Book of Common Prayer
24 The earth belongs to God! Everything in all the world is his! 2 He is the one who pushed the oceans back to let dry land appear.[a]
3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord and enter where he lives? Who may stand before the Lord? 4 Only those with pure hands and hearts, who do not practice dishonesty and lying. 5 They will receive God’s own goodness[b] as their blessing from him, planted in their lives by God himself, their Savior. 6 These are the ones who are allowed to stand before the Lord and worship the God of Jacob.
7 Open up, O ancient gates, and let the King of Glory in. 8 Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, invincible in battle. 9 Yes, open wide the gates and let the King of Glory in.
10 Who is this King of Glory? The Commander of all of heaven’s armies!
29 Praise the Lord, you angels of his; praise his glory and his strength. 2 Praise him for his majestic glory, the glory of his name. Come before him clothed in sacred garments.
3 The voice of the Lord echoes from the clouds. The God of glory thunders through the skies. 4 So powerful is his voice; so full of majesty. 5-6 It breaks down the cedars. It splits the giant trees of Lebanon. It shakes Mount Lebanon and Mount Sirion. They leap and skip before him like young calves! 7 The voice of the Lord thunders through the lightning. 8 It resounds through the deserts and shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. 9 The voice of the Lord spins and topples the mighty oaks.[a] It strips the forests bare. They whirl and sway beneath the blast. But in his Temple all are praising, “Glory, glory to the Lord.”
10 At the Flood the Lord showed his control of all creation. Now he continues to unveil his power. 11 He will give his people strength. He will bless them with peace.
8 O Lord our God, the majesty and glory of your name fills all the earth and overflows the heavens. 2 You have taught the little children to praise you perfectly. May their example shame and silence your enemies!
3 When I look up into the night skies and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you have made— 4 I cannot understand how you can bother with mere puny man, to pay any attention to him!
5 And yet you have made him only a little lower than the angels[a] and placed a crown of glory and honor upon his head.
6 You have put him in charge of everything you made; everything is put under his authority: 7 all sheep and oxen, and wild animals too, 8 the birds and fish, and all the life in the sea. 9 O Jehovah, our Lord, the majesty and glory of your name fills the earth.
84 How lovely is your Temple, O Lord of the armies of heaven.
2 I long, yes, faint with longing to be able to enter your courtyard and come near to the Living God. 3 Even the sparrows and swallows are welcome to come and nest among your altars and there have their young, O Lord of heaven’s armies, my King and my God! 4 How happy are those who can live in your Temple, singing your praises.
5 Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who want above all else to follow your steps. 6 When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains! 7 They will grow constantly in strength, and each of them is invited to meet with the Lord in Zion.
8 O Jehovah, God of the heavenly armies, hear my prayer! Listen, God of Israel. 9 O God, our Defender and our Shield, have mercy on the one you have anointed as your king.[a]
10 A single day spent in your Temple is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a doorman of the Temple of my God than live in palaces[b] of wickedness. 11 For Jehovah God is our Light and our Protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk along his paths.[c]
12 O Lord of the armies of heaven, blessed are those who trust in you.
16 “Surely you remember how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how as we left, we came safely through the territory of enemy nations. 17 And you have seen their heathen idols made of wood, stone, silver, and gold. 18 The day that any of you—man or woman, family or tribe of Israel—begins to turn away from the Lord our God and desires to worship these gods of other nations, that day a root will be planted that will grow bitter and poisonous fruit.
19 “Let no one blithely think, when he hears the warnings of this curse, ‘I shall prosper even though I walk in my own stubborn way!’ 20 For the Lord will not pardon! His anger and jealousy will be hot against that man. And all the curses written in this book shall lie heavily upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 The Lord will separate that man from all the tribes of Israel, to pour out upon him all the curses (which are recorded in this book) that befall those who break this contract. 22 Then your children and the generations to come and the foreigners that pass by from distant lands shall see the devastation of the land and the diseases the Lord will have sent upon it. 23 They will see that the whole land is alkali and salt, a burned over wasteland, unsown, without crops, without a shred of vegetation—just like Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, destroyed by the Lord in his anger.
24 “‘Why has the Lord done this to his land?’ the nations will ask. ‘Why was he so angry?’
25 “And they will be told, ‘Because the people of the land broke the contract made with them by Jehovah, the God of their ancestors, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 26 For they worshiped other gods, violating his express command. 27 That is why the anger of the Lord was hot against this land, so that all his curses (which are recorded in this book) broke forth upon them. 28 In great anger the Lord rooted them out of their land and threw them away into another land, where they still live today!’
29 “There are secrets the Lord your God has not revealed to us, but these words that he has revealed are for us and our children to obey forever.
12 Then a great pageant appeared in heaven, portraying things to come. I saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and screamed in the pain of her labor, awaiting her delivery.
3 Suddenly a red Dragon appeared, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail drew along behind him a third of the stars, which he plunged to the earth. He stood before the woman as she was about to give birth to her child, ready to eat the baby as soon as it was born.
5 She gave birth to a boy who was to rule all nations with a heavy hand, and he was caught up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness, where God had prepared a place for her, to take care of her for 1,260 days.
7 Then there was war in heaven; Michael and the angels under his command fought the Dragon and his hosts of fallen angels. 8 And the Dragon lost the battle and was forced from heaven. 9 This great Dragon—the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world—was thrown down onto the earth with all his army.
10 Then I heard a loud voice shouting across the heavens, “It has happened at last! God’s salvation and the power and the rule, and the authority of his Christ are finally here; for the Accuser of our brothers has been thrown down from heaven onto earth—he accused them day and night before our God. 11 They defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony; for they did not love their lives but laid them down for him. 12 Rejoice, O heavens! You citizens of heaven, rejoice! Be glad! But woe to you people of the world, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.”
29 Jesus now returned to the Sea of Galilee and climbed a hill and sat there. 30 And a vast crowd brought him their lame, blind, maimed, and those who couldn’t speak, and many others, and laid them before Jesus, and he healed them all. 31 What a spectacle it was! Those who hadn’t been able to say a word before were talking excitedly, and those with missing arms and legs had new ones; the crippled were walking and jumping around, and those who had been blind were gazing about them! The crowds just marveled and praised the God of Israel.
32 Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I pity these people—they’ve been here with me for three days now and have nothing left to eat; I don’t want to send them away hungry or they will faint along the road.”
33 The disciples replied, “And where would we get enough here in the desert for all this mob to eat?”
34 Jesus asked them, “How much food do you have?” And they replied, “Seven loaves of bread and a few small fish!”
35 Then Jesus told all of the people to sit down on the ground, 36 and he took the seven loaves and the fish, and gave thanks to God for them, and divided them into pieces, and gave them to the disciples who presented them to the crowd. 37-38 And everyone ate until full—four thousand men besides the women and children! And afterwards, when the scraps were picked up, there were seven basketfuls left over!
39 Then Jesus sent the people home and got into the boat and crossed to Magadan.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.