Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 146

¹ Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!) Praise the Lord, O my soul!

² While I live will I praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have any being.

³ Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴ When his breath leaves him, he returns to his earth; in that very day his [previous] thoughts, plans, and purposes perish.^(A)

⁵ Happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) is he who has the God of [special revelation to] Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God,^(B)

⁶ Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, Who keeps truth and is faithful forever,

⁷ Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets free the prisoners,

⁸ The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the [uncompromisingly] righteous (those upright in heart and in right standing with Him).^(C)

⁹ The Lord protects and preserves the strangers and temporary residents, He upholds the fatherless and the widow and sets them upright, but the way of the wicked He makes crooked (turns upside down and brings to ruin).

¹⁰ The Lord shall reign forever, even Your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)^(D)

¹⁴ [Thus says the Lord] I have for a long time held My peace, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant together.

¹⁵ I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their herbage; I will turn the rivers into islands, and I will dry up the pools.

¹⁶ And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness into light before them and make uneven places into a plain. These things I have determined to do [for them]; and I will not leave them forsaken.

¹⁷ They shall be turned back, they shall be utterly put to shame, who trust in graven images, who say to molten images, You are our gods.

¹⁸ Hear, you deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see!

¹⁹ Who is blind but My servant [Israel]? Or deaf like My messenger whom I send? Who is blind like the one who is at peace with Me [who has been admitted to covenant relationship with Me]? Yes, who is blind like the Lord’s servant?

²⁰ You have seen many things, but you do not observe or apprehend their true meaning. His ears are open, but he hears not!

²¹ It was the Lord’s pleasure for His righteousness’ sake [in accordance with a steadfast and consistent purpose] to magnify instruction and revelation and glorify them.

⁹ For this reason we also, from the day we heard of it, have not ceased to pray and make [^[a]special] request for you, [asking] that you may be filled with the ^[b]full (deep and clear) knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom [^[c]in comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God] and in understanding and discernment of spiritual things—

¹⁰ That you may walk (live and conduct yourselves) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him and ^[d]desiring to please Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work and steadily growing and increasing in and by the knowledge of God [with fuller, deeper, and clearer insight, ^[e]acquaintance, and recognition].

¹¹ [We pray] that you may be invigorated and strengthened with all power according to the might of His glory, [to exercise] every kind of endurance and patience (perseverance and forbearance) with joy,

¹² Giving thanks to the Father, Who has qualified and made us fit to share the ^[f]portion which is the inheritance of the saints (God’s holy people) in the Light.

¹³ [The Father] has delivered and ^[g]drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son ^[h]of His love,

¹⁴ In Whom we have our redemption through His blood, [which means] the forgiveness of our sins.