Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
10 I said: In the prime[a] of my life(A)
I must go to the gates of Sheol;(B)
I am deprived of the rest of my years.
11 I said: I will never see the Lord,
the Lord in the land of the living;(C)
I will not look on humanity any longer
with the inhabitants of what is passing away.[b]
12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me
like a shepherd’s tent.(D)
I have rolled up my life like a weaver;(E)
he cuts me off from the loom.(F)
By nightfall[c] you make an end of me.(G)
13 I thought until the morning:
He will break all my bones like a lion.
By nightfall you make an end of me.
14 I chirp like a swallow or a crane;
I moan like a dove.(H)
My eyes grow weak looking upward.
Lord, I am oppressed; support me.(I)
15 What can I say?
He has spoken to me,
and he himself has done it.
I walk along slowly all my years(J)
because of the bitterness of my soul.(K)
16 Lord, by such things people live,(L)
and in every one of them my spirit finds life;
you have restored me to health(M)
and let me live.(N)
17 Indeed, it was for my own well-being
that I had such intense bitterness;(O)
but your love has delivered me
from the Pit of destruction,(P)
for you have thrown all my sins behind your back.(Q)
18 For Sheol cannot thank you;
Death cannot praise you.(R)
Those who go down to the Pit
cannot hope for your faithfulness.
19 The living, only the living can thank you,
as I do today;
a father will make your faithfulness known to children.(S)
20 The Lord is ready to save me;
we will play stringed instruments
all the days of our lives
at the house of the Lord.(T)
9 The Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and raided Lehi. 10 So the men of Judah said, “Why have you attacked us?”
They replied, “We have come to tie Samson up and pay him back for what he did to us.”
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines rule us?(A) What have you done to us?”
“I have done to them what they did to me,” he answered.[a]
12 They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”
13 “No,” they said,[b] “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes(B) and led him away from the rock.
14 When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off. 15 He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said:
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have piled them in heaps.
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have killed a thousand men.
17 When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Jawbone Hill.[c] 18 He became very thirsty and called out to the Lord, “You have accomplished this great victory through your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his strength returned, and he revived.(C) That is why he named it Hakkore Spring,[d] which is still in Lehi today. 20 And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
The Power of Jesus over a Demon
14 When they reached the crowd,(A) a man approached and knelt down before him. 15 “Lord,” he said, “have mercy on my son, because he has seizures[a] and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”(B)
17 Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.”(C) 18 Then Jesus rebuked the demon,[b] and it[c] came out of him,(D) and from that moment[d] the boy was healed.
19 Then the disciples approached Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
20 “Because of your little faith,” he[e] told them. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of [f] a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.(E) Nothing will be impossible for you.”[g](F)
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