Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

31 Lord, I trust in you alone. Don’t let my enemies defeat me. Rescue me because you are the God who always does what is right. ² Answer quickly when I cry to you; bend low and hear my whispered plea.^[a] Be for me a great Rock of safety from my foes. ³ Yes, you are my Rock and my fortress; honor your name by leading me out of this peril. ⁴ Pull me from the trap my enemies have set for me. For you alone are strong enough.^{[b] 5-6} Into your hand I commit my spirit.

You have rescued me, O God who keeps his promises. I worship only you; how you hate all those who worship idols, those imitation gods.

^14-15 But I am trusting you, O Lord. I said, “You alone are my God; my times are in your hands. Rescue me from those who hunt me down relentlessly. ¹⁶ Let your favor shine again upon your servant; save me just because you are so kind!

3 One day as Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro,^[a] the priest of Midian, out at the edge of the desert near Horeb, the mountain of God, ² suddenly the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him as a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw that the bush was on fire and that it didn’t burn up, ^3-4 he went over to investigate. Then God called out to him, “Moses! Moses!”

“Who is it?” Moses asked.

⁵ “Don’t come any closer,” God told him. “Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. ⁶ I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Moses covered his face with his hands, for he was afraid to look at God.)

⁷ Then the Lord told him, “I have seen the deep sorrows of my people in Egypt and have heard their pleas for freedom from their harsh taskmasters. ⁸ I have come to deliver them from the Egyptians and to take them out of Egypt into a good land, a large land, a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. ⁹ Yes, the wail of the people of Israel has risen to me in heaven, and I have seen the heavy tasks the Egyptians have oppressed them with. ¹⁰ Now I am going to send you to Pharaoh, to demand that he let you lead my people out of Egypt.”

¹¹ “But I’m not the person for a job like that!” Moses exclaimed.

¹² Then God told him, “I will certainly be with you, and this is the proof that I am the one who is sending you: When you have led the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God here upon this mountain!”

7 Then the High Priest asked him, “Are these accusations true?”

² This was Stephen’s lengthy reply: “The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Iraq^[a] before he moved to Syria, ³ and told him to leave his native land, to say good-bye to his relatives and to start out for a country that God would direct him to. ⁴ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, in Syria, until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land of Israel, ⁵ but gave him no property of his own, not one little tract of land.

“However, God promised that eventually the whole country would belong to him and his descendants—though as yet he had no children! ⁶ But God also told him that these descendants of his would leave the land and live in a foreign country and there become slaves for 400 years. ⁷ ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God told him, ‘and afterwards my people will return to this land of Israel and worship me here.’

⁸ “God also gave Abraham the ceremony of circumcision at that time, as evidence of the covenant between God and the people of Abraham. And so Isaac, Abraham’s son, was circumcised when he was eight days old. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Jewish nation. ⁹ These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.

¹¹ “But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan, and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, ¹² Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons^[b] to buy some. ¹³ The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. ¹⁵ So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. ¹⁶ All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.