Bible Browser

Psalm 124

1  If the Lord himself had not been on our side, ♦︎
   now may Israel say;
2  If the Lord had not been on our side, ♦︎
   when enemies rose up against us;
3  Then would they have swallowed us alive ♦︎
   when their anger burned against us;
4  Then would the waters have overwhelmed us
      and the torrent gone over our soul; ♦︎
   over our soul would have swept the raging waters.
5  But blessed be the Lord ♦︎
   who has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.
6  Our soul has escaped
      as a bird from the snare of the fowler; ♦︎
   the snare is broken and we are delivered.
7  Our help is in the name of the Lord, ♦︎
   who has made heaven and earth.

The False Attractions of Adultery

7My child, keep my words
   and store up my commandments with you;
² keep my commandments and live,
   keep my teachings as the apple of your eye;
³ bind them on your fingers,
   write them on the tablet of your heart.
⁴ Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister’,
   and call insight your intimate friend,
⁵ that they may keep you from the loose^* woman,
   from the adulteress with her smooth words.

⁶ For at the window of my house
   I looked out through my lattice,
⁷ and I saw among the simple ones,
   I observed among the youths,
   a young man without sense,
⁸ passing along the street near her corner,
   taking the road to her house
⁹ in the twilight, in the evening,
   at the time of night and darkness.

¹⁰ Then a woman comes towards him,
   decked out like a prostitute, wily of heart.^*
11 She is loud and wayward;
   her feet do not stay at home;
¹² now in the street, now in the squares,
   and at every corner she lies in wait.
¹³ She seizes him and kisses him,
   and with impudent face she says to him:
¹⁴ ‘I had to offer sacrifices,
   and today I have paid my vows;

7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
   he gave gifts to his people.’
⁹(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended^* into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.