Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 31
For the worship leader. A song of David.
1 You are my shelter, O Eternal One—my soul’s sanctuary!
Shield me from shame;
rescue me by Your righteousness.
2 Hear me, Lord! Turn Your ear in my direction.
Come quick! Save me!
Be my rock, my shelter,
my fortress of salvation!
3 You are my rock and my fortress—my soul’s sanctuary!
Therefore, for the sake of Your reputation, be my leader, my guide, my navigator, my commander.
4 Save me from the snare that has been secretly set out for me,
for You are my protection.
5 I entrust my spirit into Your hands.[a]
You have redeemed me, O Eternal, God of faithfulness and truth.
19 Your overflowing goodness
You have kept for those who live in awe of You,
And You share Your goodness with those who make You their sanctuary.
20 You hide them, You shelter them in Your presence,
safe from the conspiracies of sinful men.
You keep them in Your tent,
safe from the slander of accusing tongues.
21 Bless the Eternal!
For He has revealed His gracious love to me
when I was trapped like a city under siege.
22 I began to panic so I yelled out,
“I’m cut off. You no longer see me!”
But You heard my cry for help that day
when I called out to You.
23 Love the Eternal, all of you, His faithful people!
He protects those who are true to Him,
but He pays back the proud in kind.
24 Be strong, and live courageously,
all of you who set your hope in the Eternal!
6 Here, Israel, is what the Eternal says about your past and present behavior:
Eternal One: For three crimes of Israel,
no for four, I have laid down My sentence and will not revoke it
Because they have sold the right-living for silver
and the poor and their property for a pair of sandals.
7 They have trampled the heads of the weak into the dirt
and pushed the oppressed even further down.
A father and his son sleep with the same girl,
trampling My holy name in the process.
8 And the religious lie beside every altar
on garments taken as collateral from their debtors;
And in the house of their pagan god, they drink
wine bought with the fines they have imposed on others.
9 Still I destroyed all of Canaan’s Amorites before them,
those Canaanites who were as tall as the towering cedars,
as strong as the mighty oaks.
As entrenched as they were, I still destroyed their fruit above
and their roots underneath My promised land.
10 And I brought you up out of the land of Egypt
and led you safely through 40 years of wilderness wandering
to take possession of the land of the Amorites.
11 I took some of your children and raised them up as prophets,
and I called some of your youth to be Nazirites, set aside to My service.
Isn’t this true, people of Israel?
God’s very own people are forcing those who have dedicated their service to Him to abandon their calling. Here He renders His judgment on them.
So says the Eternal.
7 Jesus: If you judge other people, then you will find that you, too, are being judged. 2 Indeed, you will be judged by the very standards to which you hold other people.
So when someone is tempted to criticize his neighbor because her house isn’t clean enough, she seems ill-tempered, or she is a bit flighty—he should remember those same standards and judgments will come back to him. No one should criticize his neighbor for being short-tempered one morning, when he is snippish and snappish and waspish all the time.
Jesus: 3 Why is it that you see the dust in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but you can’t see what is in your own eye? 4 Don’t ignore the wooden plank in your eye, while you criticize the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eyelashes. 5 That type of criticism and judgment is a sham! Remove the plank from your own eye, and then perhaps you will be able to see clearly how to help your brother flush out his sawdust.
6 Don’t give precious things to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. If you do, the pigs will trample the pearls with their little pigs’ feet, and then they will turn back and attack you.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.