1 A Song of Degrees.
If it had not been that the Lord was among us, let Israel now say; 2 if it had not been that the Lord was among us, when men rose up against us; 3 verily they would have swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us: 4 verily the water would have drowned us, our soul would have gone under the torrent. 5 Yea, our soul would have gone under the overwhelming water.
6 Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us for a prey to their teeth. 7 Our soul has been delivered as a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are delivered. 8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
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.