Book of Common Prayer
5 1-2 O Lord, hear me praying; listen to my plea, O God my King, for I will never pray to anyone but you. 3 Each morning I will look to you in heaven and lay my requests before you, praying earnestly.
4 I know you get no pleasure from wickedness and cannot tolerate the slightest sin. 5 Therefore, proud sinners will not survive your searching gaze, for how you hate their evil deeds. 6 You will destroy them for their lies; how you abhor all murder and deception.
7 But as for me, I will come into your Temple protected by your mercy and your love; I will worship you with deepest awe.
8 Lord, lead me as you promised me you would; otherwise my enemies will conquer me. Tell me clearly what to do, which way to turn. 9 For they cannot speak one truthful word. Their hearts are filled to the brim with wickedness. Their suggestions are full of the stench of sin and death. Their tongues are filled with flatteries to gain their wicked ends. 10 O God, hold them responsible. Catch them in their own traps; let them fall beneath the weight of their own transgressions, for they rebel against you.
11 But make everyone rejoice who puts his trust in you. Keep them shouting for joy because you are defending them. Fill all who love you with your happiness. 12 For you bless the godly man, O Lord; you protect him with your shield of love.
6 No, Lord! Don’t punish me in the heat of your anger. 2 Pity me, O Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, for my body is sick, 3 and I am upset and disturbed. My mind is filled with apprehension and with gloom. Oh, restore me soon.
4 Come, O Lord, and make me well. In your kindness save me. 5 For if I die, I cannot give you glory by praising you before my friends.[a] 6 I am worn out with pain; every night my pillow is wet with tears. 7 My eyes are growing old and dim with grief because of all my enemies.
8 Go, leave me now, you men of evil deeds, for the Lord has heard my weeping 9 and my pleading. He will answer all my prayers. 10 All my enemies shall be suddenly dishonored, terror-stricken, and disgraced. God will turn them back in shame.
10 Lord, why are you standing aloof and far away? Why do you hide when I need you the most?
2 Come and deal with all these proud and wicked men who viciously persecute the poor. Pour upon these men the evil they planned for others! 3 For these men brag of all their evil lusts; they revile God and congratulate those the Lord abhors, whose only goal in life is money.
4 These wicked men, so proud and haughty, seem to think that God is dead.[a] They wouldn’t think of looking for him! 5 Yet there is success in everything they do, and their enemies fall before them. They do not see your punishment awaiting them. 6 They boast that neither God nor man can ever keep them down—somehow they’ll find a way!
7 Their mouths are full of profanity and lies and fraud. They are always boasting of their evil plans. 8 They lurk in dark alleys of the city and murder passersby. 9 Like lions they crouch silently, waiting to pounce upon the poor. Like hunters they catch their victims in their traps. 10 The unfortunate are overwhelmed by their superior strength and fall beneath their blows. 11 “God isn’t watching,” they say to themselves; “he’ll never know!”
12 O Lord, arise! O God, crush them! Don’t forget the poor or anyone else in need. 13 Why do you let the wicked get away with this contempt for God? For they think that God will never call them to account. 14 Lord, you see what they are doing. You have noted each evil act. You know what trouble and grief they have caused. Now punish them. O Lord, the poor man trusts himself to you; you are known as the helper of the helpless. 15 Break the arms of these wicked men. Go after them until the last of them is destroyed.
16 The Lord is King forever and forever. Those who follow other gods shall be swept from his land.
17 Lord, you know the hopes of humble people. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort their hearts by helping them. 18 You will be with the orphans and all who are oppressed, so that mere earthly man will terrify them no longer.
11 How dare you tell me, “Flee[b] to the mountains for safety,” when I am trusting in the Lord?
2 For the wicked have strung their bows, drawn their arrows tight against the bowstrings, and aimed from ambush at the people of God. 3 “Law and order have collapsed,”[c] we are told. “What can the righteous do but flee?”
