Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹² Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah, the people that he hath chosen for his inheritance!

¹³ Jehovah looketh from the heavens; he beholdeth all the sons of men:

¹⁴ From the place of his habitation he looketh forth upon all the inhabitants of the earth;

¹⁵ He who fashioneth the hearts of them all, who considereth all their works.

¹⁶ The king is not saved by the multitude of [his] forces; a mighty man is not delivered by much strength.

¹⁷ The horse is a vain thing for safety; neither doth he deliver by his great power.

¹⁸ Behold, the eye of Jehovah is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his loving-kindness,

¹⁹ To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.

²⁰ Our soul waiteth for Jehovah: he is our help and our shield.

²¹ For in him shall our heart rejoice, because we have confided in his holy name.

²² Let thy loving-kindness, O Jehovah, be upon us, according as we have hoped in thee.

6 There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it is frequent among men:

² one to whom God giveth riches, wealth, and honour, and he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and a sore evil.

³ If a man beget a hundred [sons], and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, but his soul be not filled with good, and also he have no burial, I say an untimely birth is better than he.

⁴ For it cometh in vanity, and departeth in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness;

⁵ moreover it hath not seen nor known the sun: this hath rest rather than the other.

⁶ Yea, though he live twice a thousand years, yet hath he seen no good: do not all go to one place?

7 And the high priest said, Are these things then so?

² And he said, Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,

³ and said to him, Go out of thy land and out of thy kindred, and come into the land which I will shew thee.

⁴ Then going out of the land of the Chaldeans he dwelt in Charran, and thence, after his father died, he removed him into this land in which *ye* now dwell.

⁵ And he did not give him an inheritance in it, not even what his foot could stand on; and promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when he had no child.

⁶ And God spoke thus: His seed shall be a sojourner in a strange land, and they shall enslave them and evil entreat [them] four hundred years;

⁷ and the nation to which they shall be in bondage will *I* judge, said God; and after these things they shall come forth and serve me in this place.

⁸ And he gave to him [the] covenant of circumcision; and thus he begat Isaac and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac Jacob, and Jacob the twelve patriarchs.