Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
David Praises the Lord for Rescuing Him.
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spoke the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord rescued him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And he said:
18 “I love You [fervently and devotedly], O Lord, my strength.”
2
The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and the One who rescues me;
My God, my rock and strength in whom I trust and take refuge;
My shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower—my stronghold.(A)
3
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;
And I am saved from my enemies.(B)
4
The cords of death surrounded me,
And the streams of ungodliness and torrents of destruction terrified me.
5
The cords of Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead) surrounded me;
The snares of death confronted me.
6
In my distress [when I seemed surrounded] I called upon the Lord
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice from His temple,
And my cry for help came before Him, into His very ears.
7
Then the earth shook and quaked,
The foundations of the mountains trembled;
They were shaken because He was indignant and angry.
8
Smoke went up from His nostrils,
And fire from His mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
9
He bowed the heavens also and came down;
And thick darkness was under His feet.
10
And He rode upon a cherub (storm) and flew;
And He sped on the wings of the wind.
11
He made darkness His hiding place (covering); His pavilion (canopy) around Him,
The darkness of the waters, the thick clouds of the skies.
12
Out of the brightness before Him passed His thick clouds,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
13
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High uttered His voice,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
14
He sent out His arrows and scattered them;
And He sent an abundance of lightning flashes and confused and routed them [in defeat].
15
Then the stream beds of the waters appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare
At Your rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.
16
He reached from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
17
He rescued me from my strong enemy,
And from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me.
18
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
But the Lord was my support.
19
He brought me out into a broad place;
He rescued me because He was pleased with me and delighted in me.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that same day all the fountains of the great deep [subterranean waters] burst open, and the windows and floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 It rained on the earth for forty days and forty nights.
13 On the very same day Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark, 14 they and every animal according to its kind, all the livestock according to their kinds, every moving thing that crawls on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged thing of every sort. 15 So they went into the ark with Noah, two by two of all living beings in which there was the breath and spirit of life. 16 Those which entered, male and female of all flesh (creatures), entered as God had commanded Noah; and the Lord closed the door behind him.
17 The flood [the great downpour of rain] was forty days and nights on the earth; and the waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it floated [high] above the land. 18 The waters became mighty and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters. 19 The waters prevailed so greatly and were so mighty and overwhelming on the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. 20 [In fact] the waters became [a]fifteen cubits higher [than the highest ground], and the mountains were covered. 21 All living beings that moved on the earth perished—birds and cattle (domestic animals), [wild] animals, all things that swarm and crawl on the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath and spirit of life, died. 23 God destroyed (blotted out, wiped away) every living thing that was on the surface of the earth; man and animals and the crawling things and the birds of the heavens were destroyed from the land. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.(A) 24 The waters covered [all of] the earth for a hundred and fifty days (five months).
The Flood Abates
8 And God remembered and thought kindly of Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind blow over the land, and the waters receded. 2 Also the fountains of the deep [subterranean waters] and the windows of the heavens were closed, the [pouring] rain from the sky was restrained, 3 and the waters receded steadily from the earth. At the end of a hundred and fifty days the waters had diminished. 4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month [five months after the rain began], the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat [in [b]Turkey]. 5 The waters continued to decrease until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen.
4 [a]For if God did not [even] spare angels that sinned, but threw them into [b]hell and sent them to pits of gloom to be kept [there] for judgment; 5 and if He did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought [the judgment of] a flood upon the world of the ungodly;(A) 6 and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;(B) 7 and if He rescued righteous [c]Lot, who was tormented by the immoral conduct of unprincipled and ungodly men(C) 8 (for that just man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by what he saw and heard of their lawless acts), 9 then [in light of the fact that all this is true, be sure that] the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially [d]those who indulge in the corrupt passions of the sin nature, and despise authority.
Presumptuous and reckless, self-willed and arrogant [creatures, despising the majesty of the Lord], they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,
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