Book of Common Prayer
70 (0) For the leader. By David. As a reminder:
2 (1) God, rescue me!
Adonai, hurry and help me!
3 (2) May those who seek my life
be disgraced and humiliated.
May those who take pleasure in doing me harm
be turned back and put to confusion.
4 (3) May those who jeer, “Aha! Aha!”
withdraw because of their shame.
5 (4) But may all those who seek you
be glad and take joy in you.
May those who love your salvation say always,
“God is great and glorious!”
6 (5) But I am poor and needy;
God, hurry for me.
You are my helper and rescuer;
Adonai, don’t delay!
71 In you, Adonai, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness, rescue me;
and help me to escape.
Turn your ear toward me,
and deliver me.
3 Be for me a sheltering rock,
where I can always come.
You have determined to save me,
because you are my bedrock and stronghold.
4 My God, help me escape from the power of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and ruthless.
5 For you are my hope, Adonai Elohim,
in whom I have trusted since I was young.
6 From birth I have relied on you;
it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
7 To many, I am an amazing example;
but you are strong protection for me.
8 My mouth is full of praise for you,
filled with your glory all day long.
9 Don’t reject me when I grow old;
when my strength fails, don’t abandon me.
10 For my enemies are talking about me,
those seeking my life are plotting together.
11 They say, “God has abandoned him;
go after him, and seize him,
because no one will save him.”
12 God, don’t distance yourself from me!
My God, hurry to help me!
13 May those who are opposed to me
be put to shame and ruin;
may those who seek to harm me
be covered with scorn and disgrace.
14 But I, I will always hope
and keep adding to your praise.
15 All day long my mouth will tell
of your righteous deeds and acts of salvation,
though their number is past my knowing.
16 I will come in the power of Adonai Elohim
and recall your righteousness, yours alone.
17 God, you have taught me since I was young,
and I still proclaim your wonderful works.
18 So now that I’m old, and my hair is gray,
don’t abandon me, God, till I have proclaimed
your strength to the next generation,
your power to all who will come,
19 your righteousness too, God,
which reaches to the heights.
God, you have done great things;
who is there like you?
20 You have made me see much trouble and hardship,
but you will revive me again
and bring me up from the depths of the earth.
21 You will increase my honor;
turn and comfort me.
22 As for me, I will praise you with a lyre
for your faithfulness, my God.
I will sing praises to you with a lute,
Holy One of Isra’el.
23 My lips will shout for joy;
I will sing your praise, because you have redeemed me.
24 All day long my tongue
will speak of your righteousness.
For those who are seeking to harm me
will be put to shame and disgraced.
74 (0) A maskil of Asaf:
(1) Why have you rejected us forever, God,
with your anger smoking against the sheep you once pastured?
2 Remember your community, which you acquired long ago,
the tribe you redeemed to be your very own.
Remember Mount Tziyon, where you came to live.
3 Hurry your steps to these endless ruins,
to the sanctuary devastated by the enemy.
4 The roar of your foes filled your meeting-place;
they raised their own banners as a sign of their conquest.
5 The place seemed like a thicket of trees
when lumbermen hack away with their axes.
6 With hatchet and hammer they banged away,
smashing all the carved woodwork.
7 They set your sanctuary on fire,
tore down and profaned the abode of your name.
8 They said to themselves, “We will oppress them completely.”
They have burned down all God’s meeting-places in the land.
9 We see no signs, there is no prophet any more;
none of us knows how long it will last.
10 How much longer, God, will the foe jeer at us?
Will the enemy insult your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand?
Draw your right hand from your coat, and finish them off!
12 God has been my king from earliest times,
acting to save throughout all the earth.
13 By your strength you split the sea in two,
in the water you smashed sea monsters’ heads,
14 you crushed the heads of Livyatan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
15 You cut channels for springs and streams,
you dried up rivers that had never failed.
16 The day is yours, and the night is yours;
it was you who established light and sun.
17 It was you who fixed all the limits of the earth,
you made summer and winter.
18 Remember how the enemy scoffs at Adonai,
how a brutish people insults your name.
19 Don’t hand over the soul of your dove to wild beasts,
don’t forget forever the life of your poor.
20 Look to the covenant, for the land’s dark places
are full of the haunts of violence.
21 Don’t let the oppressed retreat in confusion;
let the poor and needy praise your name.
22 Arise, God, and defend your cause;
remember how brutish men insult you all day.
23 Don’t forget what your foes are saying,
the ever-rising uproar of your adversaries.
26 “‘Do not eat anything with blood. Do not practice divination or fortune-telling. 27 Don’t round your hair at the temples or mar the edges of your beard. 28 Don’t cut gashes in your flesh when someone dies or tattoo yourselves; I am Adonai.
29 “‘Do not debase your daughter by making her a prostitute, so that the land will not fall into prostitution and become full of shame.
30 “‘Keep my Shabbats, and revere my sanctuary; I am Adonai.
31 “‘Do not turn to spirit-mediums or sorcerers; don’t seek them out, to be defiled by them; I am Adonai your God.
32 “‘Stand up in the presence of a person with gray hair, show respect for the old; you are to fear your God; I am Adonai.
(RY: vi, LY: iv) 33 “‘If a foreigner stays with you in your land, do not do him wrong. 34 Rather, treat the foreigner staying with you like the native-born among you — you are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am Adonai your God.
35 “‘Don’t be dishonest when measuring length, weight or capacity. 36 Rather, use an honest balance-scale, honest weights, an honest bushel dry-measure and an honest gallon liquid-measure; I am Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37 Observe all my regulations and rulings, and do them; I am Adonai.’”
1 From: Sha’ul, Sila and Timothy
To: The Messianic Community of the Thessalonians, united with God our Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah:
2 Grace to you and shalom from God the Father and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.
3 We have to keep thanking God for you always, brothers, as is appropriate; because your trust continues to grow greater, and the love you each have for one another continues to increase. 4 Therefore, we boast about you in the congregations of God because of your perseverance and trust in all the persecutions and troubles you are going through. 5 This is clear evidence that God’s judgment is just; and as a result, you will be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God for which you are suffering. 6 For it is justice for God to pay back trouble to those who are troubling you, 7 and to give rest along with us to you who are being troubled, when the Lord Yeshua is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in a fiery flame. Then he will punish those who don’t know God,[a] that is, those who don’t listen to the Good News of our Lord Yeshua and obey it. 9 They will suffer the just penalty of eternal destruction, far away from the face of the Lord and the glory of his might.[b] 10 On that Day, when he comes to be glorified by his holy people and admired by all who have trusted, you will be among them, because you trusted our witness to you.
11 With this in view, we always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill by his power every good purpose of yours and every action stemming from your trust. 12 In this way, the name of our Lord Yeshua will be glorified in you, and you in him, in accordance with the grace of our God and the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.
25 “Therefore, I tell you, don’t worry about your life — what you will eat or drink; or about your body — what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds flying about! They neither plant nor harvest, nor do they gather food into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they are? 27 Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why be anxious about clothing? Think about the fields of wild irises, and how they grow. They neither work nor spin thread, 29 yet I tell you that not even Shlomo in all his glory was clothed as beautifully as one of these. 30 If this is how God clothes grass in the field — which is here today and gone tomorrow, thrown in an oven — won’t he much more clothe you? What little trust you have!
31 “So don’t be anxious, asking, ‘What will we eat?,’ ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘How will we be clothed?’ 32 For it is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. 33 But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Don’t worry about tomorrow — tomorrow will worry about itself! Today has enough tsuris already!
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.