Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Call to Praise the Lord

98 Sing a new song to the Lord. For He has done great things. His right hand and His holy arm have won the fight for Him. ² The Lord has made His saving power known. He has shown to the nations how right and good He is. ³ He has shown His loving-kindness and how beautiful He is to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of our God.

⁴ Call out for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Sing out loud songs of joy and sing praises. ⁵ Sing praises to the Lord with harps, with harps and the voice of singing. ⁶ Call out for joy with the sound of horns before the King, the Lord.

⁷ Let the sea and all that is in it make a loud noise, and the world and all who live in it. ⁸ Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the mountains sing together for joy ⁹ before the Lord. For He is coming to say who is guilty or not on the earth. He will be right in what He decides about the world. And He will be fair to the people.

The Gibeonites Kill Seven of Saul’s Grandsons

21 While David was king there was a time without food for three years. David went to the Lord. The Lord said, “It is because of Saul and his house of blood, for he put the Gibeonites to death.” ² So the king called the Gibeonites. (Now the Gibeonites were not of the sons of Israel, but of the people who were left of the Amorites. The sons of Israel had made an agreement with them. But Saul had wanted to kill them because he thought so much of the sons of Israel and Judah.) ³ David said to the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? How can I pay for the sin, so you may bring good to the land of the Lord?” ⁴ The Gibeonites said to him, “We will take no silver or gold from Saul or his family. And it is not for us to put any man to death in Israel.” David said, “I will do for you whatever you say.” ⁵ So they said to the king, “Saul destroyed us and planned to keep us from staying in any land of Israel. ⁶ Let seven men from his sons be given to us. We will hang them before the Lord at Gibeon on the Lord’s mountain.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

⁷ But the king kept alive Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because David had made a promise to Saul’s son Jonathan before the Lord. ⁸ The king took the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, Armoni and Mephibosheth, whom she had born to Saul. And he took the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab, whom she had born to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite. ⁹ He gave them to the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord. The seven of them died together. They were put to death in the first days of gathering time, when the barley was ready to gather.

¹⁰ Aiah’s daughter Rizpah spread cloth made from hair on the rock for herself to lie upon, from the beginning of gathering time until the rain fell from the sky upon the bodies. She would not let the birds of the sky rest on them during the day, or the animals of the field during the night. ¹¹ David was told what Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, Saul’s woman, had done. ¹² Then he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead. They had stolen them from the open space in the center of Bethshan. That was where the Philistines had hanged them on the day they killed Saul in Gilboa. ¹³ David brought the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan. They gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. ¹⁴ And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the country of Benjamin in Zela, in the grave of Kish his father. They did all that the king told them to do. After that, God heard and answered when they prayed for the land.

³ We must give thanks to God for you always, Christian brothers. It is the right thing to do because your faith is growing so much. Your love for each other is stronger all the time. ⁴ We are proud of you and tell the other churches about you. We tell them how your faith stays so strong even when people make it hard for you and make you suffer. ⁵ God wants you to prove yourselves to be worth being in His holy nation by suffering for Him. ⁶ He does what is right and will allow trouble to come to those who are making it hard for you. ⁷ He will help you and us who are suffering. This will happen when the Lord Jesus comes down from heaven with His powerful angels in a bright fire. ⁸ He will punish those who do not know God and those who do not obey the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ They will be punished forever and taken away from the Lord and from the shining-greatness of His power. ¹⁰ On the day He comes, His shining-greatness will be seen in those who belong to Him. On that day, He will receive honor from all those who put their trust in Him. You believed what we had to say to you. ¹¹ For this reason, we always pray for you. We pray that our God will make you worth being chosen. We pray that His power will help you do the good things you want to do. We pray that your work of faith will be complete. ¹² In this way, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be honored by you and you will be honored by Him. It is through the loving-favor of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.