Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹¹ Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk and live in Your truth; direct and unite my heart [solely, reverently] to fear and honor Your name.^(A)

¹² I will confess and praise You, O Lord my God, with my whole (united) heart; and I will glorify Your name forevermore.

¹³ For great is Your mercy and loving-kindness toward me; and You have delivered me from the depths of Sheol [from the exceeding depths of affliction].

¹⁴ O God, the proud and insolent are risen against me; a rabble of violent and ruthless men has sought and demanded my life, and they have not set You before them.

¹⁵ But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and loving-kindness and truth.

¹⁶ O turn to me and have mercy and be gracious to me; grant strength (might and inflexibility to temptation) to Your servant and save the son of Your handmaiden.

¹⁷ Show me a sign of [Your evident] goodwill and favor, that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame, because You, Lord, [will show Your approval of me when You] help and comfort me.

⁹ All who make graven idols are confusion, chaos, and worthlessness. Their objects (idols) in which they delight do not profit them, and their own witnesses (worshipers) do not see or know, so that they are put to shame.

¹⁰ Who is [such a fool as] to fashion a god or cast a graven image that is profitable for nothing?

¹¹ Behold, all his fellows shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen, [how can they make a god?] they are but men. Let them all be gathered together, let them stand forth; they shall be terrified, they shall be put to shame together.

¹² The ironsmith sharpens and uses a chisel and works it over the coals; he shapes [the core of the idol] with hammers and forges it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint.

¹³ The carpenter stretches out a line, he marks it out with a pencil or red ocher; he fashions [an idol] with planes and marks it out with the compasses; and he shapes it to have the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, that it may dwell in a house.

¹⁴ He hews for himself cedars, and takes the holm tree and the oak and lets them grow strong for himself among the trees of the forest; he plants a fir tree or an ash, and the rain nourishes it.

¹⁵ Then it becomes fuel for a man to burn; a part of it he takes and warms himself, yes, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. [Then out of the remainder, the leavings] he also makes a god and worships it! He [with his own hands] makes it into a graven image and falls down and worships it!

¹⁶ He burns part of the wood in the fire; with part of it he [cooks and] eats flesh, he roasts meat and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire!

¹⁷ And from what is left [of the log] he makes a god, his graven idol. He falls down to it, he worships it and prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my god!

¹³ For when God made [His] promise to Abraham, He swore by Himself, since He had no one greater by whom to swear,

¹⁴ Saying, Blessing I certainly will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you.^(A)

¹⁵ And so it was that he [Abraham], having waited long and endured patiently, realized and obtained [in the birth of Isaac as a pledge of what was to come] what God had promised him.

¹⁶ Men indeed swear by a greater [than themselves], and with them in all disputes the oath taken for confirmation is final [ending strife].

¹⁷ Accordingly God also, in His desire to show more convincingly and beyond doubt to those who were to inherit the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose and plan, intervened (mediated) with an oath.

¹⁸ This was so that, by two unchangeable things [His promise and His oath] in which it is impossible for God ever to prove false or deceive us, we who have fled [to Him] for refuge might have mighty indwelling strength and strong encouragement to grasp and hold fast the hope appointed for us and set before [us].

¹⁹ [Now] we have this [hope] as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul [it cannot slip and it cannot ^[a]break down under whoever steps out upon it—a hope] that reaches ^[b]farther and enters into [the very certainty of the Presence] within the veil,^(B)

²⁰ Where Jesus has entered in for us [in advance], a Forerunner having become a High Priest forever after the order (with ^[c]the rank) of Melchizedek.^(C)