Book of Common Prayer
1 ¶ O come, let us bring joy unto the LORD; let us sing with joy unto the rock of our saving health.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and sing unto him with joy.
3 For the LORD is a great God and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands formed the dry land.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
7 ¶ For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today if ye will hear his voice,
8 harden not your heart, as in the provocation and as in the day of trials in the wilderness
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
10 Forty years long I was grieved with this generation and said, It is a people that err from the heart, who have not known my ways;
11 unto whom I swore in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.
To the Overcomer upon Shoshannim (lilies), A Psalm of David.
1 ¶ Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.
2 I sink in deep mire where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.
3 I am weary of my crying; my throat is dried; my eyes fail while I wait for my God.
4 Those that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; those that would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty; then I restored that which I did not take away.
5 O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my guiltiness is not hid from thee.
6 Do not let those that wait on thee, O Lord GOD of the hosts, be ashamed for my sake; do not let those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel.
7 Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame has covered my face.
8 I am become a stranger unto my brethren and an alien unto my mother’s sons.
9 For the zeal of thy house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those that reproached thee are fallen upon me.
10 When I wept with fasting of my soul, thou hast been a reproach unto me.
11 I made sackcloth also my garment, and I became a proverb to them.
12 They that sat in the gate spoke against me, and I was the song of the drunkards.
13 ¶ But I corrected my prayer unto thee, O LORD, in the time of thy good pleasure; O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy saving health.
14 Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not drown; let me be delivered from those that hate me and out of the deep waters.
15 Let not the violent force of the waters overcome me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.
16 Hear me, O LORD, for thy mercy is perceptible, look upon me according to the multitude of thy acts of compassion
17 And hide not thy face from thy slave, for I am in trouble; hear me speedily.
18 Draw near unto my soul and redeem it; deliver me because of my enemies.
19 Thou hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonour; my adversaries are all before thee.
20 Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness, and I looked for some to take pity, but there was no one, and for comforters, but I found none.
21 They also gave me gall for my food; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
22 ¶ Let their table become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their prosperity, let it become a stumbling block.
23 Let their eyes be darkened that they see not and make their loins continually to shake.
24 Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them.
25 Let their palace be desolate, and let no one dwell in their tents.
26 For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they boast that thou hast slain their enemies.
27 Add iniquity unto their iniquity, and let them not come into thy righteousness.
28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written with the righteous.
29 But I am poor and sorrowful; let thy saving health, O God, set me up on high.
30 ¶ I will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify him with praises.
31 This also shall please the LORD better than the sacrifice of an ox or bullock that struggles with horns and hoofs.
32 The humble shall see this and be glad; seek God and thy heart shall live.
33 For the LORD hears the destitute and does not despise his prisoners.
34 Let the heavens and the earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moves in them.
35 For God will protect Zion and will rebuild the cities of Judah; they shall dwell there and inherit it.
36 The seed of his slaves shall inherit it, and those that love his name shall dwell therein.
1 ¶ Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are pure in heart.
2 But as for me, my feet almost departed from the way; my steps had almost slipped.
3 For I became angry against the foolish when I saw the peace of the wicked.
4 Because there is no restraint that would bring about their death, but their strength is firm.
5 They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.
6 Therefore they are crowned with pride; they cover themselves with violence as a garment.
7 Their eyes stand out with fatness; they easily obtain the desires of their heart.
8 They are lawless and speak wickedly of doing violence; they speak loftily.
9 They set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue walks through the earth.
10 Therefore his people shall return here; and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them.
11 And they say, How does God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?
12 Behold, these ungodly men, without being troubled by the world obtain riches.
13 Verily, in vain have I cleansed my heart and washed my hands in innocency
14 and been plagued all day long and chastened every morning:
15 ¶ If I should say, I will speak as they do; behold, I should deny the generation of thy sons.
16 I shall meditate that I might understand this; it is very hard for me to see.
17 When I come into the sanctuary of God, then I shall understand their end.
18 Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; in desolation thou shalt cause them to fall.
