Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 89

A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of Ethan the Ezrahite.

¹ I will sing of the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord forever; with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness from generation to generation.

² For I have said, Mercy and loving-kindness shall be built up forever; Your faithfulness will You establish in the very heavens [unchangeable and perpetual].

³ [You have said] I have made a ^[a]covenant with My chosen one, I have sworn to David My servant,

⁴ Your Seed I will establish forever, and I will build up your throne for all generations. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!^(A)

⁵ Let heaven (the angels) praise Your wonders, O Lord, Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones (the holy angels).

⁶ For who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? Who among the mighty [heavenly beings] can be likened to the Lord,

⁷ A God greatly feared and revered in the council of the holy (angelic) ones, and to be feared and worshipfully revered above all those who are round about Him?

⁸ O Lord God of hosts, who is a mighty one like unto You, O Lord? And Your faithfulness is round about You [an essential part of You at all times].

⁹ You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves arise, You still them.

¹⁰ You have broken Rahab (Egypt) in pieces; with Your mighty arm You have scattered Your enemies.

¹¹ The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; the world and all that is in it, You have founded them.

¹² The north and the south, You have created them; Mount Tabor and Mount Hermon joyously praise Your name.

¹³ You have a mighty arm; strong is Your hand, Your right hand is soaring high.

¹⁴ Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; mercy and loving-kindness and truth go before Your face.

¹⁵ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are the people who know the joyful sound [who understand and appreciate the spiritual blessings symbolized by the feasts]; they walk, O Lord, in the light and favor of Your countenance!

¹⁶ In Your name they rejoice all the day, and in Your righteousness they are exalted.

¹⁷ For You are the glory of their strength [their proud adornment], and by Your favor our horn is exalted and we walk with uplifted faces!

¹⁸ For our shield belongs to the Lord, and our king to the Holy One of Israel.

33 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.

² But he did evil in the Lord’s sight, like the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites.

³ For he built again the [idolatrous] high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down, and he reared altars for the Baals and made the Asherim and worshiped all the hosts of the heavens and served them.

⁴ Also he built [heathen] altars in the Lord’s house, of which the Lord had said, In Jerusalem shall My Name be forever.

⁵ He built altars for all the hosts of the heavens in the two courts of the Lord’s house.

⁶ And he burned his children as an offering [to his god] in the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], and practiced soothsaying, augury, and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.

⁷ And he set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put My Name [and Presence] forever;

⁸ And I will no more remove Israel from the land which I appointed for your fathers, if they will only take heed to do all that I have commanded them, the whole law, the statutes, and the ordinances given through Moses.

⁹ So Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the heathen whom the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.

¹⁰ The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not hearken.

¹¹ So the Lord brought against them the commanders of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks and in fetters and brought him to Babylon.

¹² When he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.

¹³ He prayed to Him, and God, entreated by him, heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.

¹⁴ And he built an outer wall to the City of David west of Gihon in the valley, to the entrance of the Fish Gate, and ran it around Ophel, raising it to a very great height; and he put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities of Judah.

¹⁵ And he took away the foreign gods and the idol out of the house of the Lord and all the altars that he had built on the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem; and he cast them out of the city.

¹⁶ And he restored the Lord’s altar and sacrificed on it offerings of peace and of thanksgiving; and he commanded Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel.

¹⁷ Yet the people still sacrificed in the high places, but only to the Lord their God.

11 Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, ^[a]the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

² For by [faith—^[b]trust and holy fervor born of faith] the men of old had divine testimony borne to them and obtained a good report.

³ By faith we understand that the worlds [during the successive ages] were framed (fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose) by the word of God, so that what we see was not made out of things which are visible.

⁴ [Prompted, actuated] by faith Abel brought God a better and more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, because of which it was testified of him that he was righteous [that he was upright and in right standing with God], and God bore witness by accepting and acknowledging his gifts. And though he died, yet [through the incident] he is still speaking.^(A)

⁵ Because of faith Enoch was caught up and transferred to heaven, so that he did not have a glimpse of death; and he was not found, because God had translated him. For even before he was taken to heaven, he received testimony [still on record] that he had pleased and been satisfactory to God.^(B)

⁶ But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out].

⁷ [Prompted] by faith Noah, being forewarned by God concerning events of which as yet there was no visible sign, took heed and diligently and reverently constructed and prepared an ark for the deliverance of his own family. By this [his faith which relied on God] he passed judgment and sentence on the world’s unbelief and became an heir and possessor of righteousness (^[c]that relation of being right into which God puts the person who has faith).^(C)