Genesis 3:8, "The Fall of Man"
Genesis 21:7, "The Birth of Isaac"
Genesis 35:18, "The Deaths of Rachel and Isaac"
Genesis 42-45, "Joseph's Brothers Go to Egypt"
Genesis 50:22-26, "The Death of Joseph"
Exodus 17:6, "Water From the Rock"
Exodus 3:8-17, "Moses and the Burning Bush"
Numbers 20:11, "Water From the Rock"
Psalm 8:2
Psalm 23:4
Psalm 51:2
Solomon's Song of Songs 8:8
Matthew 2:16, "The Escape to Egypt"
Matthew 8:28-32, "The Healing of Two Demon-possessed Men"
Matthew 10:16-31, "Jesus Sends Out the Twelve"
Matthew 21:16, "Jesus at the Temple"
Matthew 27:39-44, "The Crucifixion"
Mark 2:9, "Jesus Heals a Paralytic"
Luke 8:26-34, "The Healing of a Demon-possessed Man"
Luke 16:24-25, "The Rich Man and Lazarus"
John 1:1-4, "The Word Became Flesh"
John 11:25-26, "Jesus Comforts the Sisters"
John 19:34, "The Death of Jesus"
Romans 5:8, "Peace and Joy"
I Corinthians 15:22, "The Resurrection of the Dead"
Revelation 7:14, "The Great Multitude in White Robes"
Revelation 20:13, "The Dead Are Judged"
Revelation 22:13, "Jesus is Coming"

⁸Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

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⁶Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me." ⁷And she added, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."

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¹⁶Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. ¹⁷And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, "Don't be afraid, for you have another son." ¹⁸As she breathed her last - for she was dying - she named her son Ben-Oni ["son of my trouble"]. But his father named him Benjamin ["son of my right hand"].

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Synopsis: Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy food for his starving people. There, they encounter their brother Joseph, who was sold into Egypt as a child. They do not recognize him. Joseph accuses them of being spies and they promise that if they return they will bring their youngest brother, Benjamin, to see Jacob. They buy food and leave, only to find that the silver they paid Joseph's steward is back in their sacks. At home, Jacob tells them to return the silver and buy more food and, after some argument, reluctantly agrees to send Benjamin with his brothers. Once in Egypt, the brothers explain to Joseph that they do not know why the silver was in their possession. Joseph forgives them but before they leave, he instructs his steward to place silver in their sacks, along with a silver cup in Benjamin's sack. He then sends a servant to accuse the departing brothers of stealing silver and that the theif of the silver cup will be blamed. The cup is discovered in Benjamin's sack. At their next audience before Joseph, their brother Judah pleads that Benjamin be released in order to prevent Jacob from dying in anguish at the loss of his son. Joseph requents a private audience and weeps, disclosing his identity and asking about his father's health.

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²²Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father's family. He lived a hundred and ten years ²³and saw the third generation of Ephraim's children. Also the children of Makir son of Manasseh were placed at birth on Joseph's knees.
     ²⁴Then Joseph said to his brothers, "I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." ²⁵And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath and said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place."
     ²⁶So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

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³But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?"
     ⁴Then Moses cried out to the LORD, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me."
     ⁵The LORD answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink." So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.

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⁷The LORD said [to Moses], "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. ⁸So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey - the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ⁹And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. . . . ¹⁶Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. ¹⁷And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites - a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

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⁹So Moses took the staff from the LORD's presence, just as he commanded him. ¹⁰He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" ¹¹Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and thier livestock drank.

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¹O LORD, our Lord,
      how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 You have set your glory
      above the heavens.
²From the lips of children and infants
      you have ordained praise
  because of your enemies,
      to silence the foe and the avenger.

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¹The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.
²    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
³   he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
    for his name's sake.
⁴Even though I walk 
    through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me; 
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

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¹Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
²Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

 

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⁸We have a young sister,
    and her breasts are not yet grown.
What shall we do for our sister
    for the day she is spoken for?

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     ¹⁶When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vincinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

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²⁸When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming form the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. ²⁹"What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?"
     ³⁰Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. ³¹The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs."
      ³²He said to them, "Go!" So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.

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[Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with the following instructions:] ¹⁶"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. . . . ²⁶So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be discolosed, or hidden that will not be made known. ²⁷What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops. ²⁸Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. ³⁰And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹So don't be afriad; you are worth more than many sparrows."

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¹⁶"Do you hear what these children are saying?" they asked him.
"Yes," replied Jesus, "have you never read,

"'From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise'?"

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³⁹Those who passed by hurled insults at [Jesus on the cross], shaking their heads ⁴⁰and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"
     ⁴¹In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. ⁴²"He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. ⁴³He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" ⁴⁴In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

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⁹Which is easier: to say to a paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? ¹⁰But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ." [Jesus] said to the paralytic, ¹¹"I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." ¹²He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all.

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²⁶They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. ²⁷When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. ²⁸When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don't torture me!" ²⁹For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places. 
     ³⁰Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"
     "Legion," he replied, because many demons had gone into him. ³¹"And they begged him repreatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
     ³²A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into them, and he gave them permission. ³³When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
     ³⁴When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, ³⁵and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, the found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mid; and they were afraid. ³⁶Those who had seen it told the poeple how the domon-possessed man had been cured.

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¹⁹"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. 
²²"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
     ³⁵"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. ²⁶And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from her to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning.
     ³Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

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²⁵Jesus said to [Martha], "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; ²⁶and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

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³¹Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. ³²The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. ³³But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. ³⁴Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. ³⁵The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. ³⁶These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken," ³⁷and, as another Scripture says, "They will look on the one they have pierced."

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⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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²²For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

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     ¹³Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes - who are they, and where did they come from?"
     ¹⁴I answered, "Sir, you know."
     And he said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

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¹³The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. ¹⁴Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. ¹⁵If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

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¹²"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. ¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

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Introduction to the canticle
The canticle's context in The Sound and the Fury

O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing! 

Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures, and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he and shines with a very great spendor: O Lord, he signifies to us thee! 

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 

Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and cloud, calms and all weather by the which thou upholdest life in all creatures. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean. 

Praised by my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong. 

Praised by my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colors, and grass. 

Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for his love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, for thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a crown. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin! Blessed are they who are found walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall have no power to do them harm. *

Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto him and serve him with great humility. 
 

NOTES 

1. [Introduction] "Blind, weak, and in great pain, Saint Francis passed seven weeks in the summer of 1225 at San Damiano, where Saint Clare had lovingly prepared for him a little hut of rush matting in the garden, in the hope that rest and quiet would assist his recovery. Despite great suffering he never lost his serenity and joy, and receiving one night an assurance of future blessedness, he composed this canticle of praise in his native Italian, and taught the brethren to sing it to the people when they preached. Not long afterwards the Bishop and Mayor of Assisi had a serious dispute, and the Saint composed the stanza 'Praise to Thee, my Lord, for those who pardon one another,' and sent some friars to sing it before them to effect a reconciliation. Two years later, at the approach of death, he called on Brother Leo and Brother Angelo to sing the Canticle to him, and added the stanza, 'Praised be my Lord for our Sister Death.' 
      It should perhaps be mentioned that the Italian per can mean both for and by, which makes it uncertain whether Francis is praising God for His creatures, or asking that God may be praised by His creatures, as in the Benedicite. The general sense, especially those of the last stanzas, seems to favour the first meaning." (Sherley-Price, Leo. St. Francis of Assisi. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.) 

2. Context of St. Francis' Canticle in The Sound and the Fury: The "Sister Death" stanza (shown above in red), which Assisi wrote for the "Canticle" while on his deathbed, provides several symbols and themes that are bastions of Quentin's fatalism in Faulkner's novel. Quentin makes the image of his sister Caddy into that of Death: he associates her with his own suicide, especially in his account of his blundering, naive, and sexually-charged attempt at killing her and then turning the knife on himself. Ironically, if Caddy is "the death of the body," it is not her body that will die, for she remains a symbol of fertility in the otherwise sterile Compson family. It is her sexuality, and Quentin's envy of it, that prompts him to invent the lie of their incest, which is the great but imaginary sin that Quentin's death will atone for, in his own quest for matyrdom. He finds sympathy for his pain in the canticle, which cries: "Woe to him that dieth in mortal sin!" And, paradoxically, he believes his suffering will be erased by truthfulness to his father about his invented incest. Thus, the "second death," the Judgment of Revelation 20:13, cannot harm him and neither can his suicide. He is damned to woe but raised to blessedness. Furthermore, he recalls (or imagines) his father's comment - "You will not even be dead . . . . You cannot bear to think that someday it will no longer hurt you like this" - a comment that criticizes Quentin's conflicting aspirations for both martyrdom and the perpetuation of his pain, by which he defines himself - and that turns his weak-willed suicidal tendencies into a nihilism that enables him to drop into the river. [Context contributed by Joel Deshaye, 1999.]

*. Laudato si, mi signore, per sora nostra morte corporale, de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare: guai a quilli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali; beati quilli ke se trovarà ne le tue sanctissime voluntati, ka la morte secunda no farrà male.

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