Book of Common Prayer
41 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David:
2 (1) How blessed are those who care for the poor!
When calamity comes, Adonai will save them.
3 (2) Adonai will preserve them, keep them alive,
and make them happy in the land.
You will not hand them over
to the whims of their enemies.
4 (3) Adonai sustains them on their sickbed;
when they lie ill, you make them recover.
5 (4) I said, “Adonai, have pity on me!
Heal me, for I have sinned against you!”
6 (5) My enemies say the worst about me:
“When will he die and his name disappear?”
7 (6) When they come to see me they speak insincerely,
their hearts meanwhile gathering falsehoods;
then they go out and spread bad reports.
8 (7) All who hate me whisper together against me,
imagining the worst about me.
9 (8) “A fatal disease has attached itself to him;
now that he lies ill, he will never get up.”
10 (9) Even my close friend, on whom I relied,
who shared my table, has turned against me.
11 (10) But you, Adonai, have pity on me,
put me on my feet, so I can pay them back.
12 (11) I will know you are pleased with me
if my enemy doesn’t defeat me.
13 (12) You uphold me because of my innocence
you establish me in your presence forever.
14 (13) Blessed be Adonai the God of Isra’el
from eternity past to eternity future.
Amen. Amen.
52 (0) For the leader. A maskil of David, 2 when Do’eg from Edom came and told Sha’ul, “David has arrived at the house of Achimelekh”:
3 (1) Why do you boast of your evil, you tyrant,
when God’s mercy is present every day?
4 (2) Your tongue, as sharp as a razor,
plots destruction and works deception.
5 (3) You love evil more than good,
lies rather than speaking uprightly. (Selah)
6 (4) You love all words that eat people up,
you deceitful tongue!
7 (5) This is why God will strike you down,
seize you, pluck you from your tent
and uproot you from the land of the living. (Selah)
8 (6) The righteous will see and be awestruck;
they will jeer at him, saying,
9 (7) “This fellow would not make God his refuge,
but trusted in his own great wealth,
relying on his evil plots.”
10 (8) But I am like a leafy olive tree
in the house of God;
I put my trust in the grace of God
forever and ever.
11 (9) I will praise you forever for what you have done,
and I will put my hope in your name;
for this is what is good
in the presence of your faithful.
44 (0) For the leader. By the descendants of Korach. A maskil:
2 (1) God, we heard it with our ears;
our fathers told us about it —
a deed which you did in their days,
back in days of old.
3 (2) With your hand you drove out nations
to plant them in [the land],
you crushed peoples
to make room for them.
4 (3) For not by their own swords
did they conquer the land,
nor did their own arm
give them victory;
rather, it was your right hand,
your arm and the light of your face;
because you favored them.
5 (4) God, you are my king;
command complete victory for Ya‘akov.
6 (5) Through you we pushed away our foes,
through your name we trampled down our assailants.
7 (6) For I don’t rely on my bow,
nor can my sword give me victory.
8 (7) No, you saved us from our adversaries;
you put to shame those who hate us.
9 (8) We will boast in our God all day
and give thanks to your name forever. (Selah)
10 (9) Yet now you have thrust us aside and disgraced us;
you don’t march out with our armies.
11 (10) You make us retreat from the adversary,
and those who hate us plunder us at will.
12 (11) You have handed us over like sheep to be eaten
and scattered us among the nations.
13 (12) You sell your people for a pittance,
you don’t even profit on the sale.
14 (13) You make us an object for our neighbors to mock,
one of scorn and derision to those around us.
15 (14) You make us a byword among the nations;
the peoples jeer at us, shaking their heads.
16 (15) All day long my disgrace is on my mind,
and shame has covered my face
17 (16) at the sound of those who revile and insult,
at the sight of the enemy bent on revenge.
18 (17) Though all this came on us, we did not forget you;
we have not been false to your covenant;
19 (18) Our hearts have not turned back,
and our steps did not turn away from your path,
20 (19) though you pressed us into a lair of jackals
and covered us with death-dark gloom.
21 (20) If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
22 (21) wouldn’t God have discovered this,
since he knows the secrets of the heart?
23 (22) For your sake we are put to death all day long,
we are considered sheep to be slaughtered.
24 (23) Wake up, Adonai! Why are you asleep?
Rouse yourself! Don’t thrust us off forever.
25 (24) Why are you turning your face away,
forgetting our pain and misery?
