Book of Common Prayer
To the Director: For flutes. A Davidic Psalm
A Prayer for God’s Help
5 Lord, listen to my words,
consider my groaning.
2 Pay attention to my cry for help,[a]
my king and my God,
for unto you will I pray.
3 Lord, in the morning you will hear my voice;
in the morning I will pray[b] to you,
and I will watch for your answer.[c]
4 Indeed, you aren’t a God who delights in wickedness;
evil will never dwell with you.
5 Boastful ones will not stand before you;
you hate all those who practice wickedness.
6 You will destroy those who speak lies.
The Lord abhors the person of bloodshed and deceit.
7 But I, because of the abundance of your gracious love,
may come into your house.
In awe of you, I will worship in your holy Temple.
8 Lord, lead me in your righteousness because of my enemies.
Make your path straight before me.
9 But as for the wicked,[d]
they do not speak truth at all.
Inside them there is only wickedness.
Their throat is an open grave,
on their tongue is deceitful flattery.
10 Declare them guilty, God!
Let them fall by their own schemes.
Drive them away because of their many transgressions,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 Let all those who take refuge in you rejoice!
Let them shout for joy forever,
and may you protect them.
Let those who love your name exult in you.
12 Indeed, you will bless the righteous one, Lord,
like a large shield, you will surround him with favor.
To the Director: With stringed instruments. On an eight-stringed harp.[e] A Davidic Psalm
A Prayer in Times of Trouble
6 Lord, in your anger, do not rebuke me;
in your wrath, do not discipline me.
2 Be gracious to me, Lord,
because I am fading away.
Heal me,
because my body[f] is distressed.
3 And my soul[g] is deeply distressed.
But you, Lord, how long do I wait?[h]
4 Return, Lord,
save my life!
Deliver me, because of your gracious love.
5 In death, there is no memory of you.
Who will give you thanks where the dead are?[i]
6 I am weary from my groaning.
Every night my couch is drenched with tears,
my bed is soaked through.
7 My eyesight has faded because of grief,
it has dimmed because of all my enemies.
8 Get away from me, all of you who practice evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord receives my prayer.
10 As for all my enemies, they will be put to shame;
they will be greatly frightened
and suddenly turn away ashamed.
A Prayer for Judging the Wicked
10 [a]Why do you stand far away, Lord?
Why do you hide in times of distress?
2 The wicked one arrogantly pursues the afflicted,[b]
who are trapped in the schemes he devises.
3 For the wicked one boasts about his own desire;
he blesses the greedy
and despises the Lord.
4 With haughty arrogance, the wicked thinks,
“God will not seek justice.”[c]
He always presumes “There is no God.”
5 Their ways always seem prosperous.
Your judgments are on high,
far away from them.
They scoff at all their enemies.
6 They say to themselves,
“We will not be moved throughout all time,
and we will not experience adversity.”
7 Their mouth is full of curses, lies, and oppression,
their tongues[d] spread trouble and iniquity.
8 They wait[e] in ambush in the villages,
they kill the innocent in secret.
9 Their eyes secretly watch the helpless,
lying in wait like a lion in his den.
They lie in wait to catch the afflicted.
They catch the afflicted when they pull him into their net.
10 The victim[f] is crushed,
and he sinks down;
the helpless fall by their might.
11 The wicked say to themselves,
“God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face,
he will never see it.”
12 Rise up, Lord!
Raise your hand, God.
Don’t forget the afflicted!
13 Why do the wicked despise God
and say to themselves, “God[g] will not seek justice.”?[h]
14 But you do see!
You take note of trouble and grief
in order to take the matter into your own hand.
The helpless one commits himself[i] to you;
you have been the orphan’s helper.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
so that when you seek out his wickedness
you will find it no more.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
nations will perish from his land.
17 Lord, you heard the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen them,[j]
you will listen carefully,
18 to do justice for the orphan[k] and the oppressed,
so that men of the earth may cause terror no more.
To the Director: A Davidic Song.[l]
Confident Trust in God
11 I take refuge in the Lord.
So how can you say to me,
“Flee like a bird to the mountains.”?
2 Look, the wicked have bent their bow
and placed their arrow[m] on the string,[n]
to shoot from the darkness[o] at the upright in heart.
3 When the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?
4 The Lord is in his holy Temple;
the Lord’s throne is in the heavens.
His eyes see,
his glance[p] examines humanity.[q]
5 The Lord examines the righteous,
but the wicked and those who love violence, he hates.
