Psalm 102

⁶In my distress I called upon the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice, and my cry for His help reached His ears.

¹A song of ascents. Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord!

²O Lord, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.

²³After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from bondage ascended to God.

²From the ends of the earth I call out to You whenever my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

²I pour out my complaint before Him; I reveal my trouble to Him.

³Although my spirit grows faint within me, You know my way. Along the path I travel they have hidden a snare for me.

¹²Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry for help; do not be deaf to my weeping. For I am a foreigner dwelling with You, a stranger like all my fathers.

¹⁷Hide not Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress. Answer me quickly!

⁹Hide not Your face from me, nor turn away Your servant in anger. You have been my helper; do not leave me or forsake me, O God of my salvation.

¹⁷I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in Him.

¹For the choirmaster. Of David. To bring remembrance. Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Hurry, O Lord, to help me!

²May my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry.

³For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.

²In Your justice, rescue and deliver me; incline Your ear and save me.

¹⁴You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

¹⁰For my life is consumed with grief and my years with groaning; my iniquity has drained my strength, and my bones are wasting away.

¹³He sent fire from on high, and it overpowered my bones. He spread a net for my feet and turned me back. He made me desolate, faint all the day long.

³⁰My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever.

²⁰But the wicked and enemies of the Lord will perish like the glory of the fields. They will vanish; like smoke they will fade away.

¹⁴I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed. My heart is like wax; it melts away within me.

¹⁵My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death.

⁷The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the Lord blows on them; indeed, the people are grass.

²For they wither quickly like grass and wilt like tender plants.

⁶Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and walked to the chamber of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. And while he stayed there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

⁹For three days he was without sight, and he did not eat or drink anything.

³⁷He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

³⁸Then He said to them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me.”

¹⁷The elders of his household stood beside him to help him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat anything with them.

²⁰My skin and flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²²A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.

⁸But now their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as a stick.

³When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.

⁴For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was drained as in the summer heat. Selah

⁸I am numb and badly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.

⁹O Lord, my every desire is before You; my groaning is not hidden from You.

⁸Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity, for the Lord has heard my weeping.

¹⁴Herds will lie down in her midst, creatures of every kind. Both the desert owl and screech owl will roost atop her pillars. Their calls will sound from the window, but desolation will lie on the threshold, for He will expose the beams of cedar.

¹⁴I chirp like a swallow or crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak as I look upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”

²And he cried out in a mighty voice: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a lair for demons and a haunt for every unclean spirit, every unclean bird, and every detestable beast.

¹¹The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The Lord will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.

¹²No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing.

²⁹I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.

³⁰My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever.

⁸Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.

⁴You have kept my eyes from closing; I am too troubled to speak.

²⁸Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it upon him.

²⁹Let him bury his face in the dust—perhaps there is still hope.

³³He took with Him Peter, James, and John, and began to be deeply troubled and distressed.

³⁴Then He said to them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch.”

⁶My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.

¹³When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint,

¹⁴then You frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions,

⁶⁶So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival.

⁶⁷In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.

¹¹I frequently had them punished in the synagogues, and I tried to make them blaspheme. In my raging fury against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.

³For even Christ did not please Himself, but as it is written: “The insults of those who insult You have fallen on Me.”

⁹because zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult You have fallen on me.

¹⁰I wept and fasted, but it brought me reproach.

¹²When daylight came, the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.

¹³More than forty of them were involved in this plot.

¹⁵You will leave behind your name as a curse for My chosen ones, and the Lord God will slay you; but to His servants He will give another name.

²⁰Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found no one.

³My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”

²⁴I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.

²⁰He feeds on ashes. His deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

⁵You fed them with the bread of tears and made them drink the full measure of their tears.

⁴⁸Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people.

⁴⁹My eyes overflow unceasingly, without relief,

¹⁰Do not tell it in Gath; do not weep at all. Roll in the dust in Beth-leaphrah.

³There is no soundness in my body because of Your anger; there is no rest in my bones because of my sin.

⁹persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

¹⁸The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you people; look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into captivity.

⁷For we are consumed by Your anger and terrified by Your wrath.

⁸You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

⁶The Lord sustains the humble, but casts the wicked to the ground.

²Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.

²³I am fading away like a lengthening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.

⁴Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.

²⁴For, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall,

¹⁴You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

¹⁰But the one who is rich should exult in his low position, because he will pass away like a flower of the field.

¹³Your name, O Lord, endures forever, Your renown, O Lord, through all generations.

¹⁹You, O Lord, reign forever; Your throne endures from generation to generation.

¹⁵God also told Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.

⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

⁷But the Lord abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment.

¹⁷When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last,

¹⁸the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.

⁴But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

²“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her forced labor has been completed; her iniquity has been pardoned. For she has received from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.”

¹Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

²⁶Rise up; be our help! Redeem us on account of Your loving devotion.

³⁵For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it.

³⁶The descendants of His servants will inherit it, and those who love His name will settle in it.

¹⁰“Shout for joy and be glad, O Daughter of Zion, for I am coming to dwell among you,” declares the Lord.

¹¹“On that day many nations will join themselves to the Lord, and they will become My people. I will dwell among you, and you will know that the Lord of Hosts has sent Me to you.

²before his associates and the army of Samaria, saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore the wall by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble?”

⁵So the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites—everyone whose spirit God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of the Lord in Jerusalem.

¹⁷Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned down. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we will no longer be a disgrace.”

³And they told me, “The remnant who survived the exile are there in the province, in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

¹⁰Meanwhile, the people of Judah said: “The strength of the laborer fails, and there is so much rubble that we will never be able to rebuild the wall.”

⁶So we rebuilt the wall until all of it was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.

