1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

2. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

3. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.

4. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

5. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.

6. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

7. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.

8. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.

9. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.

10. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.

11. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.

12. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

13. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

14. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

15. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.

16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.

17. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.

18. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord:

19. Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

20. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.

21. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

22. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

23. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

24. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

25. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

41 more verses…

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.