Book of Common Prayer
72 A psalm for Asaph. How good is God to Israel, to them that are of a right heart!
2 But my feet were almost moved; my steps had well nigh slipped.
3 Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners.
4 For there is no regard to their death, nor is there strength in their stripes.
5 They are not in the labour of men: neither shall they be scourged like other men.
6 Therefore pride hath held them fast: they are covered with their iniquity and their wickedness.
7 Their iniquity hath come forth, as it were from fatness: they have passed into the affection of the heart.
8 They have thought and spoken wickedness: they have spoken iniquity on high.
9 They have set their mouth against heaven: and their tongue hath passed through the earth.
10 Therefore will my people return here and full days shall be found in them.
11 And they said: How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?
12 Behold these are sinners; and yet abounding in the world they have obtained riches.
13 And I said: Then have I in vain justified my heart, and washed my hands among the innocent.
14 And I have been scourged all the day; and my chastisement hath been in the mornings.
15 If I said: I will speak thus; behold I should condemn the generation of thy children.
16 I studied that I might know this thing, it is a labour in my sight:
17 Until I go into the sanctuary of God, and understand concerning their last ends.
18 But indeed for deceits thou hast put it to them: when they were lifted up thou hast cast them down.
19 How are they brought to desolation? they have suddenly ceased to be: they have perished by reason of their iniquity.
20 As the dream of them that awake, O Lord; so in thy city thou shalt bring their image to nothing.
21 For my heart hath been inflamed, and my reins have been changed:
22 And I am brought to nothing, and I knew not.
23 I am become as a beast before thee: and I am always with thee.
24 Thou hast held me by my right hand; and by thy will thou hast conducted me, and with thy glory thou hast received me.
25 For what have I in heaven? and besides thee what do I desire upon earth?
26 For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever.
27 For behold they that go far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that are disloyal to thee.
28 But it is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my hope in the Lord God: That I may declare all thy praises, in the gates of the daughter of Sion.
30 Moses therefore spoke, in the hearing of the whole assembly of Israel, the words of this canticle, and finished it even to the end,
32 Hear, O ye heavens, the things I speak, let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth.
2 Let my doctrine gather as the rain, let my speech distil as the dew, as a shower upon the herb, and as drops upon the grass.
3 Because I will invoke the name of the Lord: give ye magnificence to our God.
4 The works of God are perfect, and all his ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, he is just and right.
5 They have sinned against him, and are nose of his children in their filth: they are a wicked and perverse generation.
6 Is this the return thou makest to the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he thy father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?
7 Remember the days of old, think upon every generation: ask thy father, and he will declare to thee: thy elders and they will tell thee.
8 When the Most High divided the nations: when he separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel.
9 But the Lord's portion is his people: Jacob the lot of his inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, in a place of horror, and of vast wilderness: he led him about, and taught him: and he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11 As the eagle enticing her young to fly, and hovering over them, he spread his wings, and hath taken him and carried him on his shoulders.
12 The Lord alone was his leader: and there was no strange god with him.
13 He set him upon high land: that he might eat the fruits of the fields, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone,
14 Butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep with the fat of lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan: and goats with the marrow of wheat, and might drink the purest blood of the grape.
21 I speak according to dishonour, as if we had been weak in this part. Wherein if any man dare (I speak foolishly), I dare also.
22 They are Hebrews: so am I. They are Israelites: so am I. They are the seed of Abraham: so am I.
23 They are the ministers of Christ (I speak as one less wise): I am more; in many more labours, in prisons more frequently, in stripes above measure, in deaths often.
24 Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes, save one.
25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea.
26 In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren.
27 In labour and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
28 Besides those things which are without: my daily instance, the solicitude for all the churches.
29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?
30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things that concern my infirmity.
31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever, knoweth that I lie not.
32 At Damascus, the governor of the nation under Aretas the king, guarded the city of the Damascenes, to apprehend me.
33 And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and so escaped his hands.
11 As they were hearing these things, he added and spoke a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately be manifested.
12 He said therefore: A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.
13 And calling his ten servants, he gave them ten pounds, and said to them: Trade till I come.
14 But his citizens hated him: and they sent an embassage after him, saying: We will not have this man to reign over us.
15 And it came to pass, that he returned, having received the kingdom: and he commanded his servants to be called, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.
16 And the first came, saying: Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.
17 And he said to him: Well done, thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a little, thou shalt have power over ten cities.
18 And the second came, saying: Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds.
19 And he said to him: Be thou also over five cities.
20 And another came, saying: Lord, behold here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin;
21 For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up what thou didst not lay down, and thou reapest that which thou didst not sow.
22 He saith to him: Out of thy own mouth I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up what I laid not down, and reaping that which I did not sow:
23 And why then didst thou not give my money into the bank, that at my coming, I might have exacted it with usury?
24 And he said to them that stood by: Take the pound away from him, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
25 And they said to him: Lord, he hath ten pounds.
26 But I say to you, that to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall abound: and from him that hath not, even that which he hath, shall be taken from him.
27 But as for those my enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither, and kill them before me.
Public Domain (Why are modern Bible translations copyrighted?)