Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁵ See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil.

¹⁶ [If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which] I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land into which you go to possess.

¹⁷ But if your [mind and] heart turn away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them,

¹⁸ I declare to you today that you shall surely perish, and you shall not live long in the land which you pass over the Jordan to enter and possess.

¹⁹ I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live

²⁰ And may love the Lord your God, obey His voice, and cling to Him. For He is your life and the length of your days, that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Psalm 119

¹ Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are the undefiled (the upright, truly sincere, and blameless) in the way [of the revealed will of God], who walk (order their conduct and conversation) in the law of the Lord (the whole of God’s revealed will).

² Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are they who keep His testimonies, and who seek, inquire for and of Him and crave Him with the whole heart.

³ Yes, they do no unrighteousness [no willful wandering from His precepts]; they walk in His ways.^(A)

⁴ You have commanded us to keep Your precepts, that we should observe them diligently.

⁵ Oh, that my ways were directed and established to observe Your statutes [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them]!

⁶ Then shall I not be put to shame [by failing to inherit Your promises] when I have respect to all Your commandments.

⁷ I will praise and give thanks to You with uprightness of heart when I learn [by sanctified experiences] Your righteous judgments [Your decisions against and punishments for particular lines of thought and conduct].

⁸ I will keep Your statutes; O forsake me not utterly.

3 However, brethren, I could not talk to you as to spiritual [men], but as to nonspiritual [men of the flesh, in whom the carnal nature predominates], as to mere infants [in the new life] in Christ [^[a]unable to talk yet!]

² I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet strong enough [to be ready for it]; but even yet you are not strong enough [to be ready for it],

³ For you are still [unspiritual, having the nature] of the flesh [under the control of ordinary impulses]. For as long as [there are] envying and jealousy and wrangling and factions among you, are you not unspiritual and of the flesh, behaving yourselves after a human standard and like mere (unchanged) men?

⁴ For when one says, I belong to Paul, and another, I belong to Apollos, are you not [proving yourselves] ordinary (unchanged) men?

⁵ What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Ministering servants [not heads of parties] through whom you believed, even as the Lord appointed to each his task:

⁶ I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.

⁷ So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.

⁸ He who plants and he who waters are equal (one in aim, of the same importance and esteem), yet each shall receive his own reward (wages), according to his own labor.

⁹ For we are fellow workmen (joint promoters, laborers together) with and for God; you are God’s ^[b]garden and vineyard and field under cultivation, [you are] God’s building.^(A)

²¹ You have heard that it was said to the men of old, You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be ^[a]liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the court.^(A)

²² But I say to you that everyone who continues to be ^[b]angry with his brother or harbors malice (enmity of heart) against him shall be ^[c]liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the court; and whoever speaks contemptuously and insultingly to his brother shall be ^[d]liable to and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, You ^[e]cursed fool! [You empty-headed idiot!] shall be ^[f]liable to and unable to escape the hell (Gehenna) of fire.

²³ So if when you are offering your gift at the altar you there remember that your brother has any [grievance] against you,

²⁴ Leave your gift at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift.

²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way traveling with him, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.

²⁶ Truly I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last fraction of a penny.

²⁷ You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.^(B)

²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who so much as looks at a woman with evil desire for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

²⁹ If your right eye serves as a trap to ensnare you or is an occasion for you to stumble and sin, pluck it out and throw it away. It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be cast into hell (Gehenna).

³⁰ And if your right hand serves as a trap to ensnare you or is an occasion for you to stumble and sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better that you lose one of your members than that your entire body should be cast into hell (Gehenna).

³¹ It has also been said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.

³² But I tell you, Whoever dismisses and repudiates and divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unfaithfulness (sexual immorality), causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who has been divorced commits adultery.^(C)

³³ Again, you have heard that it was said to the men of old, You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform your oaths to the Lord [as a religious duty].

³⁴ But I tell you, Do not bind yourselves by an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is the throne of God;

³⁵ Or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.^(D)

³⁶ And do not swear by your head, for you are not able to make a single hair white or black.

³⁷ Let your Yes be simply Yes, and your No be simply No; anything more than that comes from the evil one.^(E)