Book of Common Prayer
To the Director: By the servant of the Lord, David, who spoke the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hands of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.
Gratitude for Victory
18 He said:
“I love you, Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my God,
my stronghold[a] in whom I take refuge, my shield, the glory[b]
of my salvation, and my high tower.”
3 I cried out to the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I was delivered from my enemies.
4 The cords of death entangled me;
the rivers of Belial[c] made me afraid.
5 The cords of Sheol[d] surrounded me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I cried to the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his Temple he heard my voice;
my cry reached his ears.
7 The world shook and trembled;
the foundations of the mountains quaked,
they shook because he was angry.
8 In his anger smoke poured out of his nostrils,
and consuming fire from his mouth;
coals were lit from it.
9 He bent the sky and descended,
and darkness was under his feet.
10 He rode upon a cherub and flew;
he soared upon the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness his hiding place,
his canopy surrounding him was dark waters and thick clouds.
12 The brightness before him scattered the thick clouds,
with hail stones and flashes of fire.
13 Then the Lord thundered in[e] the heavens,
and the Most High sounded aloud,
calling for hail stones and flashes of fire.[f]
14 He shot his arrows and scattered them;
with many lightning bolts he frightened them.
15 Then the channels of the sea could be seen,
and the foundations of the earth were uncovered
because of your rebuke, Lord,
because of the blast from the breath of your nostrils.
16 He reached down and took me;
he drew me from many waters.
17 He delivered me from my strong enemies,
from those who hated me because
they were stronger than I.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out to a spacious place;
he delivered me, for in me he takes delight.
God’s Reward to the Righteous
20 The Lord will reward me because I am righteous;
because my hands are clean he will restore me;
21 because I have kept the ways of the Lord,
and I have not wickedly departed from my God;
22 because all his judgments were always before me,
and I did not cast off his statutes.
23 I was upright[g] before him,
and I kept myself from iniquity.
24 So the Lord restored me according to my righteousness,
because my hands were clean in his sight.
25 To the holy, you show your gracious love,
to the upright, you show yourself upright;
26 to the pure, you show yourself pure,
and to the morally corrupt, you appear to be perverse.
27 Indeed, you deliver the oppressed,[h]
but you bring down those who exalt themselves
in their own eyes.
28 For you, Lord, make my lamp shine;
my God enlightens my darkness.
29 With your help[i] I will run through an army,
with help from[j] my God I leap over walls.
30 As for God, his way is upright;[k]
the word of God is pure;
he is a shield to all those who take refuge in him.
The Acts of God for the Righteous
31 For who is God but the Lord,
and who is a Rock other than our God?—
32 the God who clothes me with strength,
and who makes my way upright;[l]
33 who makes my feet swift as the deer;
who makes me stand on high places;
34 who teaches my hands to make war,
and my arms to bend a bronze bow.
35 You have given to me the shield of your deliverance,
and your right hand holds me up;
your gentleness made me great.
36 You make a broad place for my steps,
so my feet[m] won’t slip.
37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them;
I did not turn around until they were utterly defeated.
38 I struck them down,
so they are not able to rise up;
they fell under my feet.
39 You clothed me with strength for war;
you will subdue under me those who rise up against me.
40 You have made my enemies turn their back to me,
and I will destroy those who hate me.
41 They cried out for deliverance,
but there was no one to deliver;
they cried out[n] to the Lord,
but he did not answer them.
42 I ground them like wind-swept dust;
I emptied them out[o] like dirt in the street.
43 You rescued me from conflict with the people;
you made me head of the nations.
People who did not know me will serve me.
44 When they hear of me,[p] they will obey me;
foreigners will submit to me.
45 Foreigners will wilt away;
they will come trembling out of their stronghold.
46 The Lord lives!
Blessed be my Rock!
May the God of my deliverance be exalted!
47 He is the God who executes vengeance on my behalf;
who destroys peoples under me;
48 who delivers me from my enemies.
Truly you will exalt me above those who oppose me;
you will deliver me from the violent person.
49 Therefore, I will give thanks to you among the nations, Lord;
I will sing praises to your name.
50 He is the one who gives victories to his king;
who shows gracious love to his anointed,
to David and his seed forever.
The Lord Again Calls Jonah to Go to Nineveh
3 This message from the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh to do what the Lord had ordered.
Now Nineveh was a very large city,[a] requiring[b] a three-day journey to cross through it.[c] 4 As Jonah started into the city on the first day’s journey, he proclaimed the message, “40 days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!”
