Book of Common Prayer

45 My heart is overflowing with a beautiful thought! I will write a lovely poem to the King, for I am as full of words as the speediest writer pouring out his story.

⁸ Your robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. In your palaces of inlaid ivory, lovely music is being played for your enjoyment. ⁹ Kings’ daughters are among your concubines.^[a] Standing beside you is the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.

^10-11 “I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away. Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord. ¹² The people of Tyre, the richest people of our day, will shower you with gifts and entreat your favors.”

¹³ The bride,^[b] a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold. ¹⁴ Lovely^[c] she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king! ¹⁵ What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates! ¹⁶ “Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

¹⁷ “I will cause your name to be honored in all generations; the nations of the earth will praise you forever.”

47 Come, everyone, and clap for joy! Shout triumphant praises to the Lord! ² For the Lord, the God above all gods, is awesome beyond words; he is the great King of all the earth. ³ He subdues the nations before us ⁴ and will personally select his choicest blessings for his Jewish people^[a]—the very best for those he loves.

⁵ God has ascended with a mighty shout, with trumpets blaring. ^6-7 Sing out your praises to our God, our King. Yes, sing your highest praises to our King, the King of all the earth. Sing thoughtful praises! ⁸ He reigns above the nations, sitting on his holy throne. ⁹ The Gentile rulers of the world have joined with us in praising him—praising^[b] the God of Abraham—for the battle shields of all the armies of the world are his trophies. He is highly honored everywhere.

48 How great is the Lord! How much we should praise him. He lives upon Mount Zion in Jerusalem. ² What a glorious sight! See Mount Zion rising north of the city^[c] high above the plains for all to see—Mount Zion, joy of all the earth, the residence of the great King.

³ God himself is the defender of Jerusalem.^{[d] 4} The kings of the earth have arrived together to inspect the city. ⁵ They marvel at the sight and hurry home again, ⁶ afraid of what they have seen; they are filled with panic like a woman in travail! ⁷ For God destroys the mightiest warships with a breath of wind. ⁸ We have heard of the city’s glory—the city of our God, the Commander of the armies of heaven. And now we see it for ourselves! God has established Jerusalem forever.

⁹ Lord, here in your Temple we meditate upon your kindness and your love. ¹⁰ Your name is known throughout the earth, O God. You are praised everywhere for the salvation^[e] you have scattered throughout the world. ¹¹ O Jerusalem,^[f] rejoice! O people of Judah, rejoice! For God will see to it that you are finally treated fairly. ¹² Go, inspect the city! Walk around and count her many towers! ¹³ Note her walls and tour her palaces so that you can tell your children.

¹⁴ For this great God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide until we die.

15 Afterwards Jehovah spoke to Abram in a vision, and this is what he told him: “Don’t be fearful, Abram, for I will defend you. And I will give you great blessings.”

^2-3 But Abram replied, “O Lord Jehovah, what good are all your blessings when I have no son? For without a son, some other member of my household^[a] will inherit all my wealth.”

⁴ Then Jehovah told him, “No, no one else will be your heir, for you will have a son to inherit everything you own.”

⁵ Then God brought Abram outside beneath the nighttime sky and told him, “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!” ⁶ And Abram believed God; then God considered him righteous on account of his faith.

⁷ And he told him, “I am Jehovah who brought you out of the city of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land.”

⁸ But Abram replied, “O Lord Jehovah, how can I be sure that you will give it to me?” ⁹ Then Jehovah told him to take a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon, ¹⁰ and to slay them and to cut them apart down the middle, and to separate the halves, but not to divide the birds. ¹¹ And when the vultures came down upon the carcasses, Abram shooed them away.

¹⁷ As the sun went down and it was dark, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch that passed between the halves of the carcasses. ¹⁸ So that day Jehovah made this covenant with Abram: “I have given this land to your descendants from the Wadi-el-Arish^[a] to the Euphrates River. ^19-21 And I give to them these nations: Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, Jebusites.”

9 ^1-2 Now in that first agreement between God and his people there were rules for worship and there was a sacred tent down here on earth. Inside this place of worship there were two rooms. The first one contained the golden candlestick and a table with special loaves of holy bread upon it; this part was called the Holy Place. ³ Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was a room called the Holy of Holies. ⁴ In that room there were a golden incense-altar and the golden chest, called the ark of the covenant, completely covered on all sides with pure gold. Inside the ark were the tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments written on them, and a golden jar with some manna in it, and Aaron’s wooden cane that budded. ⁵ Above the golden chest were statues of angels called the cherubim—the guardians of God’s glory—with their wings stretched out over the ark’s golden cover, called the mercy seat. But enough of such details.

⁶ Well, when all was ready, the priests went in and out of the first room whenever they wanted to, doing their work. ⁷ But only the high priest went into the inner room, and then only once a year, all alone, and always with blood that he sprinkled on the mercy seat as an offering to God to cover his own mistakes and sins and the mistakes and sins of all the people.

⁸ And the Holy Spirit uses all this to point out to us that under the old system the common people could not go into the Holy of Holies as long as the outer room and the entire system it represents were still in use.

⁹ This has an important lesson for us today. For under the old system, gifts and sacrifices were offered, but these failed to cleanse the hearts of the people who brought them. ¹⁰ For the old system dealt only with certain rituals—what foods to eat and drink, rules for washing themselves, and rules about this and that. The people had to keep these rules to tide them over until Christ came with God’s new and better way.

¹¹ He came as High Priest of this better system that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world, ¹² and once for all took blood into that inner room, the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it on the mercy seat; but it was not the blood of goats and calves. No, he took his own blood, and with it he, by himself, made sure of our eternal salvation.

¹³ And if under the old system the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of young cows could cleanse men’s bodies from sin, ¹⁴ just think how much more surely the blood of Christ will transform our lives and hearts. His sacrifice frees us from the worry of having to obey the old rules and makes us want to serve the living God. For by the help of the eternal Holy Spirit, Christ willingly gave himself to God to die for our sins—he being perfect, without a single sin or fault.

5 Afterwards Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish religious holidays. ² Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was Bethesda Pool, with five covered platforms or porches surrounding it. ³ Crowds of sick folks—lame, blind, or with paralyzed limbs—lay on the platforms (waiting for a certain movement of the water, ⁴ for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and disturbed the water, and the first person to step down into it afterwards was healed).^[a]

⁵ One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him and knew how long he had been ill, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

⁷ “I can’t,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to help me into the pool at the movement of the water. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets in ahead of me.”

⁸ Jesus told him, “Stand up, roll up your sleeping mat and go on home!”

⁹ Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up the mat and began walking!

But it was on the Sabbath when this miracle was done. ¹⁰ So the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! It’s illegal to carry that sleeping mat!”

¹¹ “The man who healed me told me to,” was his reply.

¹² “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.

¹³ The man didn’t know, and Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. ¹⁴ But afterwards Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; don’t sin as you did before,^[b] or something even worse may happen to you.”

¹⁵ Then the man went to find the Jewish leaders and told them it was Jesus who had healed him.

¹⁶ So they began harassing Jesus as a Sabbath breaker.

¹⁷ But Jesus replied, “My Father constantly does good, and I’m following his example.”^[c]

¹⁸ Then the Jewish leaders were all the more eager to kill him because in addition to disobeying their Sabbath laws, he had spoken of God as his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.