19 How they are brought into desolation, as in a moment! They have come to an end; they are utterly consumed with terrors.
20 As the dream of one who awakes; so, O Lord, when thou shalt rise up, thou shalt despise their appearances.
21 ¶ Truly my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my kidneys.
22 But I was ignorant and did not understand; I was as a beast before thee.
23 Nevertheless I was continually with thee; thou hast apprehended me by my right hand.
24 Thou hast guided me with thy counsel, and afterward thou shalt receive me unto glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? And apart from thee there is nothing upon the earth that I desire.
26 My flesh and my heart fail; the strength of my heart is that God is my portion for ever.
27 For, behold, those that stray from thee shall perish; thou dost cut off all those that go a whoring from thee.
28 But as for me, to draw near to God is good; I have put my hope in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works.
5 ¶ Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and find out and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that execute judgment, that seek the truth; and I will pardon the city.
2 And if they should say, The LORD lives; surely they swear falsely.
3 O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? Thou hast stricken them, but they did not feel it; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive chastisement; they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.
4 Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they have become foolish; for they do not know the way of the LORD nor the judgment of their God.
5 I will go unto the great men, and will speak unto them; for they have known the way of the LORD, and the judgment of their God: but these have altogether broken the yoke and burst the bonds.
6 Therefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the desert shall destroy them and a tiger shall lie in wait over their cities; anyone that goes out from there shall be torn in pieces because their rebellions have been multiplied, and their backslidings are increased.
7 How shall I pardon thee for this? Thy sons have forsaken me and sworn by them that are not gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses.
8 They were as fed horses in the morning; each one neighed after his neighbour’s wife.
9 Shall I not visit for these things? said the LORD; and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
25 For circumcision verily profits if thou keep the law, but if thou art a rebel to the law, thy circumcision is made into a foreskin.
26 Therefore if the uncircumcised keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his foreskin be counted for circumcision?
27 And that which is by nature foreskin, but keeps the law perfectly, shall judge thee who with the letter and with the circumcision art rebellious to the law.
28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is circumcision that which is done outwardly in the flesh;
29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.
3 ¶ What advantage then has the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
2 Much in every way: first, certainly, that the oracles of God have been entrusted unto them.
3 For what if some of them did not believe? Shall their unbelief have made the truth of God without effect?
4 No, in no wise: for God is true, and every man a liar; as it is written, That thou might be justified in thy words and might overcome when thou dost judge.
5 And if our iniquity commends the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Shall for this reason God be unjust who sends punishment? (I speak as a man.)
6 No, in no wise: for then how shall God judge the world?
7 For if the truth of God has more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why even so am I also judged as a sinner?
8 And why not say (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come? The condemnation of whom is just.
9 What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise; for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin;
10 as it is written, There is no one righteous, no, not one;
11 there is no one that understands; there is no one that seeks after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable; there is no one that does good, no, not one.
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips,
14 whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness;
15 their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 destruction and misery are in their ways,
17 and the way of peace they have not known;
18 there is no fear of God before their eyes.
30 I can of my own self do nothing; as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who has sent me.
31 ¶ If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.
32 There is another that bears witness of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesses of me is true.
33 Ye sent unto John, and he bore witness unto the truth.
34 But I receive not testimony from man, but I say these things that ye might be saved.
35 He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing to rejoice for one hour in his light.
36 But I have greater testimony than that of John; for the works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father has sent me.
37 And the Father himself, who has sent me, has borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his appearance.
38 And ye do not have his word abiding in you; for whom he has sent, him ye do not believe.
39 Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are those who testify of me.
40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
41 I do not receive glory from men.
42 But I know you that ye have not the love of God in you.
43 I have come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
44 How can ye believe, who take glory one from another, and seek not the glory that comes only from God?
45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that accuses you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.
46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me.
47 But if ye do not believe his writings, how shall ye believe my words?
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