Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹² Blessed is that nation whose God is the LORD, the people He has chosen for His inheritance.

¹³ The LORD looks down from Heaven, beholding all the children of men.

¹⁴ From the habitation of His dwelling he beholds all those who dwell on the Earth.

¹⁵ He fashions their hearts, every one, understanding all their works.

¹⁶ The king is not saved by the multitude of an army; nor is the mighty man delivered by great strength.

¹⁷ A horse is a vain help and shall not deliver by his great strength.

¹⁸ Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear Him, upon those who trust in His mercy

¹⁹ to deliver their souls from death and to preserve them in famine.

²⁰ Our soul waits for the LORD. He is our Help and our Shield.

²¹ Surely, our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we trusted in His Holy Name.

²² Let Your mercy, O LORD, be upon us. As we trusted in You. A Psalm of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech; who drove him away and he departed.

6 There is an evil which I saw under the Sun, and it is much among men:

² a man to whom God has given riches and treasures and honor, and he lacks nothing for his soul of all that he desires. But God does not give him power to eat of them, but a strange man eats them up. This is vanity. And this is an evil sickness.

³ If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years, and the days of his years are multiplied, and his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he is not buried, I say that a miscarriage is better than he.

⁴ For he comes into vanity and goes into darkness. And his name shall be covered with darkness.

⁵ Also he has neither seen the Sun nor known it. This has more rest than the other,

⁶ even if he had lived a thousand years, twice, and still had seen no good. Shall not all go to one place?

7 Then the High Priest said, “Are these things so?”

² And he said, “You men! Brothers and fathers! Listen! The God of Glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia (before he lived in Haran),

³ “and said to him, ‘Come out of our country, and from your kindred. And come into the land which I shall show you.’

⁴ “Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And after his father died, God brought him from there into this land wherein you now dwell.

⁵ “And He gave him no inheritance in it; no, not the breadth of a foot. Yet, He promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he still had no child.

⁶ “But God said this: ‘that his seed would be a sojourner in a strange land. And that they would keep it in bondage and mistreat it four hundred years.

⁷ ‘But the nation to whom they shall be in bondage, I will judge,’ says God, ‘And after that, they shall come forth and serve Me in this place.’

⁸ “He also gave him the Covenant of Circumcision. And Abraham begat Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob the twelve Patriarchs.