Psalms 43; Psalms 44; Psalms 45; Psalms 49; Psalms 84; Psalms 85; Psalms 87

1 O God, declare me innocent, and defend my cause against the ungodly; deliver me from lying and evil people!

2 You are my protector; why have you abandoned me? Why must I go on suffering from the cruelty of my enemies?

3 Send your light and your truth; may they lead me and bring me back to Zion, your sacred hill, and to your Temple, where you live.

4 Then I will go to your altar, O God; you are the source of my happiness. I will play my harp and sing praise to you, O God, my God.

5 Why am I so sad? Why am I so troubled? I will put my hope in God, and once again I will praise him, my savior and my God.

1 With our own ears we have heard it, O God - our ancestors have told us about it, about the great things you did in their time, in the days of long ago:

2 how you yourself drove out the heathen and established your people in their land; how you punished the other nations and caused your own to prosper.

3 Your people did not conquer the land with their swords; they did not win it by their own power; it was by your power and your strength, by the assurance of your presence, which showed that you loved them.

4 You are my king and my God; you give victory to your people,

5 and by your power we defeat our enemies.

6 I do not trust in my bow or in my sword to save me;

7 but you have saved us from our enemies and defeated those who hate us.

8 We will always praise you and give thanks to you forever.

9 But now you have rejected us and let us be defeated; you no longer march out with our armies.

10 You made us run from our enemies, and they took for themselves what was ours.

11 You allowed us to be slaughtered like sheep; you scattered us in foreign countries.

12 You sold your own people for a small price as though they had little value.

13 Our neighbors see what you did to us, and they mock us and laugh at us.

14 You have made us a joke among the nations; they shake their heads at us in scorn.

15 I am always in disgrace; I am covered with shame

16 from hearing the sneers and insults of my enemies and those who hate me.

17 All this has happened to us, even though we have not forgotten you or broken the covenant you made with us.

18 We have not been disloyal to you; we have not disobeyed your commands.

19 Yet you left us helpless among wild animals; you abandoned us in deepest darkness.

20 If we had stopped worshiping our God and prayed to a foreign god,

21 you would surely have discovered it, because you know our secret thoughts.

22 But it is on your account that we are being killed all the time, that we are treated like sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Wake up, Lord! Why are you asleep? Rouse yourself! Don't reject us forever!

24 Why are you hiding from us? Don't forget our suffering and trouble!

25 We fall crushed to the ground; we lie defeated in the dust.

26 Come to our aid! Because of your constant love save us!

1 Beautiful words fill my mind, as I compose this song for the king. Like the pen of a good writer my tongue is ready with a poem.

2 You are the most handsome of men; you are an eloquent speaker. God has always blessed you.

3 Buckle on your sword, mighty king; you are glorious and majestic.

4 Ride on in majesty to victory for the defense of truth and justice! Your strength will win you great victories!

5 Your arrows are sharp, they pierce the hearts of your enemies; nations fall down at your feet.

6 The kingdom that God has given you will last forever and ever. You rule over your people with justice;

7 you love what is right and hate what is evil. That is why God, your God, has chosen you and has poured out more happiness on you than on any other king.

8 The perfume of myrrh and aloes is on your clothes; musicians entertain you in palaces decorated with ivory.

9 Among the women of your court are daughters of kings, and at the right of your throne stands the queen, wearing ornaments of finest gold.

10 Bride of the king, listen to what I say - forget your people and your relatives.

11 Your beauty will make the king desire you; he is your master, so you must obey him.

12 The people of Tyre will bring you gifts; rich people will try to win your favor.

13 The princess is in the palace - how beautiful she is! Her gown is made of gold thread.

14 In her colorful gown she is led to the king, followed by her bridesmaids, and they also are brought to him.

15 With joy and gladness they come and enter the king's palace.

16 You, my king, will have many sons to succeed your ancestors as kings, and you will make them rulers over the whole earth.

