Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Song of degrees of David.

¹ ¶ If the LORD had not been for us, now may Israel say,

² If the LORD had not been for us, when men rose up against us,

³ then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us;

⁴ then the waters would have overwhelmed us; the flood would have gone over our soul;

⁵ then the proud waters would have gone over our soul.

⁶ ¶ Blessed be the LORD, who did not give us as a prey to their teeth.

⁷ Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare has broken, and we are escaped.

⁸ Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made the heaven and the earth.

9 ¶ And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

² And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every animal of the earth and upon every fowl of the heavens, upon all that moves upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand they are delivered.

³ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; even as the green grass I have given you all things.

⁴ But flesh with the soul (or life) thereof, which is its blood, ye shall not eat.

⁵ For surely your blood which is your souls I will require; at the hand of every animal I will require it and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother I will require the soul (or life) of man.

⁶ Whoever sheds man’s blood in man, his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God is man made.

⁷ And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein.

⁸ ¶ And God spoke unto Noah and to his sons with him, saying,

⁹ Behold that I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you

¹⁰ and with every living soul that is with you, of the fowl, of the animals, and of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark to every animal of the earth,

¹¹ that I will establish my covenant with you, that all flesh shall not be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

¹² ¶ And God said, This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living soul that is with you, for perpetual ages:

¹³ I set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth.

¹⁴ And it shall come to pass when I bring clouds over the earth, that the bow shall appear in the clouds;

¹⁵ and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living soul of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

¹⁶ And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living soul of all flesh that is upon the earth.

¹⁷ And God said unto Noah, This shall be the sign of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

³² ¶ And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jephthae, of David also and Samuel and of the prophets,

³³ who by faith won kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

³⁴ quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, recovered from infirmities, were made valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of foreign enemies;

³⁵ women received their dead raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection;

³⁶ and others experienced cruel mockings and scourgings, and added to this, bonds and imprisonment;

³⁷ they were stoned; they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; poor, afflicted, mistreated,

³⁸ (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

³⁹ And these all, approved by testimony of faith, received not the promise,

⁴⁰ God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.