Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁰ “My life is but half done and I must leave it all. I am robbed of my normal years, and now I must enter the gates of Sheol. ¹¹ Never again will I see the Lord in the land of the living. Never again will I see my friends in this world. ¹² My life is blown away like a shepherd’s tent; it is cut short as when a weaver stops his working at the loom. In one short day my life hangs by a thread.

¹³ “All night I moaned; it was like being torn apart by lions. ¹⁴ Delirious, I chattered like a swallow and mourned like a dove; my eyes grew weary of looking up for help. ‘O God,’ I cried, ‘I am in trouble—help me.’ ¹⁵ But what can I say? For he himself has sent this sickness. All my sleep has fled because of my soul’s bitterness. ¹⁶ O Lord, your discipline is good and leads to life and health. Oh, heal me and make me live!

¹⁷ “Yes, now I see it all—it was good for me to undergo this bitterness, for you have lovingly delivered me from death; you have forgiven all my sins. ¹⁸ For dead men cannot praise you.^[a] They cannot be filled with hope and joy. ¹⁹ The living, only the living, can praise you as I do today. One generation makes known your faithfulness to the next. ²⁰ Think of it! The Lord healed me! Every day of my life from now on I will sing my songs of praise in the Temple, accompanied by the orchestra.”

8 Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Don’t be afraid or discouraged; take the entire army and go to Ai, for it is now yours to conquer. I have given the king of Ai and all of his people to you. ² You shall do to them as you did to Jericho and her king; but this time you may keep the loot and the cattle for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”

^3-4 Before the main army left for Ai, Joshua sent thirty thousand of his bravest troops to hide in ambush close behind the city, alert for action.

⁵ “This is the plan,” he explained to them. “When our main army attacks, the men of Ai will come out to fight as they did before, and we will run away. ⁶ We will let them chase us until they have all left the city; for they will say, ‘The Israelis are running away again just as they did before!’ ⁷ Then you will jump up from your ambush and enter the city, for the Lord will give it to you. ⁸ Set the city on fire, as the Lord has commanded. You now have your instructions.”

⁹ So they left that night and lay in ambush between Bethel and the west side of Ai; but Joshua and the rest of the army remained in the camp at Jericho. ¹⁰ Early the next morning Joshua roused his men and started toward Ai, accompanied by the elders of Israel, ^11-13 and stopped at the edge of a valley north of the city. That night Joshua sent another five thousand men^[a] to join the troops in ambush on the west side of the city. He himself spent the night in the valley.

¹⁴ The king of Ai, seeing the Israelis across the valley, went out early the next morning and attacked at the plain of the Arabah. But of course he didn’t realize that there was an ambush behind the city. ¹⁵ Joshua and the Israeli army fled across the wilderness as though badly beaten, ¹⁶ and all the soldiers in the city were called out to chase after them; so the city was left defenseless; ¹⁷ there was not a soldier left in Ai or Bethel, and the city gates were left wide open.

¹⁸ Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Point your spear toward Ai, for I will give you the city.” Joshua did. ¹⁹ And when the men in ambush saw his signal, they jumped up and poured into the city and set it on fire. ^20-21 When the men of Ai looked behind them, smoke from the city was filling the sky, and they had nowhere to go. When Joshua and the troops who were with him saw the smoke, they knew that their men who had been in ambush were inside the city, so they turned upon their pursuers and began killing them. ²² Then the Israelis who were inside the city came out and began destroying the enemy from the rear. So the men of Ai were caught in a trap and all of them died; not one man survived or escaped, ²³ except for the king of Ai, who was captured and brought to Joshua.

³ If you want to keep from becoming fainthearted and weary, think about his patience as sinful men did such terrible things to him. ⁴ After all, you have never yet struggled against sin and temptation until you sweat great drops of blood.

⁵ And have you quite forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you, his child? He said, “My son, don’t be angry when the Lord punishes you. Don’t be discouraged when he has to show you where you are wrong. ⁶ For when he punishes you, it proves that he loves you. When he whips you, it proves you are really his child.”

⁷ Let God train you, for he is doing what any loving father does for his children. Whoever heard of a son who was never corrected? ⁸ If God doesn’t punish you when you need it, as other fathers punish their sons, then it means that you aren’t really God’s son at all—that you don’t really belong in his family. ⁹ Since we respect our fathers here on earth, though they punish us, should we not all the more cheerfully submit to God’s training so that we can begin really to live?

¹⁰ Our earthly fathers trained us for a few brief years, doing the best for us that they knew how, but God’s correction is always right and for our best good, that we may share his holiness. ¹¹ Being punished isn’t enjoyable while it is happening—it hurts! But afterwards we can see the result, a quiet growth in grace and character.

¹² So take a new grip with your tired hands, stand firm on your shaky legs, ¹³ and mark out a straight, smooth path for your feet so that those who follow you, though weak and lame, will not fall and hurt themselves but become strong.