Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 84
The Joy of Worship in the Temple
To the leader: according to The Gittith. Of the Korahites. A Psalm.
1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!(A)
2 My soul longs, indeed it faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.(B)
3 Even the sparrow finds a home
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.(C)
4 Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise. Selah(D)
5 Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.[a](E)
6 As they go through the valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.(F)
7 They go from strength to strength;
the God of gods will be seen in Zion.(G)
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
9 Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed.(H)
10 For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than live in the tents of wickedness.(I)
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
he bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does the Lord withhold
from those who walk uprightly.(J)
12 O Lord of hosts,
happy is everyone who trusts in you.(K)
Elijah Flees from Jezebel
19 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.(A) 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”(B) 3 Then he was afraid;[a] he got up and fled for his life and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there.
4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”(C) 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. 7 The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.” 8 He got up and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.(D) 9 At that place he came to a cave and spent the night there.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”(E)
Elijah Meets God at Horeb
11 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake,(F) 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
Ministers of the New Covenant
3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?(A) 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, 3 and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.[a](B)
4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God,(C) 6 who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.(D)
7 Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets,[b] came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside,(E) 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,[c] much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!(F)
18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.(A)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.