Book of Common Prayer
Prayer in Affliction
Psalm 102
1 A prayer of the afflicted one, when he is faint and pours out his lament before Adonai:
2 Adonai, hear my prayer,
let my cry come to You.
3 Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress.
Turn Your ear to me—in the day I call,
answer me quickly.
4 For my days vanished like smoke,
and my bones were burned like coals.
5 My heart is stricken and withered like grass,
so that I even forget to eat my bread.
6 Because of the sound of my groaning,
my bones cling to my flesh.
7 I am like a pelican of the desert,
like an owl of the waste places.
8 I lie awake, like a lonely bird on a roof.
9 My enemies taunt me all day.
My deriders use my name to curse.
10 For I have eaten ashes like bread,
and mixed my drink with tears—
11 because of Your indignation and wrath,
for You have picked me up and tossed me aside.
12 My days are like a lengthening shadow,
and I wither away like grass.
13 But You, Adonai, sit enthroned forever.
Your renown is from generation to generation.
14 You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to show favor to her,
for the appointed time has come,
15 for her stones are dear to Your servants,
and they cherish her dust.
16 So the nations will fear Adonai’s Name
and all the kings of the earth Your glory.
17 For Adonai has rebuilt Zion.
He has appeared in His glory.
18 He has turned to the prayer of the destitute,
and has not despised their prayer.
19 Let it be written for a generation to come,
that a people to be created may praise Adonai.
20 For He looks down from His holy height,
from heaven Adonai gazes on the earth,
21 to hear the groaning of the prisoner,
to set free those condemned to death,
22 to declare the Name of Adonai in Zion
and His praise in Jerusalem,
23 when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship Adonai.
24 He brought down my strength in midcourse.
He shortened my days.
25 I say, “My God,
do not take me up in the middle of my days.
Your years endure through all generations!
26 Long ago You founded the earth,
the heavens are the work of Your hands.
27 They will perish, but You will remain.
All of them will wear out like a garment.
Like clothing You change them, so they change.
28 But You are the same,
and Your years will never end.
29 The children of Your servants will live.
Their descendants will be established before You.”
His Chesed and His Wonders
Psalm 107
1 Praise Adonai, for He is good,
for His lovingkindness endures forever.
2 Let the redeemed of Adonai say so—
whom He redeemed from the hand of the foe,
3 whom He gathered out of the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the sea.
4 Some wandered in a desert, a wasteland.
They found no way to an inhabited city.
5 Hungry and thirsty,
their souls ebbed away.
6 So they cried out to Adonai in their distress,
and He delivered them out of their troubles.
7 Then He led them by a straight way
to go to a city where they could live.
8 Let them praise Adonai for His mercy
and His wonders for the children of men,
9 for He satisfies the thirsty soul
and fills the hungry soul with goodness.
10 Some sat in darkness and deep gloom,
prisoners in misery and iron chains,
11 for they had defied God’s words,
and spurned the counsel of Elyon.
12 So He humbled their heart with trouble.
They stumbled, and no one was helping.
13 So they cried out to Adonai in their distress,
and He delivered them out of their troubles.
14 He brought them out of darkness
and deep gloom, breaking their chains.
15 Let them praise Adonai for His mercy,
and His wonders for the children of men,
16 for He shattered bronze gates,
and broke into pieces iron bars.
17 Some became fools because of their rebellious ways,
and were afflicted due to their iniquities.
18 Their soul abhorred all food,
and they drew near the gates of death.
19 So they cried out to Adonai in their distress,
and He delivered them out of their troubles.
20 He sent His word and healed them,
and rescued them from their pits.
21 Let them praise Adonai for His mercy,
and His wonders for the children of men.
22 Let them sacrifice thank offerings
and tell of His works with joyful singing.
23 Some go out to the sea in ships,
doing business on the mighty waters.
24 They saw the works of Adonai,
and His wonders in the deep.
25 For He spoke and raised a stormy wind,
lifting up towering waves.
