changed deserts into pools of water
and dry land into flowing springs.
36 He let hungry people settle there,
and they built a city to live in.
37 They sowed the fields and planted grapevines
and reaped an abundant harvest.
38 He blessed his people, and they had many children;
he kept their herds of cattle from decreasing.
39 When God's people were defeated and humiliated
by cruel oppression and suffering,
40 he showed contempt for their oppressors
and made them wander in trackless deserts.
41 But he rescued the needy from their misery
and made their families increase like flocks.
42 The righteous see this and are glad,
but all the wicked are put to silence.
43 May those who are wise think about these things;
may they consider the Lord's constant love.
A Prayer for Help against Enemies[a] (B)
108 I have complete confidence, O God!
I will sing and praise you!
Wake up, my soul!
2 Wake up, my harp and lyre!
I will wake up the sun.
3 I will thank you, O Lord, among the nations.
I will praise you among the peoples.
4 Your constant love reaches above the heavens;
your faithfulness touches the skies.
5 Show your greatness in the sky, O God,
and your glory over all the earth.
6 Save us by your might; answer my prayer,
so that the people you love may be rescued.
7 From his sanctuary[b] God has said,
“In triumph I will divide Shechem
and distribute Sukkoth Valley to my people.
8 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh too;
Ephraim is my helmet
and Judah my royal scepter.
9 But I will use Moab as my washbowl,
and I will throw my sandals on Edom,
as a sign that I own it.
I will shout in triumph over the Philistines.”
10 Who, O God, will take me into the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Have you really rejected us?
Aren't you going to march out with our armies?
12 Help us against the enemy;
human help is worthless.
13 With God on our side we will win;
he will defeat our enemies.
A Song of Praise
33 All you that are righteous,
shout for joy for what the Lord has done;
praise him, all you that obey him.
2 Give thanks to the Lord with harps,
sing to him with stringed instruments.
3 Sing a new song to him,
play the harp with skill, and shout for joy!
4 The words of the Lord are true,
and all his works are dependable.
5 The Lord loves what is righteous and just;
his constant love fills the earth.
6 The Lord created the heavens by his command,
the sun, moon, and stars by his spoken word.
7 He gathered all the seas into one place;
he shut up the ocean depths in storerooms.
8 Worship the Lord, all the earth!
Honor him, all peoples of the world!
9 When he spoke, the world was created;
at his command everything appeared.
10 The Lord frustrates the purposes of the nations;
he keeps them from carrying out their plans.
11 But his plans endure forever;
his purposes last eternally.
12 Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord;
happy are the people he has chosen for his own!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven
and sees all of us humans.
14 From where he rules, he looks down
on all who live on earth.
15 He forms all their thoughts
and knows everything they do.
16 (A)A king does not win because of his powerful army;
a soldier does not triumph because of his strength.
17 War horses are useless for victory;
their great strength cannot save.
18 The Lord watches over those who obey him,
those who trust in his constant love.
19 He saves them from death;
he keeps them alive in times of famine.
20 We put our hope in the Lord;
he is our protector and our help.
21 We are glad because of him;
we trust in his holy name.
22 May your constant love be with us, Lord,
as we put our hope in you.
Samson at Gaza
16 One day Samson went to the Philistine city of Gaza, where he met a prostitute and went to bed with her. 2 The people of Gaza found out that Samson was there, so they surrounded the place and waited for him all night long at the city gate. They were quiet all night, thinking to themselves, “We'll wait until daybreak, and then we'll kill him.” 3 But Samson stayed in bed only until midnight. Then he got up and took hold of the city gate and pulled it up—doors, posts, lock, and all. He put them on his shoulders and carried them far off to the top of the hill overlooking Hebron.
Samson and Delilah
4 After this, Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in Sorek Valley. 5 The five Philistine kings went to her and said, “Trick Samson into telling you why he is so strong and how we can overpower him, tie him up, and make him helpless. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”
6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me what makes you so strong. If someone wanted to tie you up and make you helpless, how could he do it?”
7 Samson answered, “If they tie me up with seven new bowstrings that are not dried out, I'll be as weak as anybody else.”
8 So the Philistine kings brought Delilah seven new bowstrings that were not dried out, and she tied Samson up. 9 She had some men waiting in another room, so she shouted, “Samson! The Philistines are coming!” But he snapped the bowstrings just as thread breaks when fire touches it. So they still did not know the secret of his strength.
10 Delilah told Samson, “Look, you've been making a fool of me and not telling me the truth. Please tell me how someone could tie you up.”
11 He told her, “If they tie me with new ropes that have never been used, I'll be as weak as anybody else.”
12 So Delilah got some new ropes and tied him up. Then she shouted, “Samson! The Philistines are coming!” The men were waiting in another room. But he snapped the ropes off his arms like thread.
13 Delilah said to Samson, “You're still making a fool of me and not telling me the truth. Tell me how someone could tie you up.”
He told her, “If you weave my seven locks of hair into a loom, and make it tight with a peg, I'll be as weak as anybody else.”
14 Delilah then lulled him to sleep, took his seven locks of hair, and wove them into the loom.[a] She made it tight with a peg and shouted, “Samson! The Philistines are coming!” But he woke up and pulled his hair loose from the loom.
30 (A)“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 Moses was amazed by what he saw, and went near the bush to get a better look. But he heard the Lord's voice: 32 ‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and dared not look. 33 The Lord said to him, ‘Take your sandals off, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have seen the cruel suffering of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groans, and I have come down to set them free. Come now; I will send you to Egypt.’
35 (B)“Moses is the one who was rejected by the people of Israel. ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ they asked. He is the one whom God sent to rule the people and set them free with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the burning bush. 36 (C)He led the people out of Egypt, performing miracles and wonders in Egypt and at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert. 37 (D)Moses is the one who said to the people of Israel, ‘God will send you a prophet, just as he sent me,[a] and he will be one of your own people.’ 38 (E)He is the one who was with the people of Israel assembled in the desert; he was there with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and he received God's living messages to pass on to us.
39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him; they pushed him aside and wished that they could go back to Egypt. 40 (F)So they said to Aaron, ‘Make us some gods who will lead us. We do not know what has happened to that man Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’ 41 (G)It was then that they made an idol in the shape of a bull, offered sacrifice to it, and had a feast in honor of what they themselves had made. 42 (H)So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:
‘People of Israel! It was not to me
that you slaughtered and sacrificed animals
for forty years in the desert.
43 It was the tent of the god Molech that you carried,
and the image of Rephan, your star god;
they were idols that you had made to worship.
And so I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’
The Healing at the Pool
5 After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival. 2 Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool[a] with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha.[b] 3 A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. 4 [c] 5 A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 The sick man answered, “Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first.”
8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” 9 Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and started walking.
The day this happened was a Sabbath, 10 (A)so the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, “This is a Sabbath, and it is against our Law for you to carry your mat.”
11 He answered, “The man who made me well told me to pick up my mat and walk.”
12 They asked him, “Who is the man who told you to do this?”
13 But the man who had been healed did not know who Jesus was, for there was a crowd in that place, and Jesus had slipped away.
14 Afterward, Jesus found him in the Temple and said, “Listen, you are well now; so stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
15 Then the man left and told the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 So they began to persecute Jesus, because he had done this healing on a Sabbath. 17 Jesus answered them, “My Father is always working, and I too must work.”
18 (B)This saying made the Jewish authorities all the more determined to kill him; not only had he broken the Sabbath law, but he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal with God.
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.