Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

²³ Attend unto my help, O Lord, the God of my salvation.

¹⁷ And Samuel called together the people to the Lord in Maspha:

¹⁸ And he said to the children of Israel: Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all the kings who afflicted you.

¹⁹ But you this day have rejected your God, who only hath saved you out of all your evils and your tribulations: and you have said: Nay: but set a king over us. Now therefore stand before the Lord by your tribes, and by your families.

²⁰ And Samuel brought to him all the tribes of Israel, and the lot fell on the tribe of Benjamin.

²¹ And he brought the tribe of Benjamin and the kindreds thereof, and the lot fell Upon the kindred of Metri, and it came to Saul the son of Cis. They sought him therefore and he was not found.

²² And after this they consulted the Lord whether he would come thither. And the Lord answered: Behold he is hidden at home.

²³ And they ran and fetched him thence: and he stood in the midst of the people, and he was higher than any of the people from the shoulders and upward.

²⁴ And Samuel said to all the people: Surely you see him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people. And all the people cried and said: God save the king.

²⁵ And Samuel told the people the law of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord: and Samuel sent away all the people, every one to his own house.

¹³ For God making promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom he might swear, swore by himself,

¹⁴ Saying: Unless blessing I shall bless thee, and multiplying I shall multiply thee.

¹⁵ And so patiently enduring he obtained the promise.

¹⁶ For men swear by one greater than themselves: and an oath for confirmation is the end of all their controversy.

¹⁷ Wherein God, meaning more abundantly to shew to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed an oath:

¹⁸ That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the strongest comfort, who have fled for refuge to hold fast the hope set before us.

¹⁹ Which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, and which entereth in even within the veil;

²⁰ Where the forerunner Jesus is entered for us, made a high priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech.