Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 18
For the worship leader. A song of David, the Eternal One’s servant, who addressed these words to the Eternal after He had rescued him from Saul and his other enemies.
This Davidic psalm is also found in 2 Samuel 22. It expresses gratitude to God for saving him.
1 I love You, Eternal One, source of my power.
2 The Eternal is my rock, my fortress, and my salvation;
He is my True God, the stronghold in which I hide,
my strong shield, the horn that calls forth help, and my tall-walled tower.
3 I call out to the Eternal, who is worthy to be praised—
that’s how I will be rescued from my enemies.
4 The bonds of death encircled me;
the currents of destruction tugged at me;
5 The sorrows of the grave wrap around me;
the traps of death lay in wait for me.
6 In my time of need, I called to the Eternal;
I begged my True God for help.
He heard my voice echo up to His temple,
and my cry came to His ears.
7 Because of His great anger, the earth shook and staggered;
the roots of the mountains shifted.
8 Smoke poured out from His nose,
and devouring fire burst from His mouth.
Coals glowed from Him.
9 He bent the heavens and descended;
inky darkness was beneath His feet.
10 He rode upon a heavenly creature,[a] flying;
He was carried quickly on the wings of the wind.
11 He took darkness as His hiding place—
both the dark waters of the seas and the dark clouds of the sky.
12 Out from His brilliance
hailstones and burning coals
broke through the clouds.
13 The Eternal thundered in the heavens;
the Highest spoke; His voice rumbled [in the midst of hail and lightning].[b]
14 He shot forth His arrows and scattered the wicked;
He flung forth His lightning and struck them.
15 Then the deepest channels of the seas were visible,
and the very foundations of the world were uncovered
At Your rebuke, O Eternal One,
at the blast of wind from Your nostrils.
16 He reached down His hand from above me; He held me.
He lifted me from the raging waters.
17 He rescued me from my strongest enemy,
from all those who sought my death,
for they were too strong.
18 They came for me in the day of my destruction,
but the Eternal was the support of my life.
19 He set me down in a safe place;
He saved me to His delight; He took joy in me.
20 The Eternal One responded to me according to my goodness;
I kept my hands clean, and He blessed me.
21 I kept the ways of the Eternal
and have not walked away from my True God in wickedness.
22 All His laws were there before me,
and I did not push His statutes away.
23 I was blameless before Him;
I kept myself from guilt and shame.
24 That’s why the Eternal has rewarded me for my right living;
He’s rewarded me because He saw my hands were clean.
25 You are loyal to those who are loyal;
with the innocent, You prove to be innocent;
26 With the clean, You prove to be clean;
and with the twisted, You make Yourself contrary.
27 For You rescue humble people,
but You bring the proud back in line.
28 You are the lamp who lights my way;
the Eternal, my God, lights up my darkness.
29 With Your help, I can conquer an army;
I can leap over walls with a helping hand from You.
30 Everything God does is perfect;
the promise of the Eternal rings true;
He stands as a shield for all who hide in Him.
31 Who is the True God except the Eternal?
Who stands like a rock except our God?
32 The True God who encircled me with strength
and made my pathway straight.
33 He made me sure-footed as a deer
and placed me high up where I am safe.
34 He teaches me to fight
so that my arms can bend a bronze bow.
35 You have shielded me with Your salvation,
supporting me with Your strong right hand,
and it makes me strong.
36 You taught me how to walk with care
so my feet will not slip.
37 I chased my enemies and caught them
and did not stop until they were destroyed.
38 I broke them and threw them down beneath my feet,
and they could not rise up again.
39 For You equipped me for battle,
and You made my enemies fall beneath me.
40 You made my enemies turn tail and run,
and all who wanted my destruction, I destroyed.
41 They looked everywhere, but no one came to rescue them;
they asked the Eternal, but He did not answer them.
42 I beat them to sand, to dust that blows in the wind;
I flung them away like trash in the gutters.
43 You rescued me from conflict with the peoples;
You raised me up to rule over nations.
People who did not know me have come to serve me.
44 Strangers come to me, afraid.
As soon as they hear about me, they serve me;
45 Strangers who have lost heart
come fearfully to me from behind their high walls.
46 The Eternal is alive! My Rock is blessed,
and exalted is the True God of my deliverance—
47 The God who avenged me
and placed the peoples under me,
48 Who rescued me from all my foes.
Truly, You raised me up above my enemies
and saved me from the violent ones.