26 (25) For we are lying flat in the dust,
our bodies cling to the ground.
27 (26) Get up, and come to help us!
For the sake of your grace, redeem us!
7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month of Sh’vat, in the second year of Daryavesh, this message from Adonai came to Z’kharyah the son of Berekhyah, the son of ‘Iddo, the prophet: 8 It was night, and I saw there before me a man riding on a russet-colored horse. He stood among the myrtle bushes in the valley; and behind him were other horses, russet, chestnut-colored and white. 9 I asked, “What are these, my Lord?” The angel speaking with me said to me, “I will show you what these are.” 10 The man standing among the myrtles said, “These are those whom Adonai has sent to wander throughout the earth.” 11 Then they themselves answered the angel of Adonai standing among the myrtles, “We have been wandering throughout the earth, and the whole world is quiet and at peace.” 12 The angel of Adonai said, “Adonai-Tzva’ot, how long will you keep withholding mercy from Yerushalayim and the cities of Y’hudah? You’ve been angry with them for the past seventy years!” 13 Adonai replied with kind and comforting words to the angel who was speaking with me. 14 The angel speaking with me then said to me, “Here is what Adonai-Tzva’ot says: ‘I am extremely jealous on behalf of Yerushalayim and Tziyon; 15 and [to the same degree] I am extremely angry with the nations that are so self-satisfied; because I was only a little angry [at Yerushalayim and Tziyon], but they made the suffering worse.’ 16 Therefore Adonai says, ‘I will return to Yerushalayim with merciful deeds. My house will be rebuilt there,’ says Adonai-Tzva’ot; ‘yes, a measuring line will be stretched out over Yerushalayim.’ 17 In addition, proclaim that Adonai-Tzva’ot says, ‘My cities will again overflow with prosperity.’ Adonai will again comfort Tziyon, and he will again make Yerushalayim the city of his choice.”
7 “To the angel of the Messianic Community in Philadelphia, write: ‘Here is the message of HaKadosh, the True One, the one who has the key of David, who, if he opens something, no one else can shut it, and if he closes something, no one else can open it.[a] 8 “I know what you are doing. Look, I have put in front of you an open door, and no one can shut it. I know that you have but little power, yet you have obeyed my message and have not disowned me. 9 Here, I will give you some from the synagogue of the Adversary, those who call themselves Jews but aren’t — on the contrary, they are lying — see, I will cause them to come and prostrate themselves at your feet, and they will know that I have loved you. 10 Because you did obey my message about persevering, I will keep you from the time of trial coming upon the whole world to put the people living on earth to the test. 11 I am coming soon; hold on to what you have, so that no one will take away your crown. 12 I will make him who wins the victory a pillar in the Temple of my God, and he will never leave it. Also I will write on him the name of my God and the name of my God’s city, the new Yerushalayim coming down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name. 13 Those who have ears, let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the Messianic communities.”’
15 “So when you see the abomination that causes devastation spoken about through the prophet Dani’el standing in the Holy Place”[a] (let the reader understand the allusion), 16 “that will be the time for those in Y’hudah to escape to the hills. 17 If someone is on the roof, he must not go down to gather his belongings from his house; 18 if someone is in the field, he must not turn back to get his coat. 19 What a terrible time it will be for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that you will not have to escape in winter or on Shabbat. 21 For there will be trouble then worse than there has ever been from the beginning of the world until now, and there will be nothing like it again![b] 22 Indeed, if the length of this time had not been limited, no one would survive; but for the sake of those who have been chosen, its length will be limited.
23 “At that time, if someone says to you, ‘Look! Here’s the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ don’t believe him. 24 For there will appear false Messiahs and false prophets performing great miracles — amazing things! — so as to fool even the chosen, if possible. 25 There! I have told you in advance! 26 So if people say to you, ‘Listen! He’s out in the desert!’ don’t go; or, ‘Look! He’s hidden away in a secret room!’ don’t believe it. 27 For when the Son of Man does come, it will be like lightning that flashes out of the east and fills the sky to the western horizon. 28 Wherever there’s a dead body, that’s where you find the vultures.
29 “But immediately following the trouble of those times,
the sun will grow dark,
the moon will stop shining,[c]
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the powers in heaven will be shaken. [d]
30 “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, all the tribes of the Land will mourn,[e] and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with tremendous power and glory.[f] 31 He will send out his angels with a great shofar;[g] and they will gather together his chosen people from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.