Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Book Four

Psalm 90

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

¹ Lord, You have been our dwelling place and our refuge in all generations [says Moses].

² Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed and given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

³ You turn man back to dust and corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]!

⁴ For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.^(A)

⁵ You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up—

⁶ In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers.

⁷ For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, and frightened away.

⁸ Our iniquities, our secret heart and its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance.

⁹ For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan].^(B)

¹⁰ The days of our years are ^[a]threescore years and ten (seventy years)—or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away.

¹¹ Who knows the power of Your anger? [Who worthily connects this brevity of life with Your recognition of sin?] And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent and worshipful fear that is due You?

¹² So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.

¹³ Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long—? Revoke Your sentence and be compassionate and at ease toward Your servants.

¹⁴ O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

¹⁵ Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us and to the years in which we have suffered evil.

¹⁶ Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children.

¹⁷ And let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands—yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it.

¹⁸ Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that You have brought me this far?

¹⁹ Then as if this were a little thing in Your eyes, O Lord God, You have spoken also of Your servant’s house in the far distant future. And this is the law for man, O Lord God!

²⁰ What more can David say to You? For You know Your servant, O Lord God.

²¹ Because of Your promise and as Your own heart dictates, You have done all these astounding things to make Your servant know and understand.

²² Therefore You are great, O Lord God; for none is like You, nor is there any God besides You, according to all [You have made] our ears to hear.

²³ What [other] one nation on earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem to be a people for Himself and to make for Himself a name? You have done great and terrible things for Yourself and for Your land, before Your people, whom You redeemed and delivered for Yourself from Egypt, from the nations and their gods.

²⁴ And You have established for Yourself Your people Israel to be Your people forever, and You, Lord, became their God.

²⁵ Now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word You have given as to Your servant and his house; and do as You have said,

²⁶ And Your name [and presence] shall be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is God over Israel; and the house of Your servant David will be made firm before You.

²⁷ For You, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, have revealed this to Your servant: I will build you a house. So Your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to You.

²⁸ And now, O Lord God, You are God, and Your words are truth, and You have promised this good thing to Your servant.

²⁹ Therefore now let it please You to bless the house of Your servant, that it may continue forever before You; for You, O Lord God, have spoken it, and with Your blessing let [his] house be blessed forever.

¹² Behold, I am coming soon, and I shall bring My wages and rewards with Me, to repay and render to each one just what his own actions and his own work merit.^(A)

¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last (the Before all and the End of all).^(B)

¹⁴ Blessed (happy and ^[a]to be envied) are those who cleanse their garments, that they may have the authority and right to [approach] the tree of life and to enter through the gates into the city.^(C)

¹⁵ [But] without are the dogs and those who practice sorceries (magic arts) and impurity [the lewd, adulterers] and the murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and deals in falsehood (untruth, error, deception, cheating).

¹⁶ I, Jesus, have sent My messenger (angel) to you to witness and to give you assurance of these things for the churches (assemblies). I am the Root (the Source) and the Offspring of David, the radiant and brilliant Morning Star.^(D)