◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 40:6-17 (Not sacrifice but divine mercy); Isaiah 48:12-21 (God saves the people through water); Matthew 9:14-17 (Christ the bridegroom the new wine) (New English Translation)

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January 22, 2020

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with thematically matched Old and New Testament readings.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 40:6-17

⁶Receiving sacrifices and offerings are not your primary concern.^[a]
You make that quite clear to me.^[b]
You do not ask for burnt sacrifices and sin offerings.
⁷Then I say,
“Look, I come!
What is written in the scroll pertains to me.^[c]
⁸I want to do what pleases you,^[d] my God.
Your law dominates my thoughts.”^[e]
⁹I have told the great assembly^[f] about your justice.^[g]
Look, I spare no words.^[h]
O Lord, you know this is true.
¹⁰I have not failed to tell about your justice;^[i]
I spoke about your reliability and deliverance.
I have not neglected to tell the great assembly about your loyal love and faithfulness.^[j]
¹¹O Lord, you do not withhold^[k] your compassion from me.
May your loyal love and faithfulness continually protect me!^[l]
¹²For innumerable dangers^[m] surround me.
My sins overtake me
so I am unable to see;
they outnumber the hairs of my head
so my strength fails me.^[n]
¹³Please be willing, O Lord, to rescue me!
O Lord, hurry and help me!^[o]
¹⁴May those who are trying to snatch away my life
be totally embarrassed and ashamed.^[p]
May those who want to harm me
be turned back and ashamed.^[q]
¹⁵May those who say to me, “Aha! Aha!”
be humiliated^[r] and disgraced.^[s]
¹⁶May all those who seek you be happy and rejoice in you.
May those who love to experience^[t] your deliverance say continually,^[u]
“May the Lord be praised!”^[v]
¹⁷I am oppressed and needy.^[w]
May the Lord pay attention to me.^[x]
You are my helper and my deliverer.
O my God, do not delay.

