Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 102
The Afflicted Ruler
Heading
A prayer for an afflicted person who is weary and pours out his complaints before the Lord.
Opening Plea
1 O Lord, hear my prayer,
and let my cry for help come to you.
2 Do not hide your face from me on the day when I am distressed.
Turn your ear to me on the day I call.
Hurry! Answer me!
The Shortness of His Days
3 For my days go up in smoke,
and my bones are burned like hot coals.
4 My heart is cut down and withered like grass,
so I forget to eat my food.
5 Because of the sound of my groaning, my bones stick out of my flesh.
6 I am like an owl in the wilderness,
like a screech owl[a] among the ruins.
7 I lie awake.
I have become like a lonely bird on a roof.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me.
Those who ridicule me use my name as a curse,
9 because I eat ashes like bread,
and I mix tears with my drinks.
10 Because of your rage and your wrath,
you have picked me up and thrown me away.
11 My days are being stretched out like a shadow,
and I am dried up like grass.
God’s Endless Years
12 But you, Lord, sit on your throne forever,
and you will be remembered through all generations.
13 You will rise and have compassion on Zion.
Yes, it is time to be gracious to her,
because the appointed time has come.
14 Yes, your servants will show favor to her stones,
and they will have compassion on her dust.
15 Then the nations will fear the name of the Lord,
and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory.
16 For the Lord will rebuild Zion.
He will appear in his glory.
17 He will respond to the prayer of the naked.
He will not despise their prayer.
18 Let this be written till the last generation,
so that a people not yet created may praise the Lord.[b]
19 For the Lord looked down from his high, holy place.
From heaven he viewed the earth
20 to hear the groans of the prisoner,
to release those condemned to death.
21 So the name of the Lord will be recorded in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when the peoples and the kingdoms are gathered together
to serve the Lord.
The Plea Repeated
23 He took away my strength during my lifetime.
He cut short my days.
24 I said, “My God, do not take me away in the middle of my days.”
The Eternal King
Your years go on through all generations.
25 Long ago you laid a foundation for the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain.
All of them wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them,
and they will be changed.
27 But you are the same,
and your years will never end.
28 The children of your servants will dwell with you,
and their descendants will be established before you.
Book V
Psalms 107–150
Psalm 107
He Redeemed Them From Trouble
Invocation to Give Thanks
1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say this,
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
3 those he gathered from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.[a]
First Crisis: The Wilderness
4 They wandered in the wilderness, in the wasteland.
They did not find the way to a city where they could live.
5 They were hungry and also thirsty,
so their lives were draining away.
Refrain
6 Then they cried out to the Lord in their distress.
He delivered them from their troubles.
7 He led them by a straight way to come to a city where they could live.
8 Let them give thanks to the Lord
for his mercy and his wonderful deeds for all people,[b]
9 because he satisfies the desire of the thirsty,
and he fills the desire of the hungry with good things.
Second Crisis: Imprisonment
10 They were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death,
prisoners, bound in misery and chains,
11 because they had rebelled against the words of God,
and they despised the plan of the Most High.
12 So he broke their hearts with hard labor.
They stumbled, and there was no helper.
Refrain
13 Then they cried out to the Lord in their distress.
He saved them from their troubles.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and he tore off their chains.
15 Let them give thanks to the Lord
for his mercy and his wonderful deeds for all people,
16 because he shatters bronze doors,
and he cuts through iron bars.
Third Crisis: Rebellion
17 They became fools through their rebellious way,
and they brought affliction on themselves by their guilt.
18 They lost their appetite for food,
so they approached the gates of death.
Refrain
19 Then they cried out to the Lord in their distress.
He saved them from their troubles.
20 He sent his word and healed them.
He rescued them from the pits that trapped them.
21 Let them give thanks to the Lord
for his mercy and his wonderful deeds for all people,
22 so let them sacrifice thank offerings
and tell about his works with a joyful shout.
Fourth Crisis: On the Sea
23 They went down to the sea in ships.
They conducted trade on many waters.
24 They saw the deeds of the Lord
and his wonders on the deep.
25 For he spoke and stirred up a violent storm,
which produced large waves.
26 They were raised up to the sky.
They sank down into the depths.