The City of Nineveh Repents
5 The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least important. 6 When the message reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, removed his royal garments, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. 7 Then he had this proclamation published throughout Nineveh:
“By decree of the king and his nobles:
No man or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything, graze, or drink water. 8 Instead, let both man and animal clothe themselves with sackcloth and cry out to God forcefully. Let every person turn from his evil ways and from his tendency to do violence.[d] 9 Who knows but that God may relent, have compassion, and turn from his fierce anger, so that we are not exterminated?”
10 God took note of what they did—that they turned from their evil ways. Because God relented concerning the trouble about which he had warned them, he did not carry it out.
Jonah’s Anger at God’s Kindness
4 Greatly displeased, Jonah flew into a rage. 2 So he prayed to the Lord, “Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my home country? That’s why I fled previously to Tarshish, because I knew you’re a compassionate God, slow to anger, overflowing with gracious love, and reluctant[e] to send trouble. 3 Therefore, Lord, please kill me, because it’s better for me to die than to live!”
4 The Lord replied, “Does being angry make you right?”
Jonah’s Discouragement
5 Then Jonah left the city and sat down on the eastern side.[f] There he made a shelter for himself and sat down under its shade to see what would happen to the city. 6 The Lord God prepared a vine plant,[g] and it grew over Jonah to shade his head and provide relief from his misery. Jonah was happy—indeed, he was ecstatic—about the vine plant. 7 But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm that attacked the vine plant so that it withered away. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a harsh east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head, he became faint, and he begged to die. “It is better for me to die than to live!” he said.
9 Then God asked Jonah, “Is your anger about the vine plant justified?”
And he answered, “Absolutely! I’m so angry I could die!”
10 But the Lord asked, “You cared about a vine plant that you neither worked on nor cultivated? A vine plant that grew up overnight and died overnight? 11 So why shouldn’t I be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 human beings who do not know their right hand from their left,[h] as well as a lot of livestock?
The Shipwreck
27 It was the fourteenth night, and we were drifting through the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors suspected that land was near. 28 After taking soundings, they found the depth to be twenty fathoms. A little later, they took soundings again and found it was fifteen fathoms. 29 Fearing that we might run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and began praying for daylight to come. 30 Meanwhile, the sailors had begun trying to escape from the ship. They lowered the lifeboat into the sea and pretended that they were going to lay out the anchors from the bow. 31 Paul told the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men remain onboard, you cannot be saved.” 32 Then the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and set it adrift.
33 Right up to daybreak Paul kept urging all of them to eat something. He said, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been waiting and going without food, not eating anything. 34 So I urge you to eat something, for it will help you survive, since none of you will lose so much as[a] a hair from his head.” 35 After he said this, he took some bread, thanked God in front of everyone, broke it, and began to eat. 36 Everyone was encouraged and had something to eat. 37 There were 276[b] of us on the ship. 38 After they had eaten all they wanted, they began to lighten the ship by dumping its cargo of[c] wheat into the sea.
39 When day came, they didn’t recognize the land, but they could see a bay with a beach on which they planned to run the ship ashore, if possible. 40 So they cut the anchors free and left them in the sea. At the same time they untied the ropes that held the steering oars, raised the foresail to the wind, and headed for the beach. 41 But they struck a sandbar and ran the ship aground. The bow stuck and couldn’t be moved, while the stern was broken to pieces by the force of the waves. 42 The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners to keep them from swimming ashore and escaping, 43 but the centurion wanted to save Paul, so he prevented them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. 44 The rest were to follow, some on planks and others on various pieces of the ship. In this way everyone got to shore safely.
Peter Declares His Faith in Jesus(A)
18 One day, while Jesus[a] was praying privately and the disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They answered, “Some say[b] John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others one of the ancient prophets who has come back to life.”
20 He asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
“God’s Messiah,”[c] Peter replied.
Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection(B)
21 He gave them strict orders, commanding them not to tell this to anyone. 22 He said, “The Son of Man must suffer a great deal and be rejected by the elders, the high priests, and the scribes. Then he must be killed, but on the third day he will be raised.”
23 Then he told all of them, “If anyone wants to come with me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross every day, and follow me continuously, 24 because whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 What profit will a person have if he gains the whole world, but destroys himself or is lost? 26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and the glory of[d] the Father and the holy angels. 27 I tell you with certainty, some people who are standing here won’t experience[e] death until they see the kingdom of God.”
Copyright © 1995-2014 by ISV Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC.