Book of Common Prayer
78 Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,
3 which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done.
5 For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded to our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;
6 that the generation to come might know them, even the children who should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children,
7 that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;
8 and so might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
9 The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle.
10 They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in His law;
11 they forgot His works and His wonders that He had shown them.
12 Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and caused them to pass through; and He made the waters to stand as a heap.
14 In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire.
15 He cleaved the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.
16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
17 And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness.
18 And they tempted God in their heart by asking for meat for their lust.
19 Yea, they spoke against God: they said, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
20 Behold, He smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?”
21 Therefore the Lord heard this and was wroth; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also rose up against Israel,
22 because they believed not in God and trusted not in His salvation,
23 though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven,
24 and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.
25 Man ate angels’ food; He sent them meat to the full.
26 He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven, and by His power He brought in the south wind.
27 He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls as the sand of the sea.
28 And He let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations.
29 So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them their own desire.
30 But they were not estranged from their lust; but while their meat was yet in their mouths,
31 the wrath of God came upon them and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.
32 For all this, they sinned still and believed not in His wondrous works.
33 Therefore their days did He consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.
34 When He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned and inquired early after God.
35 And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God, their redeemer.
36 Nevertheless they flattered Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues.
37 For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they steadfast in His covenant.
38 But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not. Yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath;
39 for He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again.
40 How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness, and grieve Him in the desert!
41 Yea, they turned back and tested God, and limited the Holy One of Israel.
42 They remembered not His hand, nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy,
43 how He had wrought His signs in Egypt and His wonders in the field of Zoan,
44 and had turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, that they could not drink.
45 He sent divers sorts of flies among them which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them.
46 He gave also their harvest unto the caterpillar, and their labor unto the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost.
48 He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts.
49 He cast upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.
50 He made a path to His anger; He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence,
51 and smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.
52 But He made His own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
53 And He led them on safely, so that they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
54 And He brought them to the border of His sanctuary, even to this mountain, which His right hand had purchased.
55 He cast out the heathen also before them, and apportioned them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
56 Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God and kept not His testimonies,
57 but turned back and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
58 For they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and loved Him to jealousy with their graven images.
59 When God heard this, He was wroth and greatly abhorred Israel,
60 so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He had placed among men,
61 and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
62 He gave His people over also unto the sword, and was wroth with His inheritance.
63 The fire consumed their young men, and their maidens were not given to marriage.
64 Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awakened as one out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine.
66 And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts, and laid upon them a perpetual reproach.
67 Moreover He refused the tabernacle of Joseph and chose not the tribe of Ephraim,
68 but chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved.
69 And He built His sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which He hath established for ever.
70 He also chose David His servant, and took him from the sheepfolds;
71 from following the ewes great with young He brought him to feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance.
72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.
21 “‘Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices and eat flesh.
22 For I spoke not unto your fathers nor commanded them, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.
23 But this thing commanded I them, saying, “Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.”
24 But they hearkened not nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward.
25 Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day, I have even sent unto you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them.
26 Yet they hearkened not unto Me nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck; they did worse than their fathers.’
27 “Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them, but they will not hearken to thee; thou shalt also call unto them, but they will not answer thee.
28 But thou shalt say unto them, ‘This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the Lord their God, nor receiveth correction. Truth has perished and is cut off from their mouth.
29 “‘Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.
30 “‘For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight, saith the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to pollute it.
31 And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I commanded them not, neither came it into My heart.
32 Therefore behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place.
33 And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall frighten them away.
34 Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall be desolate.
13 For the promise that he should be the heir of the world came not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if those who are of the law be heirs, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect,
15 because the law worketh wrath; for where there is no law, there is no transgression.
16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be given by grace to the end that the promise might be made sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all
17 (as it is written: “I have made thee a father of many nations”), in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead and calleth those things which are not, as though they were.
18 Abraham, against all hope, believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So shall thy seed be.”
19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, nor yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God,
21 and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
22 And therefore “it was imputed to him for righteousness.”
23 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him,
24 but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed if we believe in Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead,
25 who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.
37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
38 He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
39 (But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believe in Him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)
40 Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, “In truth this is the Prophet.”
41 Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Shall Christ come out of Galilee?
42 Hath not the Scripture said that Christ cometh out of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem where David was?”
43 So there was a division among the people because of Him.
44 And some of them would have taken Him, but no man laid hands on Him.
45 Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said unto them, “Why have ye not brought him?”
46 The officers answered, “Never did man speak like this man!”
47 Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are ye also deceived?
48 Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him?
49 But this people, who knoweth not the law, are cursed.”
50 Nicodemus said unto them (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them),
51 “Doth our law judge any man before it hear him and know what he doeth?”
52 They answered and said unto him, “Art thou also from Galilee? Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”
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