Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Praise God Who Saved the Nation
For the director of music. A psalm of David. A song.
68 Let God rise up and scatter his enemies;
let those who hate him run away from him.
2 Blow them away as smoke
is driven away by the wind.
As wax melts before a fire,
let the wicked be destroyed before God.
3 But those who do right should be glad
and should rejoice before God;
they should be happy and glad.
4 Sing to God; sing praises to his name.
Prepare the way for him
who rides through the desert,
whose name is the Lord.
Rejoice before him.
5 God is in his holy Temple.
He is a father to orphans,
and he defends the widows.
6 God gives the lonely a home.
He leads prisoners out with joy,
but those who turn against God will live in a dry land.
7 God, you led your people out
when you marched through the desert. Selah
8 The ground shook
and the sky poured down rain
before God, the God of Mount Sinai,
before God, the God of Israel.
9 God, you sent much rain;
you refreshed your tired land.
10 Your people settled there.
God, in your goodness
you took care of the poor.
19 Praise the Lord, God our Savior,
who helps us every day. Selah
20 Our God is a God who saves us;
the Lord God saves us from death.
Jephthah’s Promise
29 Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Jephthah. Jephthah passed through Gilead and Manasseh and the city of Mizpah in Gilead to the land of the Ammonites. 30 Jephthah made a promise to the Lord, saying, “If you will hand over the Ammonites to me, 31 I will give you as a burnt offering the first thing that comes out of my house to meet me when I return from the victory. It will be the Lord’s.”
32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord handed them over to him. 33 In a great defeat Jephthah struck them down from the city of Aroer to the area of Minnith, and twenty cities as far as the city of Abel Keramim. So the Ammonites were defeated by the Israelites.
34 When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, his daughter was the first one to come out to meet him, playing a tambourine and dancing. She was his only child; he had no other sons or daughters. 35 When Jephthah saw his daughter, he tore his clothes to show his sorrow. He said, “My daughter! You have made me so sad because I made a promise to the Lord, and I cannot break it!”
36 Then his daughter said, “Father, you made a promise to the Lord. So do to me just what you promised, because the Lord helped you defeat your enemies, the Ammonites.” 37 She also said, “But let me do one thing. Let me be alone for two months to go to the mountains. Since I will never marry, let me and my friends go and cry together.”
38 Jephthah said, “Go.” So he sent her away for two months. She and her friends stayed in the mountains and cried for her because she would never marry. 39 After two months she returned to her father, and Jephthah did to her what he had promised. Jephthah’s daughter never had a husband.
From this came a custom in Israel that 40 every year the young women of Israel would go out for four days to remember the daughter of Jephthah from Gilead.
Paul Shows that Peter Was Wrong
11 When Peter came to Antioch, I challenged him to his face, because he was wrong. 12 Peter ate with the non-Jewish people until some Jewish people sent from James came to Antioch. When they arrived, Peter stopped eating with those who weren’t Jewish, and he separated himself from them. He was afraid of the Jews. 13 So Peter was a hypocrite, as were the other Jewish believers who joined with him. Even Barnabas was influenced by what these Jewish believers did. 14 When I saw they were not following the truth of the Good News, I spoke to Peter in front of them all. I said, “Peter, you are a Jew, but you are not living like a Jew. You are living like those who are not Jewish. So why do you now try to force those who are not Jewish to live like Jews?”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.