Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A National Song of Triumph[a]
68 God rises up and scatters his enemies.
Those who hate him run away in defeat.
2 As smoke is blown away, so he drives them off;
as wax melts in front of the fire,
so do the wicked perish in God's presence.
3 But the righteous are glad and rejoice in his presence;
they are happy and shout for joy.
4 Sing to God, sing praises to his name;
prepare a way for him who rides on the clouds.[b]
His name is the Lord—be glad in his presence!
5 God, who lives in his sacred Temple,
cares for orphans and protects widows.
6 He gives the lonely a home to live in
and leads prisoners out into happy freedom,
but rebels will have to live in a desolate land.
7 O God, when you led your people,
when you marched across the desert,
8 (A)the earth shook, and the sky poured down rain,
because of the coming of the God of Sinai,[c]
the coming of the God of Israel.
9 You caused abundant rain to fall
and restored your worn-out land;
10 your people made their home there;
in your goodness you provided for the poor.
19 Praise the Lord,
who carries our burdens day after day;
he is the God who saves us.
20 Our God is a God who saves;
he is the Lord, our Lord,
who rescues us from death.
29 Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. He went through Gilead and Manasseh and returned to Mizpah in Gilead and went on to Ammon. 30 Jephthah promised the Lord: “If you will give me victory over the Ammonites, 31 I will burn as an offering the first person that comes out of my house to meet me, when I come back from the victory. I will offer that person to you as a sacrifice.”
32 So Jephthah crossed the river to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave him victory. 33 He struck at them from Aroer to the area around Minnith, twenty cities in all, and as far as Abel Keramim. There was a great slaughter, and the Ammonites were defeated by Israel.
Jephthah's Daughter
34 When Jephthah went back home to Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him, dancing and playing the tambourine. She was his only child. 35 (A)When he saw her, he tore his clothes in sorrow and said, “Oh, my daughter! You are breaking my heart! Why must it be you that causes me pain? I have made a solemn promise to the Lord, and I cannot take it back!”
36 She told him, “If you have made a promise to the Lord, do what you said you would do to me, since the Lord has given you revenge on your enemies, the Ammonites.” 37 But she asked her father, “Do this one thing for me. Leave me alone for two months, so that I can go with my friends to wander in the mountains and grieve that I must die a virgin.” 38 He told her to go and sent her away for two months. She and her friends went up into the mountains and grieved because she was going to die unmarried and childless. 39 After two months she came back to her father. He did what he had promised the Lord, and she died still a virgin.
This was the origin of the custom in Israel 40 that the Israelite women would go out for four days every year to grieve for the daughter of Jephthah of Gilead.
Paul Rebukes Peter at Antioch
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong. 12 Before some men who had been sent by James arrived there, Peter had been eating with the Gentile believers. But after these men arrived, he drew back and would not eat with the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who were in favor of circumcising them. 13 The other Jewish believers also started acting like cowards along with Peter; and even Barnabas was swept along by their cowardly action. 14 When I saw that they were not walking a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you have been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How, then, can you try to force Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.