The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. 2 Out of Sion comes the excellence of his beauty. 3 God, our God, shall come manifestly, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall be kindled before him, and round about him there shall be a very great tempest. 4 He shall summon the heaven above, and the earth, that he may [Heb. 10. 30.] judge his people. 5 Assemble ye his saints to him, those that have engaged in a covenant with him upon sacrifices. 6 And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge. Pause.
7 Hear, my people, and I will speak to thee, O Israel: and I will testify to thee: I am God, thy God. 8 I will not reprove thee on account of thy sacrifices; for thy whole-burnt-offerings are before me continually. 9 I will take no bullocks out of thine house, nor he-goats out of thy flocks. 10 For all the wild beasts of the thicket are mine, the cattle on the mountains, and oxen. 11 I know all the birds of the sky; and the beauty of the field is mine. 12 If I should be hungry, I will not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness of it. 13 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer to God the sacrifice of praise; and pay thy vows to the Most High. 15 And call upon me in the day of affliction; and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. Pause.
16 But to the sinner God has said, Why dost thou declare my ordinances, and take up my covenant in thy mouth? 17 Whereas thou hast hated instruction, and hast cast my words behind thee. 18 If thou sawest a thief, thou 2rannest along with him, and hast cast in thy lot with adulterers. 19 Thy mouth has multiplied wickedness, and thy tongue has framed deceit.3 20 Thou didst sit and speak against thy brother, and didst scandalise thy mother's son.
21 These things thou didst, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest wickedly that I should be like thee; but I will reprove thee, and set thine offences before thee. 22 Now consider these things, ye that forget God, lest he rend you, and there be no deliverer.
23 The sacrifice of praise will glorify me: and 4that is the way wherein I will shew to him the salvation of God.
- 1 v. 1 Or, of.
- 2 v. 18 See 1 Pe 4. 4.
- 3 v. 19 From these words in Alex. to Ps. 79. 11, thirty psalms are wanting.
- 4 v. 23 Gr. there.
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.