1 Alleluia, a Psalm of Aggæus and Zacharias.
My soul, praise the Lord. 2 While I live will I praise the Lord: I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist. 3 Trust not in princes, nor in the children of men, in whom there is no safety. 4 His breath shall go forth, and he shall return to his earth; in that day all his thoughts shall perish.
5 Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God: 6 who made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all things in them: who keeps truth for ever: 7 who executes judgment for the wronged: who gives food to the hungry. The Lord looses the fettered ones: 8 the Lord gives wisdom to the blind:
The Lord sets up the broken down: the Lord loves the righteous: the Lord preserves the strangers; 9 he will relieve the orphan and widow: but will utterly remove the way of sinners. 10 The Lord shall reign for ever, even thy God, O Sion, to all generations.
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.