Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 124

A Song of ^[a]Ascents. Of David.

¹ If it had not been the Lord Who was on our side—now may Israel say—

² If it had not been the Lord Who was on our side when men rose up against us,

³ Then they would have quickly swallowed us up alive when their wrath was kindled against us;

⁴ Then the waters would have overwhelmed us and swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us;

⁵ Then the proud waters would have gone over us.

⁶ Blessed be the Lord, Who has not given us as prey to their teeth!

⁷ We are like a bird escaped from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped!

⁸ Our help is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.

8 And God [earnestly] remembered Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind blow over the land, and the waters sank down and abated.

² Also the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the gushing rain from the sky was checked,

³ And the waters receded from the land continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had diminished.

⁴ On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat [in Armenia].

⁵ And the waters continued to diminish until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the high hills were seen.

⁶ At the end of [another] forty days Noah opened a window of the ark which he had made

⁷ And sent forth a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters were dried up from the land.

⁸ Then he sent forth a dove to see if the waters had decreased from the surface of the ground.

⁹ But the dove found no resting-place on which to roost, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were [yet] on the face of the whole land. So he put forth his hand and drew her to him into the ark.

¹⁰ He waited another seven days and again sent forth the dove out of the ark.

¹¹ And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a newly sprouted and freshly plucked olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the land.

¹² Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, but she did not return to him any more.

¹³ In the year 601 [of Noah’s life], on the first day of the first month, the waters were drying up from the land. And Noah ^[a]removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the surface of the ground was drying.

¹⁴ And on the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was entirely dry.

¹⁵ And God spoke to Noah, saying,

¹⁶ Go forth from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives with you.

¹⁷ Bring forth every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the ground—that they may breed abundantly on the land and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.

¹⁸ And Noah went forth, and his wife and his sons and their wives with him [after being in the ark one year and ten days].

¹⁹ Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird—and whatever moves on the land—went forth by families out of the ark.

6 What shall we say [to all this]? Are we to remain in sin in order that God’s grace (favor and mercy) may multiply and overflow?

² Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?

³ Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

⁴ We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, we shall also be [one with Him in sharing] His resurrection [by a new life lived for God].

⁶ We know that our old (unrenewed) self was nailed to the cross with Him in order that [our] body [which is the instrument] of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil, that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.

⁷ For when a man dies, he is freed (loosed, delivered) from [the power of] sin [among men].

⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

⁹ Because we know that Christ (the Anointed One), being once raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him.

¹⁰ For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him].

¹¹ Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.