Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 18

Royal Thanksgiving for Victory

To the leader. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said:

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.^{(A) 12} The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.^{(B) 13} On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark,^{(C) 14} they and every wild animal of every kind and all domestic animals of every kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and every bird of every kind.^{[a] 15} They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life.^{(D) 16} And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in.^(E)

¹⁷ The flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.^{(F) 18} The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters.^{(G) 19} The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; ²⁰ the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. ²¹ And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings;^{(H) 22} everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.^{(I) 23} He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark.^{(J) 24} And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.^(K)

The Flood Subsides

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;^{(L) 2} the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained,^{(M) 3} and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated,^{(N) 4} and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.^{(O) 5} The waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to chains^[a] of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment;^{(A) 5} and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;^{(B) 6} and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to destruction^[b] and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{[c] 7} and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the debauchery of the lawless^{(C) 8} (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial and to keep the unrighteous until the day of judgment, when they will be punished^{(D) 10} —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^[d](E)