Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 21

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ The king [David] shall joy in Your strength, O Lord; and in Your salvation how greatly shall he rejoice!

² You have given him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah [pause, and think of that]!

³ For You send blessings of good things to meet him; You set a crown of pure gold on his head.

⁴ He asked life of You, and You gave it to him—long life forever and evermore.

⁵ His glory is great because of Your aid; splendor and majesty You bestow upon him.

⁶ For You make him to be blessed and a blessing forever; You make him exceedingly glad with the joy of Your presence.^(A)

⁷ For the king trusts, relies on, and is confident in the Lord, and through the mercy and steadfast love of the Most High he will never be moved.

⁸ Your hand shall find all Your enemies; Your right hand shall find all those who hate You.

⁹ You will make them as if in a blazing oven in the time of Your anger; the Lord will swallow them up in His wrath, and the fire will utterly consume them.

¹⁰ Their offspring You will destroy from the earth, and their sons from among the children of men.

¹¹ For they planned evil against You; they conceived a mischievous plot which they are not able to perform.

¹² For You will make them turn their backs; You will aim Your bow [of divine justice] at their faces.

¹³ Be exalted, Lord, in Your strength; we will sing and praise Your power.

24 Behold, the Lord will make the land and the ^[a]earth empty and make it waste and turn it upside down (twist the face of it) and scatter abroad its inhabitants.

² And it shall be—as [what happens] with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

³ The land and the earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly pillaged; for the Lord has said this.

⁴ The land and the earth mourn and wither, the world languishes and withers, the high ones of the people [and the heavens with the earth] languish.

⁵ The land and the earth also are defiled by their inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, disregarded the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant.^(A)

⁶ Therefore a curse devours the land and the earth, and they who dwell in it suffer the punishment of their guilt. Therefore the inhabitants of the land and the earth are scorched and parched [under the curse of God’s wrath], and few people are left.^(B)

⁷ The new wine mourns, the vine languishes; all the merrymakers sigh.

⁸ The mirth of the timbrels is stilled, the noise of those who rejoice ends, the joy of the lyre is stopped.

⁹ No more will they drink wine with a song; strong drink will be bitter to those who drink it.

¹⁰ The wasted city of emptiness and confusion is broken down; every house is shut up so that no one may enter.

¹¹ There is crying in the streets for wine; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is banished and gone into captivity.

¹² In the city is left desolation, and its gate is battered and destroyed.

¹³ For so shall it be in the midst of the earth among the peoples, as the shaking and beating of an olive tree, or as the gleaning when the vintage is done [and only a small amount of the fruit remains].

¹⁴ [But] these [who have escaped and remain] lift up their voices, they shout; for the majesty of the Lord they cry aloud from the [Mediterranean] Sea.

¹⁵ Wherefore glorify the Lord in the east [whether in the region of daybreak’s lights and fires, or in the west]; [glorify] the name of the Lord, the God of Israel in the isles and coasts of the [Mediterranean] Sea.

¹⁶ From the uttermost parts of the earth have we heard songs: Glory to the Righteous One [and to the people of Israel]! But I say, Emaciated I pine away, I pine away. Woe is me! The treacherous dealers deal treacherously! Yes, the treacherous dealers deal very treacherously.

4 Furthermore, ^[a]brethren, we beg and admonish you in [virtue of our union with] the Lord Jesus, that [you follow the instructions which] you learned from us about how you ought to walk so as to please and gratify God, as indeed you are doing, [and] that you do so even more and more abundantly [attaining yet greater perfection in living this life].

² For you know what charges and precepts we gave you [^[b]on the authority and by the inspiration of] the Lord Jesus.

³ For this is the will of God, that you should be consecrated (separated and set apart for pure and holy living): that you should abstain and shrink from all sexual vice,

⁴ That each one of you should know how to ^[c]possess (control, manage) his own ^[d]body in consecration (purity, separated from things profane) and honor,

⁵ Not [to be used] in the passion of lust like the heathen, who are ignorant of the true God and have no knowledge of His will,

⁶ That no man transgress and overreach his brother and defraud him in this matter or defraud his brother in business. For the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we have already warned you solemnly and ^[e]told you plainly.

⁷ For God has not called us to impurity but to consecration [to dedicate ourselves to the most thorough purity].

⁸ Therefore whoever disregards (sets aside and rejects this) disregards not man but God, Whose [very] Spirit [Whom] He gives to you is holy (chaste, pure).

⁹ But concerning brotherly love [for all other Christians], you have no need to have anyone write you, for you yourselves have been [personally] taught by God to love one another.

¹⁰ And indeed you already are [extending and displaying your love] to all the brethren throughout Macedonia. But we beseech and earnestly exhort you, brethren, that you ^[f]excel [in this matter] more and more,

¹¹ To make it your ambition and definitely endeavor to live quietly and peacefully, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you,

¹² So that you may bear yourselves becomingly and be correct and honorable and command the respect of the outside world, being dependent on nobody [self-supporting] and having need of nothing.