1 Alleluia.
I am well pleased, because the Lord will hearken to the voice of my supplication. 2 Because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore will I call upon him while I live. 3 The pangs of death compassed me; the dangers of hell found me: I found affliction and sorrow. 4 Then I called on the name of the Lord: O Lord, deliver my soul.
5 The Lord is merciful and righteous; yea, our God has pity. 6 The Lord preserves 1the simple: I was brought low, and he delivered me.
7 Return to thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with thee. 8 For he has delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. 9 I shall be well-pleasing before the Lord in the land of the living.
- 1 v. 6 Gr. infants.
About this text. This is Sir Lancelot Brenton’s 1851 translation of the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament the Orthodox Church reads, rather than the Hebrew text behind most English Bibles. It is in the public domain. Words in italics are ones Brenton supplied that the Greek does not have; he marked them so that a reader could tell the difference, and they are kept that way here. The numbered notes are his own. Its English is Victorian, and does not match the modern English of the New Testament pages on this site.
On the numbering. The Psalms are numbered here as the Septuagint numbers them, which is how Orthodox service books cite them. From Psalm 10 onward that is one behind a Hebrew-numbered Bible: Psalm 50 here is the Psalm 51 of most English Bibles. The Septuagint also carries a hundred and fifty-first Psalm, which those Bibles do not.