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:
1 I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.(A)
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
so I shall be saved from my enemies.(B)
4 The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of perdition assailed me;(C)
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.(D)
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.(E)
7 Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and reeled because he was angry.(F)
8 Smoke went up from his nostrils
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
9 He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.(G)
10 He rode on a cherub and flew;
he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.(H)
11 He made darkness his covering around him,
his canopy thick clouds dark with water.(I)
12 Out of the brightness before him
there broke through his clouds
hailstones and coals of fire.(J)
13 The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice.[a](K)
14 And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.(L)
15 Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.(M)
16 He reached down from on high; he took me;
he drew me out of mighty waters.(N)
17 He delivered me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.(O)
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out into a broad place;
he delivered me because he delighted in me.(P)
The Depravity of Sodom
19 The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.(A) 2 He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.”(B) 3 But he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.(C) 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house, 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”(D) 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him,(E) 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”(F) 9 But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and came near the door to break it down.(G) 10 But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. 11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door.(H)
Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed
12 Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city—bring them out of the place.(I) 13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.”(J) 14 So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.(K)
15 When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.”(L) 16 But he lingered, so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city.(M) 17 When they had brought them outside, they[a] said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.”(N) 18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; 19 your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. 20 Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” 21 He said to him, “Very well, I grant you this favor too and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.(O) 22 Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar.[b] 23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.
24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven,(P) 25 and he overthrew those cities and all the plain and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground.(Q) 26 But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.(R)
27 Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord,(S) 28 and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and saw the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace.(T)
29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled.(U)
14 What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!(A) 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”(B)
16 So it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who shows mercy. 17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”(C) 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.
God’s Wrath and Mercy
19 You will say to me then, “Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”(D) 20 But who indeed are you, a human, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, “Why have you made me like this?”(E) 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?(F) 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction,(G) 23 and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the gentiles? 25 As he also says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ”(H)
26 “And in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they shall be called children of the living God.”(I)
27 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved,(J) 28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth quickly and decisively.”[a] 29 And as Isaiah predicted,
“If the Lord of hosts had not left descendants to us,
we would have fared like Sodom
and been made like Gomorrah.”(K)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.