Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹² ¶ Blessed is the people whose God is the LORD; the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.

¹³ The LORD looked from heaven; he saw all the sons of Adam.

¹⁴ From the place of his habitation he looked upon all the inhabitants of the earth.

¹⁵ He fashioned all of their hearts; he considers all their works.

¹⁶ The king is not saved by the multitude of the army; the mighty man does not escape by much strength.

¹⁷ A horse is a vain thing for salvation; neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.

¹⁸ Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those that fear him, upon those that wait for his mercy

¹⁹ to deliver their souls from death and to keep them alive in the famine.

²⁰ Our soul waited for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.

²¹ Therefore our heart shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in the name of his holiness.

²² Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we have waited upon thee.

6 ¶ There is another evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is very common among men:

² A man to whom God has given riches, wealth, and honour so that he lacks nothing for his soul of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to eat of it, but the strangers eat it; this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.

³ If a man begets a hundred sons and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, if his soul is not filled with good and also that he have no burial; I say that an aborted birth is better than he.

⁴ For he came in vain and departs unto darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness.

⁵ Even though he has not seen the sun nor known any thing; this one has more rest than the other.

⁶ For though the other should live a thousand years twice and has not enjoyed good; both shall surely go to the same place.

7 ¶ Then the prince of the priests said, Are these things so?

² And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,

³ and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and come into the land which I shall show thee.

⁴ Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans and dwelt in Haran; and from there, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, in which ye now dwell.

⁵ And he gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.

⁶ And God spoke thus, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into slavery and mistreat them four hundred years.

⁷ And the Gentiles unto whom they shall be in slavery I will judge, said God; and after that they shall come forth and serve me in this place.

⁸ And he gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham begat Isaac and circumcised him the eighth day, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.