Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

[A Psalm] of David.

138 I will give thee thanks with my whole heart; before the gods will I sing psalms of thee.

² I will bow down toward the temple of thy holiness, and celebrate thy name for thy loving-kindness and for thy truth; for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.

³ In the day when I called thou answeredst me; thou didst encourage me with strength in my soul.

⁴ All the kings of the earth shall celebrate thee, Jehovah, when they have heard the words of thy mouth;

⁵ And they shall sing in the ways of Jehovah, for great is the glory of Jehovah.

⁶ For Jehovah is high; but he looketh upon the lowly, and the proud he knoweth afar off.

⁷ Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou wilt stretch forth thy hand against the anger of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.

⁸ Jehovah will perfect what concerneth me: thy loving-kindness, O Jehovah, [endureth] for ever; forsake not the works of thine own hands.

¹⁵ Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: In the day when he went down to Sheol, I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed; and I made Lebanon black for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him.

¹⁶ I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to Sheol, with them that go down into the pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the lower parts of the earth.

¹⁷ They also went down into Sheol with him unto them that were slain with the sword, and [that were] his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the nations.

¹⁸ To whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? Yet shalt thou be brought down with the trees of Eden, unto the lower parts of the earth; thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord Jehovah.

¹² For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves; but these, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves, are not intelligent.

¹³ Now *we* will not boast out of measure, but according to the measure of the rule which the God of measure has apportioned to us, to reach to you also.

¹⁴ For we do not, as not reaching to you, overstretch ourselves, (for we have come to you also in the glad tidings of the Christ;)

¹⁵ not boasting out of measure in other people's labours, but having hope, your faith increasing, to be enlarged amongst you, according to our rule, yet more abundantly

¹⁶ to announce the glad tidings to that [which is] beyond you, not to be boasting in another's rule of things made ready to hand.

¹⁷ But he that boasts, let him boast in the Lord.

¹⁸ For not *he* that commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends.