Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

17 I am pleading for your help, O Lord; for I have been honest and have done what is right, and you must listen to my earnest cry! ² Publicly acquit me, Lord, for you are always fair. ³ You have tested me and seen that I am good. You have come even in the night and found nothing amiss and know that I have told the truth. ⁴ I have followed your commands and have not gone along with cruel and evil men. ⁵ My feet have not slipped from your paths.

⁶ Why am I praying like this? Because I know you will answer me, O God! Yes, listen as I pray. ⁷ Show me your strong love in wonderful ways, O Savior of all those seeking your help against their foes. ⁸ Protect me as you would the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings as you hover over me.

⁹ My enemies encircle me with murder in their eyes. ¹⁰ They are pitiless and arrogant. Listen to their boasting. ¹¹ They close in upon me and are ready to throw me to the ground. ¹² They are like lions eager to tear me apart, like young lions hiding and waiting their chance.

^13-14 Lord, arise and stand against them. Push them back! Come and save me from these men of the world whose only concern is earthly gain—these men whom you have filled with your treasures so that their children and grandchildren are rich and prosperous.

¹⁵ But as for me, my contentment is not in wealth but in seeing you and knowing all is well between us. And when I awake in heaven, I will be fully satisfied, for I will see you face-to-face.

² One night he couldn’t get to sleep^[a] and went for a stroll on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking her evening bath. ³ He sent to find out who she was and was told that she was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah. ⁴ Then David sent for her and when she came he slept with her. (She had just completed the purification rites after menstruation.) Then she returned home. ⁵ When she found that he had gotten her pregnant she sent a message to inform him.

⁶ So David dispatched a memo to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” ⁷ When he arrived, David asked him how Joab and the army were getting along and how the war was prospering. ⁸ Then he told him to go home and relax, and he sent a present to him at his home. ⁹ But Uriah didn’t go there. He stayed that night at the gateway of the palace with the other servants of the king.

¹⁰ When David heard what Uriah had done, he summoned him and asked him, “What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you go home to your wife last night after being away for so long?”

¹¹ Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies and the general and his officers are camping out in open fields, and should I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I will never be guilty of acting like that.”

¹² “Well, stay here tonight,” David told him, “and tomorrow you may return to the army.”

So Uriah stayed around the palace. ¹³ David invited him to dinner and got him drunk; but even so he didn’t go home that night, but again he slept at the entry to the palace.

¹⁴ Finally the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. ¹⁵ The letter instructed Joab to put Uriah at the front of the hottest part of the battle—and then pull back and leave him there to die! ¹⁶ So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the besieged city where he knew that the enemies’ best men were fighting; ¹⁷ and Uriah was killed along with several other Israeli soldiers.

¹⁸ When Joab sent a report to David of how the battle was going, ^19-21 he told his messenger, “If the king is angry and asks, ‘Why did the troops go so close to the city? Didn’t they know there would be shooting from the walls? Wasn’t Abimelech killed at Thebez by a woman who threw down a millstone on him?’—then tell him, ‘Uriah was killed too.’”

²² So the messenger arrived at Jerusalem and gave the report to David.

²³ “The enemy came out against us,” he said, “and as we chased them back to the city gates, ²⁴ the men on the wall attacked us; and some of our men were killed, and Uriah the Hittite is dead too.”

²⁵ “Well, tell Joab not to be discouraged,” David said. “The sword kills one as well as another!^[b] Fight harder next time, and conquer the city; tell him he is doing well.”

²⁶ When Bathsheba heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him;

3 “To the leader of the church in Sardis write this letter:

“This message is sent to you by the one who has the sevenfold Spirit^[a] of God and the seven stars.

“I know your reputation as a live and active church, but you are dead. ² Now wake up! Strengthen what little remains—for even what is left is at the point of death. Your deeds are far from right in the sight of God. ³ Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly and turn to me again. Unless you do, I will come suddenly upon you, unexpected as a thief, and punish you.

⁴ “Yet even there in Sardis some haven’t soiled their garments with the world’s filth; they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. ⁵ Everyone who conquers will be clothed in white, and I will not erase his name from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that he is mine.

⁶ “Let all who can hear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.