The Daily Audio Bible
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3 I am the man who has seen the afflictions that come from the rod of God’s wrath. 2 He has brought me into deepest darkness, shutting out all light. 3 He has turned against me. Day and night his hand is heavy on me. 4 He has made me old and has broken my bones.
5 He has built forts against me and surrounded me with anguish and distress. 6 He buried me in dark places, like those long dead. 7 He has walled me in; I cannot escape; he has fastened me with heavy chains. 8 And though I cry and shout, he will not hear my prayers! 9 He has shut me into a place of high, smooth walls;[a] he has filled my path with detours.
10 He lurks like a bear, like a lion, waiting to attack me. 11 He has dragged me into the underbrush and torn me with his claws, leaving me bleeding and desolate.
12 He has bent his bow and aimed it squarely at me, 13 and sent his arrows deep within my heart.
14 My own people laugh at me; all day long they sing their ribald songs.
15 He has filled me with bitterness and given me a cup of deepest sorrows to drink. 16 He has made me eat gravel and broken my teeth; he has rolled me in ashes and dirt. 17 O Lord, all peace and all prosperity have long since gone, for you have taken them away. I have forgotten what enjoyment is. 18 All hope is gone; my strength has turned to water, for the Lord has left me. 19 Oh, remember the bitterness and suffering you have dealt to me! 20 For I can never forget these awful years; always my soul will live in utter shame.
21 Yet there is one ray of hope: 22 his compassion never ends. It is only the Lord’s mercies that have kept us from complete destruction. 23 Great is his faithfulness; his loving-kindness begins afresh each day. 24 My soul claims the Lord as my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him. 25 The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him, to those who seek for him. 26 It is good both to hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a young man to be under discipline, 28 for it causes him to sit apart in silence beneath the Lord’s demands, 29 to lie face downward in the dust; then at last there is hope for him. 30 Let him turn the other cheek to those who strike him and accept their awful insults, 31 for the Lord will not abandon him forever. 32 Although God gives him grief, yet he will show compassion too, according to the greatness of his loving-kindness. 33 For he does not enjoy afflicting men and causing sorrow.
34-36 But you have trampled and crushed beneath your feet the lowly of the world, and deprived men of their God-given rights, and refused them justice. No wonder the Lord has had to deal with you! 37 For who can act against you without the Lord’s permission? 38 It is the Lord who helps one and harms another.
39 Why then should we, mere humans as we are, murmur and complain when punished for our sins? 40 Let us examine ourselves instead, and let us repent and turn again to the Lord. 41 Let us lift our hearts and hands to him in heaven, 42 for we have sinned; we have rebelled against the Lord, and he has not forgotten it.
43 You have engulfed us by your anger, Lord, and slain us without mercy. 44 You have veiled yourself as with a cloud so that our prayers do not reach through. 45 You have made us as refuse and garbage among the nations. 46 All our enemies have spoken out against us. 47 We are filled with fear, for we are trapped and desolate, destroyed.
48-49 My eyes flow day and night with never-ending streams of tears because of the destruction of my people. 50 Oh, that the Lord might look down from heaven and respond to my cry! 51 My heart is breaking over what is happening to the young girls of Jerusalem.
52 My enemies, whom I have never harmed, chased me as though I were a bird. 53 They threw me in a well and capped it with a rock. 54 The water flowed above my head. I thought, This is the end! 55 But I called upon your name, O Lord, from deep within the well, 56 and you heard me! You listened to my pleading; you heard my weeping! 57 Yes, you came at my despairing cry and told me not to fear.
58 O Lord, you are my lawyer! Plead my case! For you have redeemed my life. 59 You have seen the wrong they did to me; be my Judge, to prove me right. 60 You have seen the plots my foes have laid against me. 61 You have heard the vile names they have called me, 62 and all they say about me and their whispered plans. 63 See how they laugh and sing with glee, preparing my doom.
