Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A Prayer for Safety
A maskil of David when he was in the cave. A prayer.
142 I cry out to the Lord;
I pray to the Lord for mercy.
2 I pour out my problems to him;
I tell him my troubles.
3 When I am afraid,
you, Lord, know the way out.
In the path where I walk,
a trap is hidden for me.
4 Look around me and see.
No one cares about me.
I have no place of safety;
no one cares if I live.
5 Lord, I cry out to you.
I say, “You are my protection.
You are all I want in this life.”
6 Listen to my cry,
because I am helpless.
Save me from those who are chasing me,
because they are too strong for me.
7 Free me from my prison,
and then I will praise your name.
Then good people will surround me,
because you have taken care of me.
Israel Needs to Repent
5 Listen to this funeral song that I sing about you, people of Israel.
2 “The young girl Israel has fallen,
and she will not rise up again.
She was left alone in her own land,
and there is no one to help her up.”
3 This is what the Lord God says:
“If a thousand soldiers leave a city,
only a hundred will return;
if a hundred soldiers leave a city,
only ten will return.”
4 This is what the Lord says to the nation of Israel:
“Come to me and live.
5 But do not look in Bethel
or go to Gilgal,
and do not go down to Beersheba.
The people of Gilgal will be taken away as captives,
and Bethel will become nothing.”
6 Come to the Lord and live,
or he will move like fire against the descendants of Joseph.
The fire will burn Bethel,
and there will be no one to put it out.
7 You turn justice upside down,
and you throw on the ground what is right.
8 God is the one who made the star groups Pleiades and Orion;
he changes darkness into the morning light,
and the day into dark night.
He calls for the waters of the sea
to pour out on the earth.
The Lord is his name.
9 He destroys the protected city;
he ruins the strong, walled city.
27 When the seven days were almost over, some of his people from Asia saw Paul at the Temple. They caused all the people to be upset and grabbed Paul. 28 They shouted, “People of Israel, help us! This is the man who goes everywhere teaching against the law of Moses, against our people, and against this Temple. Now he has brought some Greeks into the Temple and has made this holy place unclean!” 29 (They said this because they had seen Trophimus, a man from Ephesus, with Paul in Jerusalem. They thought that Paul had brought him into the Temple.)
30 All the people in Jerusalem became upset. Together they ran, took Paul, and dragged him out of the Temple. The Temple doors were closed immediately. 31 While they were trying to kill Paul, the commander of the Roman army in Jerusalem learned that there was trouble in the whole city. 32 Immediately he took some officers and soldiers and ran to the place where the crowd was gathered. When the people saw them, they stopped beating Paul. 33 The commander went to Paul and arrested him. He told his soldiers to tie Paul with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done wrong. 34 Some in the crowd were yelling one thing, and some were yelling another. Because of all this confusion and shouting, the commander could not learn what had happened. So he ordered the soldiers to take Paul to the army building. 35 When Paul came to the steps, the soldiers had to carry him because the people were ready to hurt him. 36 The whole mob was following them, shouting, “Kill him!”
37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the army building, he spoke to the commander, “May I say something to you?”
The commander said, “Do you speak Greek? 38 I thought you were the Egyptian who started some trouble against the government not long ago and led four thousand killers out to the desert.”
39 Paul said, “No, I am a Jew from Tarsus in the country of Cilicia. I am a citizen of that important city. Please, let me speak to the people.”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.