Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹² Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His heritage.

¹³ The Lord looks from heaven, He beholds all the sons of men;

¹⁴ From His dwelling place He looks [intently] upon all the inhabitants of the earth—

¹⁵ He Who fashions the hearts of them all, Who considers all their doings.

¹⁶ No king is saved by the great size and power of his army; a mighty man is not delivered by [his] much strength.

¹⁷ A horse is devoid of value for victory; neither does he deliver any by his great power.

¹⁸ Behold, the Lord’s eye is upon those who fear Him [who revere and worship Him with awe], who wait for Him and hope in His mercy and loving-kindness,

¹⁹ To deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.

²⁰ Our inner selves wait [earnestly] for the Lord; He is our Help and our Shield.

²¹ For in Him does our heart rejoice, because we have trusted (relied on and been confident) in His holy name.

²² Let Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, be upon us, in proportion to our waiting and hoping for You.

6 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavily upon men:

² A man to whom God has given riches, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing for his soul of all that he might desire, yet God does not give him the power or capacity to enjoy them [things which are gifts from God], but a stranger [in whom he has no interest succeeds him and] consumes and enjoys them. This is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility); it is a sore affliction!^(A)

³ If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his life is not filled with good, and also he is given no burial [honors nor is laid to rest in the sepulcher of his fathers], I say that [he who had] an untimely birth [resulting in death] is better off than he,^(B)

⁴ For [the untimely one] comes in futility and goes into darkness, and in darkness his name is covered.

⁵ Moreover, he has not seen the sun nor had any knowledge, yet he [the stillborn child] has rest rather than he [who is aware of all that he has missed and all that he would not have had to suffer].

⁶ Even though he lives a thousand years twice over and yet has seen no good and experienced no enjoyment—do not all go to one place [the place of the dead]?

7 And the high priest asked [Stephen], Are these charges true?

² And he answered, Brethren and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our forefather Abraham when he was still in Mesopotamia, before he [went to] live in Haran,^(A)

³ And He said to him, Leave your own country and your relatives and come into the land (region) that I will point out to you.^(B)

⁴ So then he went forth from the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. And from there, after his father died, [God] transferred him to this country in which you are now dwelling.^(C)

⁵ Yet He gave him no inheritable property in it, [no] not even enough ground to set his foot on; but He promised that He would give it to Him for a ^[a]permanent possession and to his descendants after him, even though [as yet] he had no child.^(D)

⁶ And this is [in effect] what God told him: That his descendants would be aliens (strangers) in a land belonging to other people, who would bring them into bondage and ill-treat them 400 years.

⁷ But I will judge the nation to whom they will be slaves, said God, and after that they will escape and come forth and worship Me in this [very] place.^(E)

⁸ And [God] made with Abraham a covenant (an agreement to be religiously observed) ^[b]of which circumcision was the seal. And under these circumstances [Abraham] became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac [did so] when he became the father of Jacob, and Jacob [when each of his sons was born], the twelve patriarchs.^(F)