Book of Common Prayer

56 ^1-2 Lord, have mercy on me; all day long the enemy troops press in. So many are proud to fight against me; how they long to conquer me.

^3-4 But when I am afraid, I will put my confidence in you. Yes, I will trust the promises of God. And since I am trusting him, what can mere man do to me? ⁵ They are always twisting what I say. All their thoughts are how to harm me. ⁶ They meet together to perfect their plans; they hide beside the trail, listening for my steps, waiting to kill me. ⁷ They expect to get away with it. Don’t let them, Lord. In anger cast them to the ground.

⁸ You have seen me tossing and turning through the night. You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.

⁹ The very day I call for help, the tide of battle turns. My enemies flee! This one thing I know: God is for me! ^10-11 I am trusting God—oh, praise his promises! I am not afraid of anything mere man can do to me! Yes, praise his promises. ¹² I will surely do what I have promised, Lord, and thank you for your help. ¹³ For you have saved me from death and my feet from slipping, so that I can walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

57 O God, have pity, for I am trusting you! I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until this storm is past. ² I will cry to the God of heaven who does such wonders for me. ³ He will send down help from heaven to save me because of his love and his faithfulness. He will rescue me from these liars who are so intent upon destroying me. ⁴ I am surrounded by fierce lions—hotheads whose teeth are sharp as spears and arrows. Their tongues are like swords. ⁵ Lord, be exalted above the highest heavens! Show your glory high above the earth. ⁶ My enemies have set a trap for me. Frantic fear grips me. They have dug a pitfall in my path. But look! They themselves have fallen into it!

⁷ O God, my heart is quiet and confident. No wonder I can sing your praises! ⁸ Rouse yourself, my soul! Arise, O harp and lyre! Let us greet the dawn with song! ⁹ I will thank you publicly throughout the land. I will sing your praises among the nations. ¹⁰ Your kindness and love are as vast as the heavens. Your faithfulness is higher than the skies.

¹¹ Yes, be exalted, O God, above the heavens. May your glory shine throughout the earth.

58 ^1-2 Justice? You high and mighty politicians don’t even know the meaning of the word! Fairness? Which of you has any left? Not one! All your dealings are crooked: you give “justice” in exchange for bribes.^{[a] 3} These men are born sinners, lying from their earliest words! ^4-5 They are poisonous as deadly snakes, cobras that close their ears to the most expert of charmers.

⁶ O God, break off their fangs. Tear out the teeth of these young lions, Lord. ⁷ Let them disappear like water into thirsty ground. Make their weapons useless in their hands.^{[b] 8} Let them be as snails that dissolve into slime and as those who die at birth, who never see the sun. ⁹ God will sweep away both old and young. He will destroy them more quickly than a cooking pot can feel the blazing fire of thorns beneath it.

¹⁰ The godly shall rejoice in the triumph of right;^[c] they shall walk the bloodstained fields of slaughtered, wicked men. ¹¹ Then at last everyone will know that good is rewarded, and that there is a God who judges justly here on earth.

64 ^1-2 Lord, listen to my complaint: Oh, preserve my life from the conspiracy of these wicked men, these gangs of criminals. ³ They cut me down with sharpened tongues; they aim their bitter words like arrows straight at my heart. ⁴ They shoot from ambush at the innocent. Suddenly the deed is done, yet they are not afraid. ⁵ They encourage each other to do evil. They meet in secret to set their traps. “He will never notice them here,” they say. ⁶ They keep a sharp lookout for opportunities of crime. They spend long hours with all their endless evil thoughts and plans.^[a]

⁷ But God himself will shoot them down. Suddenly his arrow will pierce them. ⁸ They will stagger backward, destroyed by those they spoke against. All who see it happening will scoff at them. ⁹ Then everyone shall stand in awe and confess the greatness of the miracles of God; at last they will realize what amazing things he does. ¹⁰ And the godly shall rejoice in the Lord, and trust and praise him.

65 ^1-2 O God in Zion, we wait before you in silent praise, and thus fulfill our vow. And because you answer prayer, all mankind will come to you with their requests. ³ Though sins fill our hearts, you forgive them all. ⁴ How greatly to be envied are those you have chosen to come and live with you within the holy tabernacle courts! What joys await us among all the good things there. ⁵ With dread deeds and awesome power you will defend us from our enemies,^[b] O God who saves us. You are the only hope of all mankind throughout the world and far away upon the sea.