6 He rains on the wicked burning coals and sulfur;
a scorching wind is their destiny.[r]
7 Indeed, the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteousness;
the upright will see him face-to-face.
The Temptation and Fall
3 Now the Shining One[a] was more clever than any animal of the field that the Lord God had made. He[b] asked the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You are not to eat from any tree of the garden’?”
2 “We may eat from the trees of the garden,” the woman answered the Shining One,[c] 3 “but as for the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You are not to eat from it, nor are you to touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You certainly will not die!” the Shining One[d] told the woman. 5 “Even God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you’ll become like God,[e] knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree produced good food, was attractive in appearance,[f] and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it.[g] Then she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate some, too.[h] 7 As a result, they both understood what they had done,[i] and they became aware that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
8 When they heard the voice of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden during the breeze of the day, the man and his wife concealed themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 So the Lord God called out to the man, asking him, “Where are you?”
10 “I heard your voice in the garden,” the man[j] answered, “and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid from you.”[k]
11 “Who told you that you are naked?” God[l] asked. “Did you eat fruit[m] from the tree that I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man answered, “The woman whom you provided for[n] me gave me fruit[o] from the tree, and I ate some of it.”[p]
13 Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What did you do?”[q]
“The Shining One[r] misled me,” the woman answered, “so I ate.”
The Penalty of Sin
14 The Lord God told the Shining One,[s]
“Because you have done this,
you are more cursed than all the livestock,
and more than all the earth’s animals,[t]
You’ll crawl on your belly
and eat dust
as long as you live.
15 “I’ll place hostility between you and the woman,
between your offspring and her offspring.
He’ll strike you on the head,
and you’ll strike him on the heel.”
16 He told the woman,
“I’ll greatly increase the pain of your labor during childbirth.
It will be painful for you to bear children,
“since your trust is turning[u] toward your husband,
and he will dominate you.”
17 He told the man,
“Because you have listened to what your wife said,[v]
and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you,[w]
‘You are not to not eat from it,’
cursed is the ground because of you.
You’ll eat from it through pain-filled labor
for the rest of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you’ll eat the plants from the meadows.
19 You will eat food by the sweat of your brow
until you’re buried in[x] the ground,
because you were taken from it.
You’re made from dust
and you’ll return to dust.”
20 Now Adam[y] had named his wife “Eve,”[z] because she was to become the mother of everyone who was living. 21 The Lord God fashioned garments from animal skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
22 Later, the Lord God said, “Look! The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, so he won’t reach out, also take from the tree of life, eat, and then live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God expelled the man[aa] from the garden of Eden so he would work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he had expelled the man, the Lord God[ab] placed winged angels[ac] at the eastern end of the garden of Eden, along with a fiery, turning sword, to prevent access to[ad] the tree of life.
We Must Not Neglect Our Salvation
2 For this reason we must pay closer attention to the things we have heard, or we may drift away, 2 because if the message spoken by angels was reliable, and every violation and act of disobedience received its just punishment, 3 how will we escape if we neglect a salvation as great as this? It was first proclaimed by the Lord himself, and then it was confirmed to us by those who heard him, 4 while God added his testimony through signs, wonders, various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
Jesus is the Source of Our Salvation
5 For he did not put the coming world we are talking about under the control of angels. 6 Instead, someone has declared somewhere,
“What is man that you should remember him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
7 You made him a little lower than the angels,
yet you crowned him with glory and honor
8 and put everything under his feet.”[a]
Now when God[b] put everything under him, he left nothing outside his control. However, at the present time we do not yet see everything put under him. 9 But we do see someone who was made a little lower than the angels. He is Jesus, who is crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of[c] God he might experience[d] death for everyone.
10 It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering as part of his plan to glorify many children,
The Testimony of John the Baptist(A)
19 This was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders[a] sent priests and descendants of Levi to him from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
20 He spoke openly and, remaining true to himself,[b] admitted, “I am not the Messiah.”[c]
21 So they asked him, “Well then, are you Elijah?”
John[d] said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
22 “Who are you?” they asked him. “We must give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 He replied, “I am
as the prophet Isaiah said.”
24 Now those men[g] had been sent from the Pharisees. 25 They asked him, “Why, then, are you baptizing if you are not the Messiah,[h] or Elijah, or the Prophet?”
26 John answered them, “I am baptizing with[i] water, but among you stands a man whom you do not know, 27 the one who is coming after me, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to untie.” 28 This happened in Bethany[j] on the other side[k] of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
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