Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁶¹ Princes pursue and persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of Your words [dreading violation of them far more than the force of prince or potentate].^(A)

¹⁶² I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great spoil.

¹⁶³ I hate and abhor falsehood, but Your law do I love.

¹⁶⁴ Seven times a day and all day long do I praise You because of Your righteous decrees.

¹⁶⁵ Great peace have they who love Your law; nothing shall offend them or make them stumble.^(B)

¹⁶⁶ I am hoping and waiting [eagerly] for Your salvation, O Lord, and I do Your commandments.^(C)

¹⁶⁷ Your testimonies have I kept [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them]; I love them exceedingly!

¹⁶⁸ I have observed Your precepts and Your testimonies, for all my ways are [fully known] before You.

¹⁷ Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,

¹⁸ Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel in Samaria. He is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to possess it.

¹⁹ Say to him, Thus says the Lord: Have you killed and also taken possession? Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your blood, even yours.

²⁰ And Ahab said to Elijah, Have you found me, O my enemy? And he answered, I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord.

²¹ See [says the Lord], I will bring evil on you and utterly sweep away and cut off from Ahab every male, bond and free,

²² And will make your household like that of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the household of Baasha son of Ahijah, for the provocation with which you have provoked Me to anger and made Israel to sin.

²³ Also the Lord said of Jezebel: The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.

²⁴ Any belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and any who dies in the field the birds of the air shall eat.^(A)

²⁵ For there was no one who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord as did Ahab, incited by his wife Jezebel.

²⁶ He did very abominably in going after idols, as had the Amorites, whom the Lord cast out before the Israelites.

²⁷ When Ahab heard those words of Elijah, he tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his flesh, fasted, lay in sackcloth, and went quietly.

²⁸ And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying,

²⁹ Do you see how Ahab humbles himself before Me? Because he humbles himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his lifetime, but in his son’s day I will bring the evil upon his house.

4 Beloved, do not put faith in every spirit, but prove (test) the spirits to discover whether they proceed from God; for many false prophets have gone forth into the world.

² By this you may know (perceive and recognize) the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges and confesses [the fact] that Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [actually] has become man and has come in the flesh is of God [has God for its source];

³ And every spirit which does not acknowledge and confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh [but would ^[a]annul, destroy, ^[b]sever, disunite Him] is not of God [does not proceed from Him]. This [^[c]nonconfession] is the [spirit] of the antichrist, [of] which you heard that it was coming, and now it is already in the world.

⁴ Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He Who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world.

⁵ They proceed from the world and are of the world; therefore it is out of the world [its ^[d]whole economy morally considered] that they speak, and the world listens (pays attention) to them.

⁶ We are [children] of God. Whoever is learning to know God [progressively to perceive, recognize, and understand God by observation and experience, and to ^[e]get an ever-clearer knowledge of Him] listens to us; and he who is not of God does not listen or pay attention to us. By this we know (recognize) the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of error.