Judaism
Psalms 146
Text
Hallelujah. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
I will praise the LORD while I live; I will sing praises unto my God while I have my being.
Put not your trust in princes, Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his dust; In that very day his thoughts perish.
Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose hope is in the LORD his God,
Who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that in them is; Who keepeth truth for ever;
Who executeth justice for the oppressed; Who giveth bread to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners;
The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind; The LORD raiseth up them that are bowed down; The LORD loveth the righteous;
The LORD preserveth the strangers; He upholdeth the fatherless and the widow; But the way of the wicked He maketh crooked.
The LORD will reign for ever, Thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Hallelujah.
Text: The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society (1917), public domain, via Sefaria.
✦ Connected Across Traditions
The Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
Hadith (An-Nawawi 13)
“None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
Mahabharata 5.1517
“One should never do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself.”
Dhammapada 129 (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato)
“All tremble at the rod, all fear death. Treating others like oneself, neither kill nor incite to kill.”
Impermanence & Letting Go
Dhammapada 20:277 (trans. F. Max Müller)
“‘All created things perish,’ he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way to purity.”
Tao Te Ching 76 (trans. James Legge)
“Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, dry and withered.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2 (trans. Edwin Arnold)
“Nay, but as when one layeth His worn-out robes away, And taking new ones, sayeth, "These will I wear to-day!" So putteth by the spirit Lightly its garb of flesh, And passeth to inherit A residence afresh.”