Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A Petition to Be Saved from Death.
A Song. A Psalm of the sons of Korah. To the Chief Musician; set to chant mournfully. A didactic or reflective poem of Heman the Ezrahite.
88 O Lord, the God of my salvation,
I have cried out [for help] by day and in the night before You.(A)
2
Let my prayer come before You and enter into Your presence;
Incline Your ear to my cry!
3
For my soul is full of troubles,
And my life draws near the grave (Sheol, the place of the dead).
4
I am counted among those who go down to the pit (grave);
I am like a man who has no strength [a mere shadow],
5
[a]Cast away [from the living] and abandoned among the dead,
Like the slain who lie in a [nameless] grave,
Whom You no longer remember,
And they are cut off from Your hand.
6
You have laid me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the depths.
7
Your wrath has rested heavily upon me,
And You have afflicted me with all Your waves.(B) Selah.
8
You have put my friends far from me;
You have made me an [b]object of loathing to them.
I am shut up and I cannot go out.
9
My eye grows dim with sorrow.
O Lord, I have called on You every day;
I have spread out my hands to You [in prayer].
10
Will You perform wonders for the dead?
Shall the departed spirits arise and praise You? Selah.
11
Will Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave
Or Your faithfulness in Abaddon (the underworld)?
12
Will Your wonders be known in the darkness?
And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness [where the dead forget and are forgotten]?
13
But I have cried out to You, O Lord, for help;
And in the morning my prayer will come to You.
14
O Lord, why do You reject me?
Why do You hide Your face from me?(C)
15
I was afflicted and close to death from my youth on;
I suffer Your terrors; I am overcome.
16
Your fierce wrath has swept over me;
Your terrors have destroyed me.
17
They have surrounded me like flood waters all day long;
They have completely encompassed me.
18
Lover and friend You have placed far from me;
My familiar friends are in darkness.
19 ‘When a woman has a discharge, if her bodily discharge is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. 20 Everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. 21 Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. 22 Whoever touches anything on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. 23 And if it is on her bed or on the thing on which she is sitting, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. 24 If a man actually lies with her so that her menstrual impurity is on him, he shall be unclean for seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.
25 ‘Now if a woman has a flow of blood for many days, not during the time of her menstruation, or if she has a discharge beyond that period, as long as the impure discharge continues she shall be as she is in the days of her [normal] menstrual impurity; she is unclean.(A) 26 Every bed on which she lies during the time of her discharge shall be to her like the bed of her menstrual impurity, and whatever she sits on shall be unclean, like the uncleanness of her monthly period. 27 And whoever touches those things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. 28 When she is cleansed from her discharge, then she shall count off for herself seven days, and after that she will be clean. 29 Then on the eighth day she shall take for herself two turtledoves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the doorway of the Tent of Meeting; 30 and the priest shall offer one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering; and he shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge.’
31 “Thus you shall [a]separate the Israelites from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by their defiling My tabernacle that is among them.”
God Gives Most
9 Now it is unnecessary for me to write to you about the offering [that is to be made] for the saints [in Jerusalem]; 2 for I know your eagerness [to promote this cause], and I have [proudly] boasted to the people of Macedonia about it, telling them that [a]Achaia has been prepared since last year [for this contribution], and your enthusiasm has inspired the majority of them [to respond]. 3 Still, I am sending the brothers [on to you], so that our pride in you may not be an empty boast in this case, and so that you may be prepared, just as I told them you would be; 4 otherwise, if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we—to say nothing of yourselves—will be humiliated for being so confident. 5 That is why I thought it necessary to urge these brothers to go to you [before I come] and make arrangements in advance for this generous, previously promised gift of yours, so that it would be ready, not as something extorted [or wrung out of you], but as a [voluntary and] generous gift.
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