Book of Common Prayer

⁶ We have done bad things,
    as our ancestors also did.
We have done things that are wicked and evil.
⁷ When our ancestors were in Egypt,
    they did not understand your miracles.
They forgot the many ways that you showed them your faithful love.
When they arrived at the Red Sea,
    they turned against you, Lord.
⁸ But the Lord rescued them,
    to show that his name is great.
He showed that he was very powerful.
⁹ He shouted at the Red Sea,
    and it became dry.
He led his people through the middle of the deep water,
    as if they walked in a desert!
¹⁰ He rescued them from the people who hated them.
    He saved them from their enemy's power.
¹¹ The water of the sea drowned their enemies,
    so that none of them remained alive.^[b]
12 Then God's people believed his promises.
    They sang songs to praise him.^[c]

¹³ But they soon forgot
    what the Lord had done to help them.
They did not wait for him to tell them what to do.
¹⁴ In the wilderness they wanted better food.
    They tested God to see what he would do.
¹⁵ He gave them the food that they asked for,
    but he also sent a bad disease on them.^[d]
16 The people became jealous of Moses,
    and Aaron, the Lord's special priest.
¹⁷ So God made the earth break open,
    so that Dathan fell into it.
It also destroyed Abiram and his people.
¹⁸ Fire burned all their group,
    and it killed those wicked people.^[e]
19 At Horeb, the Israelites used gold to make a cow,
    and they worshipped it.
²⁰ They turned away from their great God.
Instead, they worshipped the statue of a cow,
    an animal that eats grass!^[f]
21 They forgot the God who had saved them,
    when he did great miracles in Egypt.
²² He had done powerful things in the land of Ham's descendants,
    and at the shore of the Red Sea.
His people forgot about all that!
²³ So God said that he would destroy them.
But God's servant, Moses, spoke on their behalf.
He asked God not to be angry with his people,
    and God agreed.
²⁴ Later, they did not believe God's promise
    to take them safely into the beautiful land of Canaan.
²⁵ They spoke against the Lord in their tents,
    and they did not obey him.
²⁶ So he made a strong promise
    that he would cause them to die in the desert.
²⁷ He promised that he would chase their descendants away,
    so that they died in foreign countries.^[g]
28 After that, they started to worship the false god, Baal of Peor.
They ate the food from sacrifices
    that people gave to dead idols.
²⁹ The Lord became angry
    because of what his people did.
He sent a bad disease among them.
³⁰ Then Phinehas punished the guilty people,
    so that the disease stopped killing people.^[h]
31 So we remember that Phinehas was a righteous man,
    and that will be true for ever.
³² At Meribah springs, the Israelites made God angry.
    What they did there caused Moses to have trouble.
³³ Moses was so upset that he spoke in a careless way.^[i]

³⁴ The Lord commanded his people
    to destroy the nations of Canaan,
But they did not obey the Lord's command.
³⁵ Instead, they mixed with those nations
    and they learned their way of life.
³⁶ They worshipped their idols
    which caught them in a trap.
³⁷ They even killed their sons and their daughters
    as sacrifices for those idols of demons!
³⁸ Their sons and their daughters did not deserve to die,
    but they killed them as sacrifices for the idols of Canaan.
Those murders made the land unclean.
³⁹ The things that the Lord's people did
    made them unclean.
They were not faithful to the Lord,
    like a wife who is not faithful to her husband.
⁴⁰ So the Lord became angry with his people.
They belonged to him
    but he turned away from them.
⁴¹ He let other nations have power over them.
    Their enemies ruled over them.
⁴² Their enemies had power to hurt them,
    and they were cruel to them.
⁴³ Many times, the Lord rescued his people,
    but they had decided not to obey him.
Their sins made them weaker and weaker.
⁴⁴ But the Lord still saw when they were in trouble.
    He answered them when they called to him for help.
⁴⁵ He remembered the covenant that he had made with them.
Because of his faithful love for his people,
    he stopped punishing them.
⁴⁶ He caused all their enemies to be kind to them.

⁴⁷ Lord, our God, please save us!
Bring us safely home from among the other nations.^[j]
Then we will thank you!
    We will shout aloud to praise your holy name.

⁴⁸ Praise the Lord, Israel's God,
    as he deserves!
Praise him now and for ever!
Let everybody say, ‘Amen! We agree!’
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!^[k]

Get ready for war!
Shout to the soldiers.
Make all the men who fight get ready to attack.
¹⁰ Make your ploughs into swords.
Make the tools that you use on the farm into spears.
The weak man must say, ‘I am strong!’
¹¹ Come quickly, you people who live round Israel.
And get together in the valley.
Lord, send down your army to attack them.

¹² ‘Wake up the people in all the countries!
Bring them into the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
I will sit there to judge the people from every place.
¹³ Now is the time to cut down the fruits.
They are ready for you to bring them in.
Walk all over the grapes.
The winepress is full of them.
They come over the top.
The people in all countries have done so many bad things.’

¹⁴ Many nations are in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
It is there that the day of the Lord will soon come.
¹⁵ The sun and moon will become dark.
The stars will not shine.
¹⁶ The Lord will shout from Zion.
He will make a great noise from Jerusalem.
The earth and the sky will move about.
But the Lord will keep his people safe.