Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁹⁷ MEM. Oh how I love thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

⁹⁸ Thy commandments make me wiser than mine enemies; for they are ever with me.

⁹⁹ I have more understanding than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation.

¹⁰⁰ I understand more than the aged, because I have observed thy precepts.

¹⁰¹ I have refrained my feet from every evil path, that I might keep thy word.

¹⁰² I have not departed from thy judgments; for it is thou that hast taught me.

¹⁰³ How sweet are thy words unto my taste! more than honey to my mouth!

¹⁰⁴ From thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false path.

9 And on the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackclothes, and earth upon them.

² And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers.

³ And they stood up in their place, and read in the book of the law of Jehovah their God a fourth part of the day; and a fourth part they confessed, and worshipped Jehovah their God.

⁴ Then stood up upon the platform of the Levites, Jeshua, and Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, Chenani, and cried with a loud voice to Jehovah their God.

⁵ And the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hodijah, Shebaniah, Pethahiah, said, Stand up, bless Jehovah your God from eternity to eternity. And let [men] bless the name of thy glory, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

⁶ Thou art the Same, thou alone, Jehovah, who hast made the heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth and all that is therein, the seas and all that is therein. And thou quickenest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee.

⁷ Thou art the Same, Jehovah Elohim, who didst choose Abram and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham;

⁸ and foundest his heart faithful before thee, and madest the covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites, and the Girgashites,—to give it to his seed; and thou hast performed thy words, for thou art righteous.

⁹ And thou sawest the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red Sea;

¹⁰ and didst shew signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants, and upon all the people of his land; for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them, and thou didst make thee a name, as it is this day.

¹¹ And thou didst divide the sea before them, and they went through the midst of the sea on dry [ground]; and their pursuers thou threwest into the depths, as a stone into the mighty waters.

¹² And thou leddest them in the day by a pillar of cloud, and in the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way wherein they should go.

¹³ And thou camest down on mount Sinai, and didst speak with them from the heavens, and gavest them right judgments and true laws, good statutes and commandments.

¹⁴ And thou madest known unto them thy holy sabbath, and prescribedst for them commandments and statutes and a law, through Moses thy servant.

¹⁵ And thou gavest them bread from the heavens for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and didst say to them that they should go in to possess the land which thou hadst sworn to give them.

²¹ submitting yourselves to one another in [the] fear of Christ.

²² Wives, [submit yourselves] to your own husbands, as to the Lord,

²³ for a husband is head of the wife, as also the Christ [is] head of the assembly. *He* [is] Saviour of the body.

²⁴ But even as the assembly is subjected to the Christ, so also wives to their own husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your own wives, even as the Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it,

²⁶ in order that he might sanctify it, purifying [it] by the washing of water by [the] word,

²⁷ that *he* might present the assembly to himself glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless.

²⁸ So ought men also to love their own wives as their own bodies: he that loves his own wife loves himself.

²⁹ For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as also the Christ the assembly:

³⁰ for we are members of his body; [we are of his flesh, and of his bones.]

³¹ Because of this a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be united to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.

³² This mystery is great, but *I* speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly.

³³ But *ye* also, every one of you, let each so love his own wife as himself; but as to the wife [I speak] that she may fear the husband.

6 Children, obey your parents in [the] Lord, for this is just.

² Honour thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with a promise,

³ that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest be long-lived on the earth.

⁴ And [ye] fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in [the] discipline and admonition of [the] Lord.

⁵ Bondmen, obey masters according to flesh, with fear and trembling, in simplicity of your heart as to the Christ;

⁶ not with eye-service as men-pleasers; but as bondmen of Christ, doing the will of God from [the] soul,

⁷ serving with good will as to the Lord, and not to men;

⁸ knowing that whatever good each shall do, this he shall receive of [the] Lord, whether bond or free.

⁹ And, masters, do the same things towards them, giving up threatening, knowing that both their and your Master is in heaven, and there is no acceptance of persons with him.