⁴³then may You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You. Then all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and fear You, as do Your people Israel, and they will know that this house I have built is called by Your Name.

⁴All the kings of the earth will give You thanks, O Lord, when they hear the words of Your mouth.

³Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

⁴Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm.

²⁰This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Peoples will yet come—the residents of many cities—

²¹and the residents of one city will go to another, saying: ‘Let us go at once to plead before the Lord and to seek the Lord of Hosts. I myself am going.’

¹⁵Then the seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and loud voices called out in heaven: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.”

⁹All the nations You have made will come and bow before You, O Lord, and they will glorify Your name.

¹Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

²For behold, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you, and His glory will appear over you.

⁷I will restore Judah and Israel from captivity and will rebuild them as in former times.

²The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel.

²In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.

³And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

⁴Again I will build you, and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out in joyful dancing.

¹⁸“And I, knowing their deeds and thoughts, am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see My glory.

⁶let Your eyes be open and Your ears attentive to hear the prayer that I, Your servant, now pray before You day and night for Your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins that we Israelites have committed against You. Both I and my father’s house have sinned.

²⁴For He has not despised or detested the torment of the afflicted. He has not hidden His face from him, but has attended to his cry for help.

¹²For he will deliver the needy who cry out and the afflicted who have no helper.

¹⁸For the needy will not always be forgotten; nor the hope of the oppressed forever dashed.

¹¹For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.

¹²Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.

²⁹But if from there you will seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

⁴For everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.

³⁰Posterity will serve Him; they will declare the Lord to a new generation.

³¹They will come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn—all that He has done.

²¹The people I formed for Myself will declare My praise.

⁴We will not hide them from their children but will declare to the next generation the praises of the Lord and His might and the wonders He has performed.

⁵For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

¹⁵And I will make every effort to ensure that after my departure, you will be able to recall these things at all times.

¹⁵Look down from Your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Your people Israel and the land You have given us as You swore to our fathers—a land flowing with milk and honey.”

²The Lord looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if any understand, if any seek God.

²³So it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

²⁴For Christ did not enter a man-made copy of the true sanctuary, but He entered heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God.

⁴³then may You hear from heaven, Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You. Then all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and fear You, as do Your people Israel, and they will know that this house I have built is called by Your Name.

⁹For the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro over all the earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him. You have acted foolishly in this matter. From now on, therefore, you will be at war.”

¹The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,

²and who ministers in the sanctuary and true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.

¹¹May the groans of the captives reach You; by the strength of Your arm preserve those condemned to death.

⁷He executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free,

¹The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,

²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn,

⁷The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I am aware of their sufferings.

⁹Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

¹⁰And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be broken. Then He will proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion will extend from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.

²in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

³All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

²²I will proclaim Your name to my brothers; I will praise You in the assembly.

¹¹So the redeemed of the Lord will return and enter Zion with singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

²¹to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

¹³Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness.

¹⁵O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.

²⁰This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Peoples will yet come—the residents of many cities—

²¹and the residents of one city will go to another, saying: ‘Let us go at once to plead before the Lord and to seek the Lord of Hosts. I myself am going.’

¹⁴And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

²²This is what the Lord God says: “Behold, I will lift up My hand to the nations, and raise My banner to the peoples. They will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their shoulders.

²³Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow to you facedown and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in Me will never be put to shame.”

³Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

⁴Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm.

²⁷All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations will bow down before Him.

⁸May he rule from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.

⁹May the nomads bow before him, and his enemies lick the dust.

²But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.

³And I will empower my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”

³⁸Now, however, You have spurned and rejected him; You are enraged by Your anointed one.

³⁹You have renounced the covenant with Your servant and sullied his crown in the dust.

³Let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness—the son of destruction—is revealed.

⁴He will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship. So he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

²¹For what does he care about his household after him, when the number of his months has run out?

¹But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come.

²For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,

¹Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons,

²influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.

¹²Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. O Lord, You have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, You have established them for correction.

¹³Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may again be cheered before I depart and am no more.”

¹⁰I said, “In the prime of my life I must go through the gates of Sheol and be deprived of the remainder of my years.”

¹¹I said, “I will never again see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living; I will no longer look on mankind with those who dwell in this world.

¹²But You, O Lord, sit enthroned forever; Your renown endures to all generations.

⁸“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty.

⁷But the Lord abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment.

¹In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

¹¹For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

¹⁷“Oh, Lord God! You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for You!

¹⁰And: “In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.

¹¹They will perish, but You remain; they will all wear out like a garment.

³For Jesus has been counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.

⁴And every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.

¹Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

⁶Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth below; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will die like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail.

³⁵Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.

³³Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.

⁴All the stars of heaven will be dissolved. The skies will be rolled up like a scroll, and all their stars will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like foliage from the fig tree.

¹¹Then I saw a great white throne and the One seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from His presence, and no place was found for them.

²²“For just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, will endure before Me,” declares the Lord, “so your descendants and your name will endure.

⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.

⁶“Because I, the Lord, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.

⁸“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty.

⁴For in Your sight a thousand years are but a day that passes, or a watch of the night.

¹⁷When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last,

¹⁸the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.

³⁵For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it.

³⁶The descendants of His servants will inherit it, and those who love His name will settle in it.

¹⁶Your sons will succeed your fathers; you will make them princes throughout the land.

¹⁷I will commemorate your name through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you forever and ever.

²²“For just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, will endure before Me,” declares the Lord, “so your descendants and your name will endure.

⁴‘I will establish your offspring forever and build up your throne for all generations.’” Selah

¹⁶May Your work be shown to Your servants, and Your splendor to their children.

¹⁷May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands—yes, establish the work of our hands!

¹⁰Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.