Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
(For the music leader. A psalm by David, the Lord's servant. David sang this to the Lord after the Lord had rescued him from his enemies, but especially from Saul.)
David's Song of Thanks
1 I love you, Lord God,
and you make me strong.
2 You are my mighty rock,[a]
my fortress, my protector,
the rock where I am safe,
my shield, my powerful weapon,[b]
and my place of shelter.
3 I praise you, Lord!
I prayed, and you rescued me
from my enemies.
4 Death had wrapped
its ropes around me,
and I was almost swallowed
by its flooding waters.
5 Ropes from the world
of the dead
had coiled around me,
and death had set a trap
in my path.
6 I was in terrible trouble
when I called out to you,
but from your temple
you heard me
and answered my prayer.
7 The earth shook and shivered,
and the mountains trembled
down to their roots.
You were angry
8 and breathed out smoke.
Scorching heat and fiery flames
spewed from your mouth.
9 You opened the heavens
like curtains,
and you came down
with storm clouds
under your feet.
10 You rode on the backs
of flying creatures
and swooped down
with the wind as wings.
11 Darkness was your robe;
thunderclouds filled the sky,
hiding you from sight.
12 Hailstones and fiery coals
lit up the sky
in front of you.
13 Lord Most High, your voice
thundered from the heavens,
as hailstones and fiery coals
poured down like rain.
14 You scattered your enemies
with arrows of lightning.
15 You roared at the sea,
and its deepest channels
could be seen.
You snorted,
and the earth shook
to its foundations.
16 You reached down from heaven,
and you lifted me
from deep in the ocean.
17 You rescued me from enemies,
who were hateful
and too powerful for me.
18 On the day disaster struck,
they came and attacked,
but you defended me.
19 When I was fenced in,
you freed and rescued me
because you love me.
11-12 (A) The water under the earth started gushing out everywhere, the sky opened like windows, and rain poured down for 40 days and nights. All this began on the seventeenth day of the second month of the year. 13 On that day Noah and his wife went into the boat with their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. 14 They took along every kind of animal, tame and wild, including the birds. 15 Noah took a male and a female of every living creature with him, 16 just as God had told him to do. And when they were all in the boat, the Lord closed the door.
17-18 For 40 days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. 19-20 Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven meters below the surface of the water. 21 Not a bird, animal, reptile, or human was left alive anywhere on earth. 22-23 (B) The Lord destroyed everything that breathed. Nothing was left alive except Noah and the others in the boat. 24 A hundred fifty days later, the water started going down.
The Water Goes Down
8 God did not forget about Noah and the animals with him in the boat. So God made a wind blow, and the water started going down. 2 God stopped up the places where the water had been gushing out from under the earth. He also closed up the sky, and the rain stopped. 3 For 150 days the water slowly went down. 4 Then on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year, the boat came to rest somewhere in the Ararat mountains. 5 The water kept going down, and the mountain tops could be seen on the first day of the tenth month.
4 God did not have pity on the angels that sinned. He had them tied up and thrown into the dark pits of hell until the time of judgment. 5 (A) And during Noah's time, God did not have pity on the ungodly people of the world. He destroyed them with a flood, though he did save eight people, including Noah, who preached the truth.
6 (B) God punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah[a] by burning them to ashes, and this is a warning to anyone else who wants to sin.
7-8 (C) Lot lived right and was greatly troubled by the terrible way those wicked people were living. He was a good man, and day after day he suffered because of the evil things he saw and heard. So the Lord rescued him. 9 This shows that the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their sufferings and to punish evil people while they wait for the day of judgment.
10 The Lord is especially hard on people who disobey him and don't think of anything except their own filthy desires. They are reckless and proud and are not afraid of cursing the glorious beings in heaven.
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