Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

57 Unto the end, destroy not, for David, for an inscription of a title.

² If in very deed you speak justice: judge right things, ye sons of men.

³ For in your heart you work iniquity: your hands forge injustice in the earth.

⁴ The wicked are alienated from the womb; they have gone astray from the womb: they have spoken false things.

⁵ Their madness is according to the likeness of a serpent: like the deaf asp that stoppeth her ears:

⁶ Which will not hear the voice of the charmers; nor of the wizard that charmeth wisely.

⁷ God shall break in pieces their teeth in their mouth: the Lord shall break the grinders of the lions.

⁸ They shall come to nothing, like water running down; he hath bent his bow till they be weakened.

⁹ Like wax that melteth they shall be taken away: fire hath fallen on them, and they shall not see the sun.

¹⁰ Before your thorns could know the brier; he swalloweth them up, as alive, in his wrath.

¹¹ The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge: he shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner.

¹² And man shall say: If indeed there be fruit to the just: there is indeed a God that judgeth them on the earth.

² Now there was a certain man in the wilderness of Maon, and his possessions were in Carmel, and the man was very great: and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and it happened that he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

³ Now the name of the man was Nabal: and the name of his wife was Abigail. And she was a prudent and very comely woman, but her husband was churlish, and very bad and ill natured: and he was of the house of Caleb.

⁴ And when David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep,

⁵ He sent ten young men, and said to them: Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and salute him in my name with peace.

⁶ And you shall say: Peace be to my brethren, and to thee, and peace to thy house, and peace to all that thou hast.

⁷ I heard that thy shepherds that were with us in the desert were shearing: we never molested them, neither was there ought missing to them of the flock at any time, all the while they were with us in Carmel.

⁸ Ask thy servants, and they will tell thee. Now therefore let thy servants find favour in thy eyes: for we are come in a good day, whatsoever thy hand shall find give to thy servants, and to thy son David.

⁹ And when David's servants came, they spoke to Nabal all these words in David's name: and then held their peace.

¹⁰ But Nabal answering the servants of David, said: Who is David? and what is the son of Isai? servants are multiplied now a days who flee from their masters.

¹¹ Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and the flesh of my cattle, which I have killed for my shearers, and give to men whom I know not whence they are?

¹² So the servants of David went back their way, and returning came and told him all the words that he said.

¹³ Then David said to his young men: Let every man gird on his sword. And they girded on every man his sword. And David also girded on his sword: and there followed David about four hundred men: and two hundred remained with the baggage.

¹⁴ But one of the servants told Abigail the wife of Nabal, saying: Behold David sent messengers out of the wilderness, to salute our master: and he rejected them.

¹⁵ These men were very good to us, and gave us no trouble: neither did we ever lose any thing all the time that we conversed with them in the desert.

¹⁶ They were a wall unto us both by night and day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep.

¹⁷ Wherefore consider, and think what thou hast to do: for evil is determined against thy husband, and against thy house, and he is a son of Belial, so that no man can speak to him.

¹⁸ Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves, and two vessels of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of dry figs, and laid them upon asses:

¹⁹ And she said to her servants: Go before me: behold I will follow after you: but she told not her husband Nabal.

²⁰ And when she had gotten upon an ass, and was coming down to the foot of the mountain, David and his men came down over against her, and she met them.

²¹ And David said: Truly in vain have I kept all that belonged to this man in the wilderness, and nothing was lost of all that pertained unto him: and he hath returned me evil for good.

²² May God do so and so, and add more to the foes of David, if I leave of all that belong to him till the morning, any that pisseth against the wall.

6 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to be judged before the unjust, and not before the saints?

² Know you not that the saints shall judge this world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

³ Know you not that we shall judge angels? how much more things of this world?

⁴ If therefore you have judgments of things pertaining to this world, set them to judge, who are the most despised in the church.

⁵ I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not among you any one wise man, that is able to judge between his brethren?

⁶ But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before unbelievers.

⁷ Already indeed there is plainly a fault among you, that you have lawsuits one with another. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?

⁸ But you do wrong and defraud, and that to your brethren.

⁹ Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,

¹⁰ Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.

¹¹ And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God.