Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
18 I will love You dearly, O LORD, my strength.
2 The LORD is my rock and my fortress; and He Who delivers me, my God and my strength. In Him will I trust. My shield. The horn, also, of my salvation. My refuge.
3 I will call upon the LORD, Who is worthy to be praised. So shall I be safe from my enemies.
4 The sorrows of death surrounded me. And the floods of wickedness made me afraid.
5 The sorrows of the grave have surrounded me. The snares of death overtook me.
6 But in my trouble, I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God. He heard my voice out of His Temple. And my cry came before Him, into His ears.
7 Then the Earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the mountains also moved and shook because He was angry.
8 Smoke went out at His nostrils; and a consuming fire out of His mouth, at which coals were kindled.
9 He also bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under His feet.
10 And He rode upon a cherub and flew. And He came flying upon the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness His secret place, his pavilion all around Him; darkness of waters and clouds of the air.
12 At the brightness of His presence, His clouds passed; hailstones and coals of fire.
13 The LORD also thundered in the heaven, and the Highest gave His voice; hailstones and coals of fire.
14 Then He sent out His arrows and scattered them. And He increased lightnings and destroyed them.
15 And the channels of waters were seen. And the foundations of the world were discovered at Your rebuking, O LORD; at the blasting of the breath of Your nostrils.
16 He has sent down from above and taken me. He has drawn me out of many waters.
17 He has delivered me from my strong enemy, and from those who hate me. For they were too strong for me.
18 They confronted me on the day of my calamity. But the LORD was my stay.
19 He also brought me forth into a large place. He delivered me because He favored me.
19 And in the evening, two angels came to Sodom. And Lot sat at the gate of Sodom. And Lot saw them and rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face to the ground.
2 And he said, “See my lords, please turn in now into your servant’s house and stay the night and wash your feet. And you shall rise up early and go your ways.” They said, “No; but we will spend the night in the street.”
3 Then he pressed upon them earnestly; and they turned in to him and came to his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread. And they ate.
4 But before they went to bed, the men of the city (the men of Sodom, from the young even to the old, all the people from all quarters) surrounded the house.
5 And crying to Lot, they said to him, “Where are the men who came to you this night!? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them!”
6 Then Lot went out to them at the door, and shut the door after him,
7 and said, “Please, my brothers, do not behave so wickedly.
8 “Behold now, I have two daughters who have not known man. I will bring them out to you now; and do to them as seems good. Only, do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shadow of my roof.”
9 Then they said, “Get out of here!” And they said, “He has come alone, as a stranger; and shall he judge and rule? We will now deal worse with you than with them!” So, they pressed hard upon Lot himself, and came to break the door.
10 But the men put forth their hand and pulled Lot into the house to them and shut the door.
11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they were weary in seeking the door.
12 Then the men said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? Either son-in-law, or your sons or your daughters, or whatever you have in the city, bring it out of this place.
13 “For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”
14 Then Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who married his daughters, and said, “Arise! Get out of this place. For the LORD will destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law as though he were joking.
15 And when the morning arose, the angels hurried Lot, saying, “Arise! Take your wife and your two daughters which are here, lest you be destroyed in the punishment of the city.”
16 And as he hesitated, the men caught both him and his wife and his two daughters by the hands (the LORD being merciful to him); and they brought him forth and set him outside the city.
17 And when they had brought them out, the angel said, “Escape for your life. Do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape into the mountain, lest you be destroyed.”
18 And Lot said to them, “Please, no, my Lord!
19 “Behold now, your servant has found grace in your sight; and you have magnified your mercy; which you have shown to me in saving my life. But I cannot escape into the mountain, lest some evil take me and I die.
20 “See, now, this city nearby to flee to, which is a little one. Oh, let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live!”
21 Then he said to him, “Behold, I have received your request concerning this thing also: that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken.
22 “Hurry! Escape there. For I can do nothing till you get there.” Therefore, the name of the city was called Zoar.
23 The Sun rose upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zoar.
24 Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah (from the LORD out of Heaven)
25 and overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew upon the Earth.
26 Now his wife behind him looked back; and she became a pillar of salt.
27 And Abraham, rising up early in the morning, went to the place where he had stood before the LORD.
28 And, looking toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain, behold, he saw the smoke of the land mounting up as the smoke of a furnace.
29 And yet, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God thought upon Abraham. And He sent Lot out from the midst of the destruction when he overthrew the cities wherein Lot dwelled.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Absolutely not!
15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy and will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.”
16 So then it is not in him who wills, nor in him who runs, but in God, Who shows mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “For this same purpose I have raised you up, so that I might show My power in you; and that My Name might be declared throughout all the Earth.”
18 Therefore, He has mercy on whom He will. And whom He will, He hardens.
19 You will then say to me: “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?”
20 But who are you, O man, to contradict God? Shall the thing formed say to Him Who formed it, “Why have you made me this way”?
21 Does not indeed the potter have authority over the clay to make, from the same lump, one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?
22 What if God – though willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known - endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
23 That in so doing, He might declare the riches of His Glory upon the vessels of mercy, which He has prepared unto Glory -
24 even we whom He has called - not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.
25 As He also says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘My people’ who were not my people; and her ‘Beloved’ who was not beloved.
26 “And it shall be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’. There they shall be called ‘The sons of the living God’.”
27 Also, Isaiah cries concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel were as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved.
28 “For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the Earth.”
29 And as Isaiah said before: “Except that the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom, and had been like Gomorrah.”
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