Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
113 Halleluyah!
Servants of Adonai, give praise!
Give praise to the name of Adonai!
2 Blessed be the name of Adonai
from this moment on and forever!
3 From sunrise until sunset
Adonai’s name is to be praised.
4 Adonai is high above all nations,
his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like Adonai our God,
seated in the heights,
6 humbling himself to look
on heaven and on earth.
7 He raises the poor from the dust,
lifts the needy from the rubbish heap,
8 in order to give him a place among princes,
among the princes of his people.
9 He causes the childless woman
to live at home happily as a mother of children.
Halleluyah!
23 “You are not to repeat false rumors; do not join hands with the wicked by offering perjured testimony. 2 Do not follow the crowd when it does what is wrong; and don’t allow the popular view to sway you into offering testimony for any cause if the effect will be to pervert justice. 3 On the other hand, don’t favor a person’s lawsuit simply because he is poor.
4 “If you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey straying, you must return it to him. 5 If you see the donkey which belongs to someone who hates you lying down helpless under its load, you are not to pass him by but to go and help him free it.
(v) 6 “Do not deny anyone justice in his lawsuit simply because he is poor. 7 Keep away from fraud, and do not cause the death of the innocent and righteous; for I will not justify the wicked. 8 You are not to receive a bribe, for a bribe blinds the clearsighted and subverts the cause of the righteous.
9 “You are not to oppress a foreigner, for you know how a foreigner feels, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
3 Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of being circumcised? 2 Much in every way! In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God. 3 If some of them were unfaithful, so what? Does their faithlessness cancel God’s faithfulness? 4 Heaven forbid! God would be true even if everyone were a liar! — as the Tanakh says,
“so that you, God, may be proved right in your words
and win the verdict when you are put on trial.”[a]
5 Now if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what should we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict his anger on us? (I am speaking here the way people commonly do.) 6 Heaven forbid! Else, how could God judge the world? 7 “But,” you say, “if, through my lie, God’s truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?” 8 Indeed! Why not say (as some people slander us by claiming we do say), “Let us do evil, so that good may come of it”? Against them the judgment is a just one!
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.