49 For this I will praise You among the nations, O Eternal,
and sing praises to Your name.
50 He is a tower of salvation for His king
and shows His enduring love to His anointed,
to David and his descendants forever.
17 Cain made love to his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Cain built a city there and named it Enoch after his son. 18 And this is how their family progressed: Enoch’s son was Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael. Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
19 Now Lamech married two wives, Adah and Zillah. 20 Adah gave birth to Jabal. His descendants are those who make their homes in tents and keep livestock. 21 Jabal’s brother’s name was Jubal, and his descendants are musicians who play instruments such as the lyre and the pipe. 22 Zillah, Lamech’s other wife, gave birth to Tubal-cain. Now he was a bronze- and ironsmith, and his sister was Naamah.
23 One day, Lamech announced to his wives:
Lamech: Adah and Zillah, listen to me!
Wives of Lamech, I need to tell you something!
I killed a man who struck me.
He was a young man who wounded me first.
24 Here’s how I see it:
if Cain is avenged seven times,
then surely Lamech must be avenged seventy-seven times!
25 Meanwhile, Adam made love to his wife again, and she gave birth to another son and named him Seth.
Eve (to herself): God has given me another child to replace Abel, since Cain killed him.
26 After many years passed, Seth became the father of a son and named him Enosh. This was about the time when people began to worship and call on the name of the Eternal One.
3 So all of you who are holy partners in a heavenly calling, let’s turn our attention to Jesus, the Emissary of God and High Priest, who brought us the faith we profess; 2 and compare Him to Moses, who also brought words from God. Both of them were faithful to their missions, to the One who called them. 3 But we value Jesus more than Moses, in the same way that we value a builder more than the house he builds. 4 Every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. 5 Moses brought healing and redemption to his people as a faithful servant in God’s house, and he was a witness to the things that would be spoken later. 6 But Jesus the Anointed was faithful as a Son of that house. (We become that house, if we’re able to hold on to the confident hope we have in God until the end.)
For the first-century Jewish-Christian audience, Moses is the rescuer of Hebrew slaves out of bondage in Egypt—the receiver of God’s law and the covenant. They remember how he shepherded the children of Israel safely through the desert for 40 years and led them to the brink of the promised land. He was indeed a remarkable man. Yet what Jesus has accomplished for everyone—not just the Jews—is on a totally different level. Moses was indeed faithful to God and accomplished a great deal as God’s servant. Jesus, too, is faithful to God, but He has accomplished what Moses could not because He is God’s very own Son.
7 Listen now, to the voice of the Holy Spirit through what the psalmist wrote:
Today, if you listen to His voice,
8 Don’t harden your hearts the way they did
in the bitter uprising at Meribah
9 Where your ancestors tested Me
though they had seen My marvelous power.
10 For the 40 years they traveled on
to the land that I had promised them,
That generation broke My heart.
Grieving and angry, I said, “Their hearts are unfaithful;
they don’t know what I want from them.”
11 That is why I swore in anger
they would never enter salvation’s rest.[a]
43-44 The next day Jesus set out to go into Galilee; and when He came upon Philip, He invited him to join them.
Jesus: Follow Me.
Philip, like Andrew and Peter, came from a town called Bethsaida; and he decided to make the journey with Him. 45 Philip found Nathanael, a friend, and burst in with excitement:
Philip: We have found the One. Moses wrote about Him in the Law, all the prophets spoke of the day when He would come, and now He is here—His name is Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter; and He comes from Nazareth.
Nathanael: 46 How can anything good come from a place like Nazareth?
Philip: Come with me, and see for yourself.
47 As Philip and Nathanael approached, Jesus saw Nathanael and spoke to those standing around Him.
Jesus: Look closely, and you will see an Israelite who is a truth-teller.
Nathanael (overhearing Jesus): 48 How would You know this about me? We have never met.
Jesus: I have been watching you before Philip invited you here. Earlier in the day, you were enjoying the shade and fruit of the fig tree. I saw you then.
Nathanael: 49 Teacher, You are the One—God’s own Son and Israel’s King.
Jesus: 50 Nathanael, if all it takes for you to believe is My telling you I saw you under the fig tree, then what you will see later will astound you. 51 I tell you the truth: before our journey is complete, you will see the heavens standing open while heavenly messengers ascend and descend, swirling around the Son of Man.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.