Book of Common Prayer
118 Oh, thank the Lord, for he’s so good! His loving-kindness is forever.
2 Let the congregation of Israel praise him with these same words: “His loving-kindness is forever.” 3 And let the priests of Aaron chant, “His loving-kindness is forever.” 4 Let the Gentile converts chant, “His loving-kindness is forever.”
5 In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me and rescued me. 6 He is for me! How can I be afraid? What can mere man do to me? 7 The Lord is on my side; he will help me. Let those who hate me beware.
8 It is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in men. 9 It is better to take refuge in him than in the mightiest king!
10 Though all the nations of the world attack me, I will march out behind his banner and destroy them. 11 Yes, they surround and attack me; but with his flag flying above me I will cut them off. 12 They swarm around me like bees; they blaze against me like a roaring flame. Yet beneath his flag I shall destroy them. 13 You did your best to kill me, O my enemy, but the Lord helped me. 14 He is my strength and song in the heat of battle, and now he has given me the victory. 15-16 Songs of joy at the news of our rescue are sung in the homes of the godly. The strong arm of the Lord has done glorious things! 17 I shall not die but live to tell of all his deeds. 18 The Lord has punished me but not handed me over to death.
19 Open the gates of the Temple[a]—I will go in and give him my thanks. 20 Those gates are the way into the presence of the Lord, and the godly enter there. 21 O Lord, thank you so much for answering my prayer and saving me.
22 The stone rejected by the builders has now become the capstone of the arch![b] 23 This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous to see! 24 This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. 25 O Lord, please help us. Save us. Give us success. 26 Blessed is the one who is coming, the one sent by the Lord.[c] We bless you from the Temple.
27-28 Jehovah God is our light. I present to him my sacrifice upon the altar, for you are my God, and I shall give you this thanks and this praise. 29 Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is so good! For his loving-kindness is forever.
145 1-2 I will praise you, my God and King, and bless your name each day and forever.
3 Great is Jehovah! Greatly praise him! His greatness is beyond discovery! 4 Let each generation tell its children what glorious things he does. 5 I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles. 6 Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. 7 Everyone will tell about how good you are and sing about your righteousness.
8 Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. 9 He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does. 10 All living things shall thank you, Lord, and your people will bless you. 11 They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom and mention examples of your power. 12 They will tell about your miracles and about the majesty and glory of your reign. 13 For your kingdom never ends. You rule generation after generation.
14 The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. 15 The eyes of all mankind look up to you for help; you give them their food as they need it. 16 You constantly satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.
17 The Lord is fair in everything he does and full of kindness. 18 He is close to all who call on him sincerely. 19 He fulfills the desires of those who reverence and trust him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. 20 He protects all those who love him, but destroys the wicked.
21 I will praise the Lord and call on all men everywhere to bless his holy name forever and forever.
15 “How can you say you love me when you don’t confide in me?” she whined. “You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what makes you so strong!”
16-17 She nagged at him every day until he couldn’t stand it any longer and finally told her his secret.
“My hair has never been cut,” he confessed, “for I’ve been a Nazirite to God since before my birth. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else.”
18 Delilah realized that he had finally told her the truth, so she sent for the five Philistine leaders.
“Come just this once more,” she said, “for this time he has told me everything.”
So they brought the money with them. 19 She lulled him to sleep with his head in her lap, and they brought in a barber and cut off his hair. Delilah began to hit him, but she could see that his strength was leaving him.
20 Then she screamed, “The Philistines are here to capture you, Samson!” And he woke up and thought, “I will do as before; I’ll just shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize that the Lord had left him. 21 So the Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes and took him to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze chains and made to grind grain in the prison. 22 But before long his hair began to grow again.
23-24 The Philistine leaders declared a great festival to celebrate the capture of Samson. The people made sacrifices to their god Dagon and excitedly praised him.
“Our god has delivered our enemy Samson to us!” they gloated as they saw him there in chains. “The scourge of our nation who killed so many of us is now in our power!” 25-26 Half drunk by now, the people demanded, “Bring out Samson so we can have some fun with him!”
So he was brought from the prison and made to stand at the center of the temple, between the two pillars supporting the roof. Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Place my hands against the two pillars. I want to rest against them.”
27 By then the temple was completely filled with people. The five Philistine leaders were there as well as three thousand people in the balconies[a] who were watching Samson and making fun of him.
28 Then Samson prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord Jehovah, remember me again—please strengthen me one more time, so that I may pay back the Philistines for the loss of at least one of my eyes.”
29 Then Samson pushed against the pillars with all his might.
30 “Let me die with the Philistines,” he prayed.
And the temple crashed down upon the Philistine leaders and all the people. So those he killed at the moment of his death were more than those he had killed during his entire lifetime. 31 Later, his brothers and other relatives came down to get his body, and they brought him back home and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, where his father, Manoah, was buried. He had led Israel for twenty years.
13 This is the third time I am coming to visit you. The Scriptures tell us that if two or three have seen a wrong, it must be punished. Well, this is my third warning as I come now for this visit.[a] 2 I have already warned those who had been sinning when I was there last; now I warn them again and all others, just as I did then, that this time I come ready to punish severely and I will not spare them.
3 I will give you all the proof you want that Christ speaks through me. Christ is not weak in his dealings with you but is a mighty power within you. 4 His weak, human body died on the cross, but now he lives by the mighty power of God. We, too, are weak in our bodies, as he was, but now we live and are strong, as he is, and have all of God’s power to use in dealing with you.
5 Check up on yourselves. Are you really Christians? Do you pass the test? Do you feel Christ’s presence and power more and more within you? Or are you just pretending to be Christians when actually you aren’t at all? 6 I hope you can agree that I have stood that test and truly belong to the Lord.
7 I pray that you will live good lives, not because that will be a feather in our caps,[b] proving that what we teach is right; no, for we want you to do right even if we ourselves are despised. 8 Our responsibility is to encourage the right at all times, not to hope for evil.[c] 9 We are glad to be weak and despised if you are really strong. Our greatest wish and prayer is that you will become mature Christians.
10 I am writing this to you now in the hope that I won’t need to scold and punish when I come; for I want to use the Lord’s authority that he has given me, not to punish you but to make you strong.
11 I close my letter with these last words: Be happy. Grow in Christ. Pay attention to what I have said. Live in harmony and peace. And may the God of love and peace be with you.
25 In the crowd was a woman who had been sick for twelve years with a hemorrhage. 26 She had suffered much from many doctors through the years and had become poor from paying them, and was no better but, in fact, was worse. 27 She had heard all about the wonderful miracles Jesus did, and that is why she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his clothes.
28 For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed.” 29 And sure enough, as soon as she had touched him, the bleeding stopped and she knew she was well!
30 Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 His disciples said to him, “All this crowd pressing around you, and you ask who touched you?”
32 But he kept on looking around to see who it was who had done it. 33 Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and told him what she had done. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, healed of your disease.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.