Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁹⁷ Oh, how love I Your law! It is my meditation all the day.^(A)

⁹⁸ You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies, for [Your words] are ever before me.

⁹⁹ I have better understanding and deeper insight than all my teachers, because Your testimonies are my meditation.^(B)

¹⁰⁰ I understand more than the aged, because I keep Your precepts [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them].

¹⁰¹ I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep Your word [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying it].^(C)

¹⁰² I have not turned aside from Your ordinances, for You Yourself have taught me.

¹⁰³ How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!^(D)

¹⁰⁴ Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.

9 Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn out and set up her seven [perfect number of] pillars.

² She has killed her beasts, she has mixed her [spiritual] wine; she has also set her table.^(A)

³ She has sent out her maids to cry from the highest places of the town:

⁴ Whoever is simple (easily led astray and wavering), let him turn in here! As for him who lacks understanding, [God’s] Wisdom says to him,

⁵ Come, eat of my bread and drink of the [spiritual] wine which I have mixed.^(B)

⁶ Leave off, simple ones [forsake the foolish and simpleminded] and live! And walk in the way of insight and understanding.

⁷ He who rebukes a scorner heaps upon himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man gets for himself bruises.

⁸ Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you.^(C)

⁹ Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser; teach a righteous man (one upright and in right standing with God) and he will increase in learning.

¹⁰ The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord is the beginning (the chief and choice part) of Wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight and understanding.

¹¹ For by me [Wisdom from God] your days shall be multiplied, and the years of your life shall be increased.

¹² If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scorn, you alone will bear it and pay the penalty.

¹³ The foolish woman is noisy; she is simple and open to all forms of evil, she [willfully and recklessly] knows nothing whatever [of eternal value].

¹⁴ For she sits at the door of her house or on a seat in the conspicuous places of the town,

¹⁵ Calling to those who pass by, who go uprightly on their way:

¹⁶ Whoever is simple (wavering and easily led astray), let him turn in here! And as for him who lacks understanding, she says to him,

¹⁷ Stolen waters (pleasures) are sweet [because they are forbidden]; and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.^(D)

¹⁸ But he knows not that the shades of the dead are there [specters haunting the scene of past transgressions], and that her invited guests are [already sunk] in the depths of Sheol (the lower world, Hades, the place of the dead).

2 My little children, I write you these things so that you may not violate God’s law and sin. But if anyone should sin, we have an Advocate (One Who will intercede for us) with the Father—[it is] Jesus Christ [the all] righteous [upright, just, Who conforms to the Father’s will in every purpose, thought, and action].

² And He [^[a]that same Jesus Himself] is the propitiation (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins, and not for ours alone but also for [the sins of] the whole world.

³ And this is how we may discern [^[b]daily, by experience] that we are coming to know Him [to perceive, recognize, understand, and become better acquainted with Him]: if we keep (bear in mind, observe, practice) His teachings (precepts, commandments).

⁴ Whoever says, I know Him [I perceive, recognize, understand, and am acquainted with Him] but fails to keep and obey His commandments (teachings) is a liar, and the Truth [^[c]of the Gospel] is not in him.

⁵ But he who keeps (treasures) His Word [who bears in mind His precepts, who observes His message in its entirety], truly in him has the love of and for God been perfected (completed, reached maturity). By this we may perceive (know, recognize, and be sure) that we are in Him:

⁶ Whoever says he abides in Him ought [as ^[d]a personal debt] to walk and conduct himself in the same way in which He walked and conducted Himself.