Holy King David the Builder

To “Let us sing…”

1. O Thou before whom every neck is bowed, every knee bendeth and every tongue proclaimeth Thy confession, look upon me also, O Word, who confess Thee!

2. Thou didst make me like unto Thine image and set me as a bond between the sensible and the intelligible, gathering in me also, as in Thee, the principles of all that is; but I was ungrateful to Thee.

3. Using my natural powers against the law, I fell away from the likeness and begot evil, and I gave my senses free rein in the tasting of visible things.

4. O Virgin, surety of the guilty, who didst clothe the Word in the thickness of flesh and of the earthly tent, strip from me the thickness of despair, that I may repent and flee to thee!

To “Be strengthened…”

1. With the natural purple of free will Thou didst entrust to me also the radiance of kingship; but I sold myself as a slave to foul passions, for “of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

2. The murderous mind of Cain, the lustfulness of the sons of Seth, the proud gait of the giants, the filth of the defilement of the five cities — all these I have multiplied many times over, like a river of wickedness running uphill.

3. The hardness of heart of Egypt, the customs of the Canaanites, sacrifices to things made with hands, spells and divinations, the plaiting of the hair and all the rest, which Thou didst command us not to resemble, I have acquired more shamelessly than their very originals.

4. For this the Virgin came to be and the Word took flesh: that by a Mother’s intercessions sinners might be saved, of whom the first, the middle and the last am I, like an abyss where the torrents of filth are gathered!

To “I have heard…”

1. I imitated the kings of Israel, but the lawless ones, and as far as I could I went astray in burning incense on the high places, in mingling with the heathen, and in worshipping the powers of heaven.

2. The Assyrian sorcery of the motions on high, the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets and the fixed stars, fortune, fate and the day of birth — as one deaf to divine things I rushed after them.

3. The Hellenes’ failure to know God through the wisdom of God, and the turning of worship from the Creator to the creature, I brought to completion when I served every idol of passion.

4. For this He who is above all gods acted as God and man, that as man He might know our passions and as God deliver from guilt those who proclaim the Virgin Mother as Theotokos!

To “From the night…”

1. I trampled underfoot the written laws, and the new law with the natural, and the law of the mind, the witness to Thy law, I made a slave to the law of sin and of the flesh.

2. I have become like a beast compounded of every beast, many-kinded and many-shaped, appearing now in one form and now in another, and doing harm after the nature of each.

3. I did not tremble at the flying sickle, which with the zeal of death cutteth down those who, like me, swear falsely again and again by Thy dreadful name.

4. For this, from a virgin’s blood, came the flesh of God and a new union, God and man: that the Mother might intercede for those made hopeless by despair, as I am!

To “He cried…”

1. Insatiable, like Solomon’s horse-leech, I seek to seize other ends of the world, and I find fault with the bounds God set, as too small and mean for my prodigality and lust.

2. Wickedly I overstepped the bounds, joining house to house and field to field; I snatched from the weaker their portion and strove to have no neighbour, as though I alone dwelt upon the earth.

3. I set myself against every ordinance of Thy law; through marriages with foreigners I did violence to my bed, and by setting evil examples I made my people sin, as Israel was made to sin by its kings.

4. For this the Virgin Mother and the new birth of the Word: that He might give a second, new fashioning of the image to those corrupted by sin, melting down all the matter of transgression in the furnace of a Mother’s intercessions!

To “Blessed art Thou…”

1. I treasured up silver as dust and gold as the mire of the streets; I bowed down to the mammon of avarice, as those of old to Baal and Astarte and the abominable Chemosh.

2. I hated the holy word and him that reproveth in the gate, but I made my own the brotherly treachery of flatterers; the counsels of slanderers were sweet to me, and I gave false judgements.

3. I had no pity on the tears of widows and the broken weeping of orphans; I did not relieve the hunger of the needy — nay, rather of Thee, O Christ, who art fed when the least of them is fed.

4. For this God was born of a human woman: that the Virgin, as the Mother of God, might loose the error of earth-born men and intercede for sinners!

To “Bless…”

1. These sins I have committed against the laws of the Gospel and Thy commandments, which bid us turn the cheek and strip ourselves for the poor; Thou commandest, O my Lawgiver, that we swear not at all, and Thou countest the look of lust as adultery accomplished.

2. Though I thus corrupted all my senses and became wholly corruption, yet I did not lift up my hands nor set my hope on a strange god, nor did I make any foreign faith the teacher of my soul, apart from that which Thy theologians taught me!

3. And now, bowing the knees of my heart, I cry like another Manasseh: Spare me, O Master, spare me, and destroy me not in my sins; remember not my evils, and condemn me not to the lower parts of the earth, for Thou art the God of those who repent, exalted on high by the powers of heaven!

4. We proclaim thee Theotokos in truth, O incorrupt Virgin, and we believe, as the theologians teach, that the honour paid to thine icon passeth to thee, and through it thou signifiest the conversion of sinners, as she maketh plain who was a spectacle to both worlds, the beauty of Egypt, the venerable Mary!

To “Magnify…”

1. When the hour of the faint and dry last breaths is come, when the awe of kingship passeth and glory drieth up, when delights fall idle and the bloom withereth, when another taketh the sceptre and the armies follow another — then have mercy on me, O my Judge!

2. When the book is opened on the day of judgement and I stand before Thee with bowed neck to be judged, when the Judge judgeth rightly, the ministers breathe wrath, the righteous are blessed and the fire scourgeth sinners — then have mercy on me, O my Jesus!

3. Since through confession bone began to feel and to come together, bone to bone and joint to joint, and Thou didst breathe again the spirit of birth into the dried bones, I believe that God will accomplish in me the fullness of the resurrection through complete repentance!

4. O Thou who art simple and perfect, three-sunned and of one dawn, enlighten the eye of my soul, that I may behold Thee, the Light, in the light of the Lord, by the Spirit of God, and that Thou mayest shine upon us then in the unending ages!

5. The sun hath never seen a virgin mother but thee, nor its light one so guilty as I; yet through thine intercession, O Queen, I hope to behold the light of thy Son and the light beyond the ages!