64 O Lord, repay them well for all the evil they have done. 65 Harden their hearts and curse them, Lord. 66 Go after them in fierce pursuit and wipe them off the earth, beneath the heavens of the Lord.
1 Long ago God spoke in many different ways to our fathers through the prophets, in visions, dreams, and even face to face,[a] telling them little by little about his plans.
2 But now in these days he has spoken to us through his Son to whom he has given everything and through whom he made the world and everything there is.
3 God’s Son shines out with God’s glory, and all that God’s Son is and does marks him as God. He regulates the universe by the mighty power of his command. He is the one who died to cleanse us and clear our record of all sin, and then sat down in highest honor beside the great God of heaven.
4 Thus he became far greater than the angels, as proved by the fact that his name “Son of God,” which was passed on to him from his Father, is far greater than the names and titles of the angels. 5-6 For God never said to any angel, “You are my Son, and today I have given you the honor that goes with that name.”[b] But God said it about Jesus. Another time he said, “I am his Father and he is my Son.” And still another time—when his firstborn Son came to earth—God said, “Let all the angels of God worship him.”
7 God speaks of his angels as messengers swift as the wind and as servants made of flaming fire; 8 but of his Son he says, “Your Kingdom, O God, will last forever and ever; its commands are always just and right. 9 You love right and hate wrong; so God, even your God, has poured out more gladness upon you than on anyone else.”
10 God also called him “Lord” when he said, “Lord, in the beginning you made the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. 11 They will disappear into nothingness, but you will remain forever. They will become worn out like old clothes, 12 and some day you will fold them up and replace them. But you yourself will never change, and your years will never end.”
13 And did God ever say to an angel, as he does to his Son, “Sit here beside me in honor until I crush all your enemies beneath your feet”?
14 No, for the angels are only spirit-messengers sent out to help and care for those who are to receive his salvation.
102 A prayer when overwhelmed with trouble.
Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!
2 Don’t turn away from me in this time of my distress. Bend down your ear and give me speedy answers, 3-4 for my days disappear like smoke. My health is broken, and my heart is sick; it is trampled like grass and is withered. My food is tasteless, and I have lost my appetite. 5 I am reduced to skin and bones because of all my groaning and despair. 6 I am like a vulture in a far-off wilderness or like an owl alone in the desert. 7 I lie awake, lonely as a solitary sparrow on the roof.
8 My enemies taunt me day after day and curse at me. 9-10 I eat ashes instead of bread. My tears run down into my drink because of your anger against me, because of your wrath. For you have rejected me and thrown me out. 11 My life is passing swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering like grass, 12 while you, Lord, are a famous King forever. Your fame will endure to every generation.
13 I know that you will come and have mercy on Jerusalem—and now is the time to pity her—the time you promised help. 14 For your people love every stone in her walls and feel sympathy for every grain of dust in her streets. 15 Now let the nations and their rulers tremble before the Lord, before his glory. 16 For Jehovah will rebuild Jerusalem! He will appear in his glory!
17 He will listen to the prayers of the destitute, for he is never too busy to heed their requests. 18 I am recording this so that future generations will also praise the Lord for all that he has done. And a people that shall be created shall praise the Lord. 19 Tell them that God looked down from his temple in heaven 20 and heard the groans of his people in slavery—they were children of death—and released them, 21-22 so that multitudes would stream to the Temple in Jerusalem to praise him, and his praises were sung throughout the city; and many rulers throughout the earth came to worship him.
23 He has cut me down in middle life, shortening my days. 24 But I cried to him, “O God, you live forever and forever! Don’t let me die halfway through my years! 25 In ages past you laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens with your hands! 26 They shall perish, but you go on forever. They will grow old like worn-out clothing, and you will change them like a man putting on a new shirt and throwing away the old one! 27 But you yourself never grow old. You are forever, and your years never end.
28 “But our families will continue; generation after generation will be preserved by your protection.”
21 A quarrelsome man starts fights as easily as a match sets fire to paper.[a]
22 Gossip is a dainty morsel eaten with great relish.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.