17 My song will keep your fame alive forever, and everyone will praise you for all time to come.

1 Hear this, everyone! Listen, all people everywhere,

2 great and small alike, rich and poor together.

3 My thoughts will be clear; I will speak words of wisdom.

4 I will turn my attention to proverbs and explain their meaning as I play the harp.

5 I am not afraid in times of danger when I am surrounded by enemies,

6 by evil people who trust in their riches and boast of their great wealth.

7 We can never redeem ourselves; we cannot pay God the price for our lives,

8 because the payment for a human life is too great. What we could pay would never be enough

9 to keep us from the grave, to let us live forever.

10 Anyone can see that even the wise die, as well as the foolish and stupid. They all leave their riches to their descendants.

11 Their graves are their homes forever; there they stay for all time, though they once had lands of their own.

12 Our greatness cannot keep us from death; we will still die like the animals.

13 See what happens to those who trust in themselves, the fate of those who are satisfied with their wealth -

14 they are doomed to die like sheep, and Death will be their shepherd. The righteous will triumph over them, as their bodies quickly decay in the world of the dead far from their homes.

15 But God will rescue me; he will save me from the power of death.

16 Don't be upset when someone becomes rich, when his wealth grows even greater;

17 he cannot take it with him when he dies; his wealth will not go with him to the grave.

18 Even if someone is satisfied with this life and is praised because he is successful,

19 he will join all his ancestors in death, where the darkness lasts forever.

20 Our greatness cannot keep us from death; we will still die like the animals.

1 How I love your Temple, Lord Almighty!

2 How I want to be there! I long to be in the Lord's Temple. With my whole being I sing for joy to the living God.

3 Even the sparrows have built a nest, and the swallows have their own home; they keep their young near your altars, Lord Almighty, my king and my God.

4 How happy are those who live in your Temple, always singing praise to you.

5 How happy are those whose strength comes from you, who are eager to make the pilgrimage to Mount Zion.

6 As they pass through the dry valley of Baca, it becomes a place of springs; the autumn rain fills it with pools.

7 They grow stronger as they go; they will see the God of gods on Zion.

8 Hear my prayer, Lord God Almighty. Listen, O God of Jacob!

9 Bless our king, O God, the king you have chosen.

10 One day spent in your Temple is better than a thousand anywhere else; I would rather stand at the gate of the house of my God than live in the homes of the wicked.

11 The Lord is our protector and glorious king, blessing us with kindness and honor. He does not refuse any good thing to those who do what is right.

12 Lord Almighty, how happy are those who trust in you!

1 Lord, you have been merciful to your land; you have made Israel prosperous again.

2 You have forgiven your people's sins and pardoned all their wrongs.

3 You stopped being angry with them and held back your furious rage.

4 Bring us back, O God our savior, and stop being displeased with us!

5 Will you be angry with us forever? Will your anger never cease?

6 Make us strong again, and we, your people, will praise you.

7 Show us your constant love, O Lord, and give us your saving help.

8 I am listening to what the Lord God is saying; he promises peace to us, his own people, if we do not go back to our foolish ways.

9 Surely he is ready to save those who honor him, and his saving presence will remain in our land.

10 Love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will embrace.

11 Human loyalty will reach up from the earth, and God's righteousness will look down from heaven.

12 The Lord will make us prosperous, and our land will produce rich harvests.

13 Righteousness will go before the Lord and prepare the path for him.

1 The Lord built his city on the sacred hill;

2 more than any other place in Israel he loves the city of Jerusalem.

3 Listen, city of God, to the wonderful things he says about you:

4 "I will include Egypt and Babylonia when I list the nations that obey me; the people of Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia I will number among the inhabitants of Jerusalem."

5 Of Zion it will be said that all nations belong there and that the Almighty will make her strong.

6 The Lord will write a list of the peoples and include them all as citizens of Jerusalem.

7 They dance and sing, "In Zion is the source of all our blessings."