4 But the Lord is still in his holy temple; he still rules from heaven. He closely watches everything that happens here on earth. 5 He puts the righteous and the wicked to the test; he hates those loving violence. 6 He will rain down fire and brimstone on the wicked and scorch them with his burning wind.
7 For God is good, and he loves goodness; the godly shall see his face.[d]
27 After the king had burned the scroll, the Lord said to Jeremiah: 28 Get another scroll and write everything again just as you did before, 29 and say this to the king: “This is what the Lord says! You burned the scroll because it said the king of Babylon would destroy this country and everything in it. 30 And now the Lord adds this concerning you, Jehoiakim, king of Judah: He shall have no one to sit upon the throne[a] of David. His dead body shall be thrown out to the hot sun and frosty nights, 31 and I will punish him and his family and his officials because of their sins. I will pour out upon them all the evil I promised—upon them and upon all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, for they wouldn’t listen to my warnings.”
32 Then Jeremiah took another scroll and dictated again to Baruch all he had written before, only this time the Lord added a lot more!
37 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did not appoint Coniah (King Jehoiakim’s son) to be the new king of Judah.[b] Instead he chose Zedekiah (son of Josiah). 2 But neither King Zedekiah nor his officials nor the people who were left in the land listened to what the Lord said through Jeremiah.
14 Let love be your greatest aim; nevertheless, ask also for the special abilities the Holy Spirit gives, and especially the gift of prophecy, being able to preach the messages of God.
2 But if your gift is that of being able to “speak in tongues,” that is, to speak in languages you haven’t learned, you will be talking to God but not to others, since they won’t be able to understand you. You will be speaking by the power of the Spirit, but it will all be a secret. 3 But one who prophesies, preaching the messages of God, is helping others grow in the Lord, encouraging and comforting them. 4 So a person “speaking in tongues” helps himself grow spiritually, but one who prophesies, preaching messages from God, helps the entire church grow in holiness and happiness.
5 I wish you all had the gift of “speaking in tongues,” but even more I wish you were all able to prophesy, preaching God’s messages, for that is a greater and more useful power than to speak in unknown languages—unless, of course, you can tell everyone afterwards what you were saying, so that they can get some good out of it too.
6 Dear friends, even if I myself should come to you talking in some language you don’t understand, how would that help you? But if I speak plainly what God has revealed to me, and tell you the things I know, and what is going to happen, and the great truths of God’s Word—that is what you need; that is what will help you. 7 Even musical instruments—the flute, for instance, or the harp—are examples of the need for speaking in plain, simple English[a] rather than in unknown languages. For no one will recognize the tune the flute is playing unless each note is sounded clearly. 8 And if the army bugler doesn’t play the right notes, how will the soldiers know that they are being called to battle? 9 In the same way, if you talk to a person in some language he doesn’t understand, how will he know what you mean? You might as well be talking to an empty room.
10 I suppose that there are hundreds of different languages in the world, and all are excellent for those who understand them, 11 but to me they mean nothing. A person talking to me in one of these languages will be a stranger to me and I will be a stranger to him. 12 Since you are so anxious to have special gifts from the Holy Spirit, ask him for the very best, for those that will be of real help to the whole church.
16 “I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Be as wary as serpents and harmless as doves. 17 But beware! For you will be arrested and tried, and whipped in the synagogues. 18 Yes, and you must stand trial before governors and kings for my sake. This will give you the opportunity to tell them about me, yes, to witness to the world.
19 “When you are arrested, don’t worry about what to say at your trial, for you will be given the right words at the right time. 20 For it won’t be you doing the talking—it will be the Spirit of your heavenly Father speaking through you!
21 “Brother shall betray brother to death, and fathers shall betray their own children. And children shall rise against their parents and cause their deaths. 22 Everyone shall hate you because you belong to me. But all of you who endure to the end shall be saved.
23 “When you are persecuted in one city, flee to the next! I[a] will return before you have reached them all!
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.