Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
8 O Lord our God, the majesty and glory of your name fills all the earth and overflows the heavens. 2 You have taught the little children to praise you perfectly. May their example shame and silence your enemies!
3 When I look up into the night skies and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you have made— 4 I cannot understand how you can bother with mere puny man, to pay any attention to him!
5 And yet you have made him only a little lower than the angels[a] and placed a crown of glory and honor upon his head.
6 You have put him in charge of everything you made; everything is put under his authority: 7 all sheep and oxen, and wild animals too, 8 the birds and fish, and all the life in the sea. 9 O Jehovah, our Lord, the majesty and glory of your name fills the earth.
20 Now Abraham moved south to the Negeb and settled between Kadesh and Shur. One day, when visiting the city of Gerar, 2 he declared that Sarah was his sister! Then King Abimelech sent for her, and had her brought to him at his palace.
3 But that night God came to him in a dream and told him, “You are a dead man, for that woman you took is married.”
4 But Abimelech hadn’t slept with her yet, so he said, “Lord, will you slay an innocent man? 5 He told me, ‘She is my sister,’ and she herself said, ‘Yes, he is my brother.’ I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing anything wrong.”
6 “Yes, I know,” the Lord replied. “That is why I held you back from sinning against me; that is why I didn’t let you touch her. 7 Now restore her to her husband, and he will pray for you (for he is a prophet) and you shall live. But if you don’t return her to him, you are doomed to death along with all your household.”
8 The king was up early the next morning, and hastily called a meeting of all the palace personnel and told them what had happened. And great fear swept through the crowd.
9-10 Then the king called for Abraham. “What is this you’ve done to us?” he demanded. “What have I done that deserves treatment like this, to make me and my kingdom guilty of this great sin? Who would suspect that you would do a thing like this to me? Whatever made you think of this vile deed?”
11-12 “Well,” Abraham said, “I figured this to be a godless place. ‘They will want my wife and will kill me to get her,’ I thought. And besides, she is my sister—or at least a half sister (we both have the same father)—and I married her. 13 And when God sent me traveling far from my childhood home, I told her, ‘Have the kindness to mention, wherever we come, that you are my sister.’”
14 Then King Abimelech took sheep and oxen and servants—both men and women—and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him.
15 “Look my kingdom over, and choose the place where you want to live,” the king told him. 16 Then he turned to Sarah. “Look,” he said, “I am giving your ‘brother’ a thousand silver pieces as damages for what I did, to compensate for any embarrassment and to settle any claim against me regarding this matter. Now justice has been done.”
17 Then Abraham prayed, asking God to cure the king and queen and the other women of the household, so that they could have children; 18 for God had stricken all the women with barrenness to punish Abimelech for taking Abraham’s wife.
23 Until Christ came we were guarded by the law, kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could believe in the coming Savior.
24 Let me put it another way. The Jewish laws were our teacher and guide until Christ came to give us right standing with God through our faith. 25 But now that Christ has come, we don’t need those laws any longer to guard us and lead us to him. 26 For now we are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, 27 and we who have been baptized into union with Christ are enveloped by him. 28 We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free men or even merely men or women, but we are all the same—we are Christians; we are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And now that we are Christ’s we are the true descendants of Abraham, and all of God’s promises to him belong to us.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.