Book of Common Prayer
69 1-2 Save me, O my God. The floods have risen. Deeper and deeper I sink in the mire; the waters rise around me. 3 I have wept until I am exhausted; my throat is dry and hoarse; my eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to act. 4 I cannot even count all those who hate me without cause. They are influential men, these who plot to kill me though I am innocent. They demand that I be punished for what I didn’t do.
5 O God, you know so well how stupid I am, and you know all my sins. 6 O Lord God of the armies of heaven, don’t let me be a stumbling block to those who trust in you. O God of Israel, don’t let me cause them to be confused, 7 though I am mocked and cursed and shamed for your sake. 8 Even my own brothers pretend they don’t know me! 9 My zeal for God and his work[a] burns hot within me. And because I advocate your cause, your enemies insult me even as they insult you. 10 How they scoff and mock me when I mourn and fast before the Lord! 11 How they talk about me when I wear sackcloth to show my humiliation and sorrow for my sins! 12 I am the talk of the town and the song of the drunkards. 13 But I keep right on praying to you, Lord. For now is the time—you are bending down to hear! You are ready with a plentiful supply of love and kindness. Now answer my prayer and rescue me as you promised.[b] 14 Pull me out of this mire. Don’t let me sink in. Rescue me from those who hate me, and from these deep waters I am in.
15 Don’t let the floods overwhelm me or the ocean swallow me; save me from the pit that threatens me. 16 O Jehovah, answer my prayers, for your loving-kindness is wonderful; your mercy is so plentiful, so tender and so kind. 17 Don’t hide from me,[c] for I am in deep trouble. Quick! Come and save me. 18 Come, Lord, and rescue me. Ransom me from all my enemies. 19 You know how they talk about me, and how they so shamefully dishonor me. You see them all and know what each has said.
20 Their contempt has broken my heart; my spirit is heavy within me. If even one would show some pity, if even one would comfort me! 21 For food they gave me gall; for my awful thirst they offered vinegar. 22 Let their joys[d] turn to ashes and their peace disappear; 23 let darkness, blindness, and great feebleness be theirs. 24 Pour out your fury upon them; consume them with the fierceness of your anger. 25 Let their homes be desolate and abandoned. 26 For they persecute the one you have smitten and scoff at the pain of the one you have pierced. 27 Pile their sins high and do not overlook them. 28 Let these men be blotted from the list of the living;[e] do not give them the joys of life with the righteous.
29 But rescue me, O God, from my poverty and pain. 30 Then I will praise God with my singing! My thanks will be his praise— 31 that will please him more than sacrificing a bullock or an ox. 32 The humble shall see their God at work for them. No wonder they will be so glad! All who seek for God shall live in joy. 33 For Jehovah hears the cries of his needy ones and does not look the other way.
34 Praise him, all heaven and earth! Praise him, all the seas and everything in them! 35 For God will save Jerusalem;[f] he rebuilds the cities of Judah. His people shall live in them and not be dispossessed. 36 Their children shall inherit the land; all who love his name shall live there safely.
73 How good God is to Israel—to those whose hearts are pure. 2 But as for me, I came so close to the edge of the cliff! My feet were slipping and I was almost gone. 3 For I was envious of the prosperity of the proud and wicked. 4 Yes, all through life their road is smooth![a] They grow sleek and fat. 5 They aren’t always in trouble and plagued with problems like everyone else, 6 so their pride sparkles like a jeweled necklace, and their clothing is woven of cruelty! 7 These fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for! 8 They scoff at God and threaten his people. How proudly they speak! 9 They boast against the very heavens, and their words strut through the earth.
10 And so God’s people are dismayed and confused and drink it all in. 11 “Does God realize what is going on?” they ask. 12 “Look at these men of arrogance; they never have to lift a finger—theirs is a life of ease; and all the time their riches multiply.”
13 Have I been wasting my time? Why take the trouble to be pure? 14 All I get out of it is trouble and woe—every day and all day long! 15 If I had really said that, I would have been a traitor to your people. 16 Yet it is so hard to explain it—this prosperity of those who hate the Lord. 17 Then one day I went into God’s sanctuary to meditate and thought about the future of these evil men. 18 What a slippery path they are on—suddenly God will send them sliding over the edge of the cliff and down to their destruction: 19 an instant end to all their happiness, an eternity of terror. 20 Their present life is only a dream! They will awaken to the truth as one awakens from a dream of things that never really were!
21 When I saw this, what turmoil filled my heart! 22 I saw myself so stupid and so ignorant; I must seem like an animal to you, O God. 23 But even so, you love me! You are holding my right hand! 24 You will keep on guiding me all my life with your wisdom and counsel, and afterwards receive me into the glories of heaven![b] 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And I desire no one on earth as much as you! 26 My health fails; my spirits droop, yet God remains! He is the strength of my heart; he is mine forever!
27 But those refusing to worship God will perish, for he destroys those serving other gods.
28 But as for me, I get as close to him as I can! I have chosen him, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful ways he rescues me.
11 You have made me act like a fool—boasting like this—for you people ought to be writing about me and not making me write about myself. There isn’t a single thing these other marvelous fellows have that I don’t have too, even though I am really worth nothing at all. 12 When I was there I certainly gave you every proof that I was truly an apostle, sent to you by God himself, for I patiently did many wonders and signs and mighty works among you. 13 The only thing I didn’t do for you, which I do everywhere else in all other churches, was to become a burden to you—I didn’t ask you to give me food to eat and a place to stay. Please forgive me for this wrong!
14 Now I am coming to you again, the third time; and it is still not going to cost you anything, for I don’t want your money. I want you! And anyway, you are my children, and little children don’t pay for their father’s and mother’s food—it’s the other way around; parents supply food for their children. 15 I am glad to give you myself and all I have for your spiritual good, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me.
16 Some of you are saying, “It’s true that his visits didn’t seem to cost us anything, but he is a sneaky fellow, that Paul, and he fooled us. As sure as anything he must have made money from us some way.”
17 But how? Did any of the men I sent to you take advantage of you? 18 When I urged Titus to visit you and sent our other brother with him, did they make any profit? No, of course not. For we have the same Holy Spirit and walk in each other’s steps, doing things the same way.
19 I suppose you think I am saying all this to get back into your good graces. That isn’t it at all. I tell you, with God listening as I say it, that I have said this to help you, dear friends—to build you up spiritually—and not to help myself. 20 For I am afraid that when I come to visit you I won’t like what I find, and then you won’t like the way I will have to act. I am afraid that I will find you quarreling, and envying each other, and being angry with each other, and acting big, and saying wicked things about each other, and whispering behind each other’s backs, filled with conceit and disunity. 21 Yes, I am afraid that when I come God will humble me before you and I will be sad and mourn because many of you have sinned before and don’t even care about the wicked, impure things you have done: your lust and immorality, and the taking of other men’s wives.
41 But as they came closer to Jerusalem and he saw the city ahead, he began to cry. 42 “Eternal peace was within your reach and you turned it down,” he wept, “and now it is too late. 43 Your enemies will pile up earth against your walls and encircle you and close in on you, 44 and crush you to the ground, and your children within you; your enemies will not leave one stone upon another—for you have rejected the opportunity God offered you.”
45 Then he entered the Temple and began to drive out the merchants from their stalls, 46 saying to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple is a place of prayer; but you have turned it into a den of thieves.’”
47 After that he taught daily in the Temple, but the chief priests and other religious leaders and the business community[a] were trying to find some way to get rid of him. 48 But they could think of nothing, for he was a hero to the people—they hung on every word he said.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.