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Psalm 74

¹O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?

²Remember your congregation, which you acquired long ago, which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage. Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell.

³Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.

⁴Your foes have roared within your holy place; they set up their emblems there.

⁵At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes.

⁶And then, with hatchets and hammers, they smashed all its carved work.

⁷They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing it to the ground.

⁸They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”; they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.

⁹We do not see our emblems; there is no longer any prophet, and there is no one among us who knows how long.

¹⁰How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?

¹¹Why do you hold back your hand; why do you keep your hand in your bosom?

¹²Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.

¹³You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.

¹⁴You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

¹⁵You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up ever-flowing streams.

¹⁶Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun.

¹⁷You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter.

¹⁸Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs, and an impious people reviles your name.

¹⁹Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild animals; do not forget the life of your poor forever.

²⁰Have regard for your covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the haunts of violence.

²¹Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame; let the poor and needy praise your name.

²²Rise up, O God, plead your cause; remember how the impious scoff at you all day long.

²³Do not forget the clamor of your foes, the uproar of your adversaries that goes up continually.

²⁴Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. ²⁵Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them; the mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. ²⁶He will raise a signal for a nation far away, and whistle for a people at the ends of the earth; Here they come, swiftly, speedily! ²⁷None of them is weary, none stumbles, none slumbers or sleeps, not a loincloth is loose, not a sandal-thong broken; ²⁸their arrows are sharp, all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs seem like flint, and their wheels like the whirlwind. ²⁹Their roaring is like a lion, like young lions they roar; they growl and seize their prey, they carry it off, and no one can rescue. ³⁰They will roar over it on that day, like the roaring of the sea. And if one look to the land— only darkness and distress; and the light grows dark with clouds.

⁴⁴“Our ancestors had the tent of testimony in the wilderness, as God directed when he spoke to Moses, ordering him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. ⁴⁵Our ancestors in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors. And it was there until the time of David, ⁴⁶who found favor with God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob. ⁴⁷But it was Solomon who built a house for him. ⁴⁸Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands; as the prophet says, ⁴⁹‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? ⁵⁰Did not my hand make all these things?’

⁵¹”You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. ⁵²Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. ⁵³You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.”

Psalm 32

¹Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

²Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah

⁶Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.

⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah

⁸I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

⁹Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.

¹⁰Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.

¹¹Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

¹⁵For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. ¹⁶They shall drink and stagger and go out of their minds because of the sword that I am sending among them. ¹⁷So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand, and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it: ¹⁸Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a desolation and a waste, an object of hissing and of cursing, as they are today; ¹⁹Pharaoh king of Egypt, his servants, his officials, and all his people; ²⁰all the mixed people; all the kings of the land of Uz; all the kings of the land of the Philistines—Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod; ²¹Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites; ²²all the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the coastland across the sea; ²³Dedan, Tema, Buz, and all who have shaven temples; ²⁴all the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the mixed peoples that live in the desert; ²⁵all the kings of Zimri, all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media; ²⁶all the kings of the north, far and near, one after another, and all the kingdoms of the world that are on the face of the earth. And after them the king of Sheshach shall drink. ²⁷Then you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, get drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you. ²⁸And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: You must drink! ²⁹See, I am beginning to bring disaster on the city that is called by my name, and how can you possibly avoid punishment? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord of hosts.