Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
139 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David:
(1) Adonai, you have probed me, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I stand up,
you discern my inclinations from afar,
3 you scrutinize my daily activities.
You are so familiar with all my ways
4 that before I speak even a word, Adonai,
you know all about it already.
5 You have hemmed me in both behind and in front
and laid your hand on me.
6 Such wonderful knowledge is beyond me,
far too high for me to reach.
13 For you fashioned my inmost being,
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I thank you because I am awesomely made,
wonderfully; your works are wonders —
I know this very well.
15 My bones were not hidden from you
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes could see me as an embryo,
but in your book all my days were already written;
my days had been shaped
before any of them existed.
17 God, how I prize your thoughts!
How many of them there are!
18 If I count them, there are more than grains of sand;
if I finish the count, I am still with you.
16 But then Adonai raised up judges, who rescued them from the power of those who were plundering them. 17 Yet they did not pay attention to their judges, but made whores of themselves to other gods and worshipped them; they quickly turned away from the path on which their ancestors had walked, the way of obeying Adonai’s mitzvot — they failed to do this. 18 When Adonai raised up judges for them, Adonai was with the judge and delivered them from the hands of their enemies throughout the lifetime of the judge; for Adonai was moved to pity by their groaning under those oppressing and crushing them. 19 But after the judge died, they would relapse into worse behavior than that of their ancestors, following other gods to serve and worship them; they abandoned none of their practices or stubborn ways. 20 So the anger of Adonai blazed against Isra’el; he said, “Because this nation violates my covenant, which I ordered their fathers to obey; and they don’t pay attention to what I say; 21 in the future, I will not expel ahead of them any of the nations that Y’hoshua left when he died. 22 This is how I will test Isra’el, to see whether or not they will keep the way of Adonai, living according to it, as their ancestors did.” 23 So Adonai allowed those nations to remain where they were, without quickly driving them out; he did not hand them over to Y’hoshua.
16 So Sha’ul stood, motioned with his hand, and said:
“Men of Isra’el and God-fearers, listen! 17 The God of this people Isra’el chose our fathers. He made the people great during the time when they were living as aliens in Egypt and with a stretched-out arm he led them out of that land.[a] 18 For some forty years[b] he took care of them in the desert, 19 and after he had destroyed seven nations[c] in the land of Kena‘an he gave their land to his people as an inheritance. 20 All this took about 450 years. After that, he gave them judges,[d] down to the prophet Sh’mu’el. 21 Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Sha’ul Ben-Kish, a man from the tribe of Binyamin. After forty years, 22 God removed him and raised up David as king for them, making his approval known with these words, ‘I found David Ben-Yishai to be a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want.’[e]
23 “In keeping with his promise, God has brought to Isra’el from this man’s descendants a deliverer, Yeshua. 24 Now before the coming of Yeshua, Yochanan proclaimed to all the people of Isra’el an immersion in connection with turning to God from sin. 25 But as Yochanan was ending his work, he said, ‘Who do you suppose I am? Well — I’m not! But after me is coming someone, the sandals of whose feet I am unworthy to untie.’
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.