Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 43

¹ Judge and vindicate me, O God; plead and defend my cause against an ungodly nation. O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

² For You are the God of my strength [my Stronghold—in Whom I take refuge]; why have You cast me off? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

³ O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your dwelling.

⁴ Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy; yes, with the lyre will I praise You, O God, my God!

⁵ Why are you cast down, O my inner self? And why should you moan over me and be disquieted within me? Hope in God and wait expectantly for Him, for I shall yet praise Him, Who is the help of my [sad] countenance, and my God.

²⁷ A man of God came to Eli and said to him, Thus has the Lord said: I plainly revealed Myself to the house of your father [forefather Aaron] when they were in Egypt in bondage to Pharaoh’s house.

²⁸ Moreover, I selected him out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to offer on My altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before Me. And I gave [from then on] to the house of your father [forefather] all the offerings of the Israelites made by fire.

²⁹ Why then do you kick [trample upon, treat with contempt] My sacrifice and My offering which I commanded, and honor your sons above Me by fattening yourselves upon the choicest part of every offering of My people Israel?

³⁰ Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, says, I did promise that your house and that of your father [forefather Aaron] should go in and out before Me forever. But now the Lord says, Be it far from Me. For those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.

³¹ Behold, the time is coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your own father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in your house.

³² And you shall behold the distress of My house, even in all the prosperity which God will give Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever.

³³ Yet I will not cut off from My altar every man of yours; some shall survive to weep and mourn [over the family’s ruin], but all the increase of your house shall die in their best years.^(A)

³⁴ And what befalls your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be a sign to you—in one day they both shall die. [Fulfilled in I Sam. 4:17, 18.]

³⁵ And I will raise up for Myself a ^[a]faithful priest (Priest), who shall do according to what is in My heart and mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My anointed (Anointed) forever.^(B)

³⁶ Everyone who is left in your house shall come crouching to him for a piece of silver and a bit of bread and say, Put me, I pray you, into a priest’s office so I may have a piece of bread.

¹⁷ But if you bear the name of Jew and rely upon the Law and pride yourselves in God and your relationship to Him,

¹⁸ And know and understand His will and discerningly approve the better things and have a sense of what is vital, because you are instructed by the Law;

¹⁹ And if you are confident that you [yourself] are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, and [that

²⁰ You are] a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the childish, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—

²¹ Well then, you who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you teach against stealing, do you steal (take what does not really belong to you)?

²² You who say not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery [are you unchaste in action or in thought]? You who abhor and loathe idols, do you rob temples [do you appropriate to your own use what is consecrated to God, thus robbing the sanctuary and ^[a]doing sacrilege]?

²³ You who boast in the Law, do you dishonor God by breaking the Law [by stealthily infringing upon or carelessly neglecting or openly breaking it]?

²⁴ For, as it is written, The name of God is maligned and blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you! [The words to this effect are from your own Scriptures.]^(A)

²⁵ Circumcision does indeed profit if you keep the Law; but if you habitually transgress the Law, your circumcision is made uncircumcision.

²⁶ So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be credited to him as [equivalent to] circumcision?

²⁷ Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the Law will condemn you who, although you have the code in writing and have circumcision, break the Law.

²⁸ For he is not a [real] Jew who is only one outwardly and publicly, nor is [true] circumcision something external and physical.

²⁹ But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and [true] circumcision is of the heart, a spiritual and not a literal [matter]. His praise is not from men but from God.