26 They mounted up to the sky
and plunged down to the depths.
In their peril their souls melted away.
27 They reeled and staggered like a drunk,
and all their skill was bewildered.
28 So they cried out to Adonai in their distress,
and He brought them out of their troubles.
29 He stilled the storm to a whisper—
the waves were hushed.[a]
30 They were glad when it became calm,
and He led them to their desired haven.
31 Let them praise Adonai for His mercy,
and His wonders to the children of men.
32 Let them exalt Him in the congregation of the people,
and praise Him at the assembly of elders.
20 But Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his best man.
Victory with a Jawbone
15 But after a while, during the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. “I am going to my wife in her room,” he said.
But her father would not let him enter. 2 “I thought for sure you had utterly hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister—isn’t she better than her? Please, let her be yours instead.”
3 Then Samson said to them, “This time I am blameless from the Philistines when I do harm to them.” 4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch between every two tails. 5 Then he set fire to the torches and released them into the standing grain of the Philistines, Thus he burned up both the stacks and the standing grain, along with vineyards and olive trees.
6 Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines came up and burnt her and her father with fire.
7 Then Samson said to them, “Since you have acted like this, surely I will take revenge on you—after that I will quit.” 8 So he struck them leg upon thigh with a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9 Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked, “Why have you marched against us?”
They replied, “We have come to arrest Samson—to do to him as he did to us.”
11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are ruling over us? So what is this that you have done to us?”
He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12 “We have come down to bind you,” they said to him, “so that we may hand you over to the Philistines.”
So Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”
13 “No, we won’t kill you,” they said to him, “but we will bind you fast and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted upon meeting him. But the Ruach Adonai came mightily upon him so that the ropes that were on his arms became like flax burned with fire and his bonds melted off his wrists. 15 Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
a heap . . . two heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
I struck down a thousand men.”
17 As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand. Then he named that place Ramat-lehi. [a] 18 Then he became very thirsty, so he called to Adonai and said, “You have granted this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant. So now, will I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
19 But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he drank, he regained his strength and revived. Therefore he called it En-hakkore[b], which is in Lehi to this day. 20 Then he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.
17 “But as the time drew near for the promise God had sworn to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt— 18 until ‘there arose another king over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.’ [a] 19 Dealing with our people with cruel cunning, this king mistreated our fathers and forced them to abandon their infants so they would not survive.
20 “At this time Moses was born—extraordinary before God. For three months he was nurtured in his father’s house. 21 And when he was set outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and raised him as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and deeds.
23 “When he was approaching forty years of age, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, Bnei-Yisrael. 24 When he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he went to the defense of the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He was assuming that his brothers understood that by his hand God was delivering them, but they did not understand. 26 So on the next day he appeared to them as they were fighting. He tried to reconcile them in shalom, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong one another?’
27 “But the one doing wrong to his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? 28 You don’t want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?’ [b] 29 At this remark, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
Life for a Dying Son
43 After the two days, He went on from there into the Galilee. 44 Now Yeshua Himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 But when He came into the Galilee, they welcomed Him. For they had seen all He had done at the feast in Jerusalem, since they also had gone up to celebrate.
46 So He went again to Cana of the Galilee, where He had turned the water into wine. Now there was a nobleman whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Yeshua had come from Judea to the Galilee, he went to Him and begged Him to come down and heal his son; for he was about to die.
48 Then Yeshua said to him, “Unless you all see signs and wonders, you’ll never believe!”
49 The nobleman said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies!”
50 Yeshua tells him, “Go! Your son lives!”
The man believed the word that Yeshua said to him and started off. 51 While on his way down, his servants met him, saying that his son was living. 52 So he asked them the hour when the boy began to get better. They said, “The fever left him yesterday at about the seventh hour.”[a]
53 Then the father realized that it was the same hour Yeshua said to him, “Your son lives!” Now he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Yeshua did this as the second sign, after He had come again from Judea into the Galilee.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.