In their danger their courage melted.
27 They reeled and staggered like a drunk.
All their skill disappeared.
Refrain
28 Then they cried out to the Lord in their distress.
He brought them out of their troubles.
29 He calmed the storm. Its waves were hushed.
30 They were glad when it grew quiet,
and he guided them to the port they desired.
31 Let them give thanks to the Lord
for his mercy and his wonderful deeds for all people.
32 Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people
and praise him in the session of the elders.
20 Meanwhile the Philistines gave Samson’s wife to one of the men who had attended him.
15 After a number of days, during the wheat harvest, Samson came to visit his wife and brought a kid goat with him. He said, “Let me go in to my wife’s room,” but her father did not let him go in.
2 Her father said, “I was so convinced that you hated her that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister better than she is? Please take her for yourself instead of her older sister.”
3 Samson said to them, “I am not responsible for the harm I am about to do to the Philistines.” 4 Then Samson went and captured three hundred foxes,[a] took torches, tied the foxes tail to tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails. 5 He set fire to the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up sheaves of grain, the standing grain, the vineyards, and the olive groves.
6 The Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did it, because the man took Samson’s wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death.
7 At that, Samson said to them, “Since you would do something like this, I will take revenge on you. Then I will stop.” 8 He ripped them to pieces[b] in a devastating attack. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft in the Rock of Etam.
9 Meanwhile the Philistines went up, set up camp in Judah, and occupied the territory around Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come up against us?”
They said, “We have come up to tie up Samson—to do to him as he did to us.”
11 So three thousand men from Judah went down to the cleft in the Rock of Etam. They said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are now ruling over us? So what is this you have done to us?”
Samson answered them, “As they did to me, so I did to them.”
12 They said to him, “We have come down to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.”
13 They said to him, “We will not. We will indeed tie you up and hand you over to them, but we will not kill you.” Then they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
14 When Samson came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him, shouting a war cry. But then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon Samson, and the ropes around his shoulders were like flax charred by fire, and the ropes melted off his wrists. 15 Samson found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, and took it. With it he struck down a thousand men.
16 Samson said:
With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps![c]
With the jawbone of a donkey I have struck down a thousand men.
17 When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand, and he named the place Ramath Lehi.[d]
18 Then he became very thirsty, and he called to the Lord, “You placed this great victory into the hand of your servant. Shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God split the hollow that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. Samson drank, his vitality was restored, and he was revived. For this reason he called the place En Hakkore,[e] which remains in Lehi to this day.
20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
17 “As the time approached that God spoke about in the promise he had made[a] to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt. 18 This continued until another king who knew nothing about Joseph became ruler of Egypt. 19 He took advantage of our people in a cunning way, and he mistreated our fathers by forcing them to get rid of their babies so that they would not survive.[b]
Stephen Defends Himself
20 “At that time, Moses was born, and he was favored by God. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. 21 After he was placed outside,[c] Pharaoh’s daughter took him in and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and actions.
23 “But when he was forty years old, it entered his mind to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. 24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he defended him and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He thought that his brothers would understand that God was giving them deliverance by his hand, but they did not understand. 26 The next day, he came across two of them while they were fighting, and he tried to reconcile them. He said, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you harming each other?’ 27 But the one who was harming his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[d] 29 At this remark, Moses fled and lived as an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
Jesus Heals an Officer’s Son
43 After two days, Jesus left for Galilee. 44 Now Jesus himself had testified that a prophet is not honored in his own country.
45 When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all the things he did at the Festival in Jerusalem, because they also had gone to the Festival.
46 Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.
In Capernaum, there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, because his son was about to die.
48 Jesus told him, “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you certainly will not believe.”
49 The royal official said to him, “Lord, come down before my little boy dies.”
50 “Go,” Jesus told him, “your son is going to live.”
The man believed this word that Jesus spoke to him and left.
51 Already as he was going down, his servants met him with the news that his boy was going to live. 52 So he asked them what time his son got better. They told him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour[a] the fever left him.” 53 Then the father realized that was the exact time when Jesus had told him, “Your son is going to live.” And he himself and his whole household believed.
54 This was the second miraculous sign Jesus did after he came from Judea into Galilee.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.