Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁶ When Y’hoshua had sent the people away, the people of Isra’el had gone each one to his assigned property in order to take possession of the land. ⁷ The people served Adonai throughout Y’hoshua’s life and throughout the lives of all the older men who outlived Y’hoshua and who had seen all the great work of Adonai which he had done for Isra’el. ⁸ When Y’hoshua the son of Nun, the servant of Adonai, died, he was 110 years old; ⁹ and they buried him near the boundary of his property in Timnat-Heres, in the hills of Efrayim, north of Mount Ga‘ash.

¹⁰ When that entire generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation arose that knew neither Adonai nor the work he had done for Isra’el. ¹¹ Then the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective and served the ba‘alim. ¹² They abandoned Adonai, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, selected from the gods of the peoples around them, and worshipped them; this made Adonai angry. ¹³ They abandoned Adonai and served Ba‘al and the ‘ashtarot. ¹⁴ The anger of Adonai blazed against Isra’el; and he handed them over to pillagers, who plundered them, and to their enemies around them; so that they could no longer resist their enemies. ¹⁵ Whenever they launched an attack, the power of Adonai was against them, so that things turned out badly — just as Adonai had said would happen and had sworn to them. They were in dire distress.

10 Now it is I myself, Sha’ul, making an appeal to you with the meekness and forbearance that come from the Messiah, I who am considered timid when face-to-face with you but intimidating from a distance. ² But I beg you not to force me to be intimidating when I am with you, as I expect to be toward some who regard us as living in a worldly way. ³ For although we do live in the world, we do not wage war in a worldly way; ⁴ because the weapons we use to wage war are not worldly. On the contrary, they have God’s power for demolishing strongholds. We demolish arguments ⁵ and every arrogance that raises itself up against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey the Messiah. ⁶ And when you have become completely obedient, then we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience.

⁷ You are looking at the surface of things. If anyone is convinced that he belongs to the Messiah, he should remind himself that we belong to the Messiah as much as he does. ⁸ For even if I boast a little too much about the authority the Lord has given us — authority to build you up, not tear you down — I am not ashamed. ⁹ My object is not to seem as if I were trying to frighten you with these letters. ¹⁰ Someone says, “His letters are weighty and powerful, but when he appears in person he is weak, and as a speaker he is nothing.” ¹¹ Such a person should realize that what we say in our letters when absent, we will do when present.