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Psalm 52

1  Why do you glory in evil, you tyrant, ♦︎
   while the goodness of God endures continually?
2  You plot destruction, you deceiver; ♦︎
   your tongue is like a sharpened razor.
3  You love evil rather than good, ♦︎
   falsehood rather than the word of truth.
4  You love all words that hurt, ♦︎
   O you deceitful tongue.
5  Therefore God shall utterly bring you down; ♦︎
   he shall take you and pluck you out of your tent
      and root you out of the land of the living.
6  The righteous shall see this and tremble; ♦︎
   they shall laugh you to scorn, and say:
7  ‘This is the one who did not take God for a refuge, ♦︎
   but trusted in great riches and relied upon wickedness.’
8  But I am like a spreading olive tree in the house of God; ♦︎
   I trust in the goodness of God for ever and ever.
9  I will always give thanks to you for what you have done; ♦︎
   I will hope in your name,
      for your faithful ones delight in it.

The Lofty Cedar

31In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me: ²Mortal, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes:
Whom are you like in your greatness?
³   Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon,
with fair branches and forest shade,
   and of great height,
   its top among the clouds.^*
4 The waters nourished it,
   the deep made it grow tall,
making its rivers flow^*
   around the place where it was planted,
sending forth its streams
   to all the trees of the field.
⁵ So it towered high
   above all the trees of the field;
its boughs grew large
   and its branches long,
   from abundant water in its shoots.
⁶ All the birds of the air
   made their nests in its boughs;
under its branches all the animals of the field
   gave birth to their young;
and in its shade
   all great nations lived.
⁷ It was beautiful in its greatness,
   in the length of its branches;
for its roots went down
   to abundant water.
⁸ The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it,
   nor the fir trees equal its boughs;
the plane trees were as nothing
   compared with its branches;
no tree in the garden of God
   was like it in beauty.
⁹ I made it beautiful
   with its mass of branches,
the envy of all the trees of Eden
   that were in the garden of God.

10 Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Because it^* towered high and set its top among the clouds,^* and its heart was proud of its height, ¹¹I gave it into the hand of the prince of the nations; he has dealt with it as its wickedness deserves. I have cast it out. ¹²Foreigners from the most terrible of the nations have cut it down and left it. On the mountains and in all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs lie broken in all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth went away from its shade and left it.

Final Admonitions and Benediction

11 See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! ¹²It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. ¹⁴May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which^* the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵For^* neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! ¹⁶As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

17 From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.

18 May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.^* Amen.