Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 128

A Song of ^[a]Ascents.

¹ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is everyone who fears, reveres, and worships the Lord, who walks in His ways and lives according to His commandments.^(A)

² For you shall eat [the fruit] of the labor of your hands; happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) shall you be, and it shall be well with you.

³ Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house; your children shall be like olive plants round about your table.

⁴ Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who reverently and worshipfully fears the Lord.

⁵ May the Lord bless you out of Zion [His sanctuary], and may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;

⁶ Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!

¹⁷ For behold, I create ^[a]new heavens and a new earth. And the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.^(A)

¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a rejoicing and her people a joy.

¹⁹ And I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; and the sound of weeping will no more be heard in it, nor the cry of distress.

²⁰ There shall no more be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who dies prematurely; for the child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner who dies when only a hundred years old shall be [thought only a child, cut off because he is] accursed.

²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.

²² They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat [the fruit]. For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people, and My chosen and elect shall long make use of and enjoy the work of their hands.

²³ They shall not labor in vain or bring forth [children] for sudden terror or calamity; for they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them.

²⁴ And it shall be that before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking I will hear.^(B)

²⁵ The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy Mount [Zion], says the Lord.

⁶ Thus David ^[a]congratulates the man and pronounces a blessing on him to whom God credits righteousness apart from the works he does:

⁷ Blessed and happy and ^[b]to be envied are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered up and completely buried.

⁸ Blessed and happy and ^[c]to be envied is the person of whose sin the Lord will take no account nor reckon it against him.^(A)

⁹ Is this blessing (happiness) then meant only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.

¹⁰ How then was it credited [to him]? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

¹¹ He received the mark of circumcision as a token or an evidence [and] seal of the righteousness which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised—[faith] so that he was to be made the father of all who [truly] believe, though without circumcision, and who thus have righteousness (right standing with God) imputed to them and credited to their account,

¹² As well as [that he be made] the father of those circumcised persons who are not merely circumcised, but also walk in the way of that faith which our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

¹³ For the promise to Abraham or his posterity, that he should inherit the world, did not come through [observing the commands of] the Law but through the righteousness of faith.^(B)