⁶ He formed the mountains by his mighty strength. ⁷ He quiets the raging oceans and all the world’s clamor. ⁸ In the farthest corners of the earth the glorious acts of God shall startle everyone. The dawn and sunset shout for joy! ⁹ He waters the earth to make it fertile. The rivers of God will not run dry! He prepares the earth for his people and sends them rich harvests of grain. ¹⁰ He waters the furrows with abundant rain. Showers soften the earth, melting the clods and causing seeds to sprout across the land. ^11-12 Then he crowns it all with green, lush pastures in the wilderness; hillsides blossom with joy. ¹³ The pastures are filled with flocks of sheep, and the valleys are carpeted with grain. All the world shouts with joy and sings.

¹⁷ Wake up, wake up, Jerusalem! You have drunk enough from the cup of the fury of the Lord. You have drunk to the dregs the cup of terror and squeezed out the last drops. ¹⁸ Not one of her sons is left alive to help or tell her what to do. ¹⁹ These two things have been your lot: desolation and destruction. Yes, famine and the sword. And who is left to sympathize? Who is left to comfort you? ²⁰ For your sons have fainted and lie in the streets, helpless as wild goats caught in a net. The Lord has poured out his fury and rebuke upon them. ²¹ But listen now to this, afflicted ones—full of troubles and in a stupor (but not from being drunk)— ²² this is what the Lord says, the Lord your God who cares for his people: “See, I take from your hands the terrible cup; you shall drink no more of my fury; it is gone at last. ²³ But I will put that terrible cup into the hands of those who tormented you and trampled your souls to the dust and walked upon your backs.”

4 But remember this, that if a father dies and leaves great wealth for his little son, that child is not much better off than a slave until he grows up, even though he actually owns everything his father had. ² He has to do what his guardians and managers tell him to until he reaches whatever age his father set.

³ And that is the way it was with us before Christ came. We were slaves to Jewish laws and rituals, for we thought they could save us. ⁴ But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, ⁵ to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own sons. ⁶ And because we are his sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, so now we can rightly speak of God as our dear Father. ⁷ Now we are no longer slaves but God’s own sons. And since we are his sons, everything he has belongs to us, for that is the way God planned.

⁸ Before you Gentiles knew God you were slaves to so-called gods that did not even exist. ⁹ And now that you have found God (or I should say, now that God has found you), how can it be that you want to go back again and become slaves once more to another poor, weak, useless religion of trying to get to heaven by obeying God’s laws? ¹⁰ You are trying to find favor with God by what you do or don’t do on certain days or months or seasons or years. ¹¹ I fear for you. I am afraid that all my hard work for you was worth nothing.

²⁴ Then he left Galilee and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon,^[a] and tried to keep it a secret that he was there, but couldn’t. For as usual the news of his arrival spread fast.

²⁵ Right away a woman came to him whose little girl was possessed by a demon. She had heard about Jesus and now she came and fell at his feet, ²⁶ and pled with him to release her child from the demon’s control. (But she was Syrophoenician—a “despised Gentile”!)

²⁷ Jesus told her, “First I should help my own family—the Jews.^[b] It isn’t right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ She replied, “That’s true, sir, but even the puppies under the table are given some scraps from the children’s plates.”

²⁹ “Good!” he said. “You have answered well—so well that I have healed your little girl. Go on home, for the demon has left her!”

³⁰ And when she arrived home, her little girl was lying quietly in bed, and the demon was gone.

³¹ From Tyre he went to Sidon, then back to the Sea of Galilee by way of the Ten Towns. ³² A deaf man with a speech impediment was brought to him, and everyone begged Jesus to lay his hands on the man and heal him.

³³ Jesus led him away from the crowd and put his fingers into the man’s ears, then spat and touched the man’s tongue with the spittle. ³⁴ Then, looking up to heaven, he sighed and commanded, “Open!” ³⁵ Instantly the man could hear perfectly and speak plainly!

³⁶ Jesus told the crowd not to spread the news, but the more he forbade them, the more they made it known, ³⁷ for they were overcome with utter amazement. Again and again they said, “Everything he does is wonderful; he even corrects deafness and stammering!”