Footnotes

Psalm 40:6 tn Heb “sacrifice and offering you do not desire.” The statement is exaggerated for the sake of emphasis (see Ps 51:16 as well). God is pleased with sacrifices, but his first priority is obedience and loyalty (see 1 Sam 15:22). Sacrifices and offerings apart from genuine allegiance are meaningless (see Isa 1:11-20).
Psalm 40:6 tn Heb “ears you hollowed out for me.” The meaning of this odd expression is debated (this is the only collocation of “hollowed out” and “ears” in the OT). It may have been an idiomatic expression referring to making a point clear to a listener. The LXX has “but a body you have prepared for me,” a reading which is followed in Heb 10:5.
Psalm 40:7 tn Heb “in the roll of the scroll it is written concerning me.” Apparently the psalmist refers to the law of God (see v. 8), which contains the commandments God desires him to obey. If this is a distinctly royal psalm, then the psalmist/king may be referring specifically to the regulations of kingship prescribed in Deut 17:14-20. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 315.
Psalm 40:8 tn Or “your will.”
Psalm 40:8 tn Heb “your law [is] in the midst of my inner parts.” The “inner parts” are viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s thought life and moral decision making.
Psalm 40:9 sn The great assembly is also mentioned in Pss 22:25 and 35:18.
Psalm 40:9 tn Heb “I proclaim justice in the great assembly.” Though “justice” appears without a pronoun here, the Lord’s just acts are in view (see v. 10). His “justice” (צֶדֶק, tsedeq) is here the deliverance that originates in his justice; he protects and vindicates the one whose cause is just.
Psalm 40:9 tn Heb “Look! My lips I do not restrain.”
Psalm 40:10 tn Heb “your justice I have not hidden in the midst of my heart.”
Psalm 40:10 tn Heb “I have not hidden your loyal love and reliability.”
Psalm 40:11 tn Some (cf. NIV, NRSV) translate the verb as a request (“do not withhold”), but elsewhere in the psalms the second masculine singular prefixed form, when addressed to God and preceded by לֹא (loʾ), is always indicative in mood and never has the force of a prayer (see Pss 16:10; 22:2; 44:9 51:16-17; 60:10; 108:11; cf. NEB, NASB).
Psalm 40:11 tn In this line the psalmist makes the transition from confidence to petition (see v. 13). Since the prefixed verbal form in the preceding line is imperfect/indicative, one could take the verb in this line as imperfect as well and translate, “your loyal love and faithfulness continually protect me” (cf. NEB). However, the כִּי (ki) at the beginning of the next verse, if causal (“because”), is best understood as introducing a motivating argument in support of a petition. For this reason v. 11b is best taken as a prayer with the prefixed form being understood as jussive (cf. NIV, NRSV). For parallels to the proposed construction (jussive followed by כִּי + perfect introducing motivating argument), see Ps 25:21, as well as Pss 10:2-3; 22:8.
Psalm 40:12 tn Or “sinful deeds.” The Hebrew term used here can have a nonmoral nuance (“dangers”) or a moral one (“sinful deeds”) depending on the context. The next line (see “my sins”) seems to favor the moral sense, but the psalmist also speaks of enemies shortly after this (v. 14).
Psalm 40:12 tn Heb “and my heart abandons me.” The “heart” is here viewed as the seat of emotional strength and courage. For a similar idea see Ps 38:10.
Psalm 40:13 tn Heb “hurry to my help.” See Pss 22:19; 38:22.
Psalm 40:14 tn Heb “may they be embarrassed and ashamed together, the ones seeking my life to snatch it away.”
Psalm 40:14 tn The four prefixed verbal forms in this verse (“may those…be…embarrassed and ashamed…may those…be turned back and ashamed”) are understood as jussives. The psalmist is calling judgment down on his enemies.sn See Ps 35:4 for a similar prayer.
Psalm 40:15 tn The prefixed verbal form is understood as a jussive in this imprecation.
Psalm 40:15 tn Heb “May they be humiliated according to their shame, those who say to me, ‘Aha! Aha!’”
Psalm 40:16 tn Heb “those who love,” which stands metonymically for its cause, the experience of being delivered by the Lord.
Psalm 40:16 tn The three prefixed verbal forms prior to the quotation are understood as jussives. The psalmist balances out his imprecation against his enemies with a prayer of blessing upon the godly.
Psalm 40:16 tn The prefixed verbal form is taken as a jussive, “may the Lord be magnified [in praise].” Another option is to take the verb as an imperfect, “the Lord is great” (cf. NRSV). See Ps 35:27.
Psalm 40:17 sn See Pss 35:10; 37:14.
Psalm 40:17 tn The prefixed verbal form may be taken as a jussive of prayer (as in the present translation; cf. NIV) or as an imperfect, “The Lord will pay attention to me” (cf. NRSV). The parallel in Ps 70:5 has, “O God, hurry to me!” For this reason some prefer to emend יַחֲשָׁב (yakhashav, “may he pay attention”) to חוּשָׁה (khushah, “hurry!”). The syntax of the Hebrew text is awkward; elsewhere when the Qal of חָשַׁב (khashav, “reckon; consider”) is collocated with the preposition ל (lamed) and a pronominal suffix there is an accompanying direct object or additional prepositional phrase/adverbial accusative (see Gen 15:6; 2 Sam 19:19; Job 13:24; 19:11; 33:10; Pss 32:2; 41:7; Amos 6:5).

Isaiah 48:12-21

¹²Listen to me, O Jacob,
Israel, whom I summoned.
I am the one;
I am present at the very beginning
and at the very end.^[a]
¹³Yes, my hand founded the earth;
my right hand spread out the sky.
I summon them;
they stand together.
¹⁴All of you, gather together and listen!
Who among them^[b] announced these things?
The Lord’s ally^[c] will carry out his desire against Babylon;
he will exert his power against the Babylonians.^[d]
¹⁵I, I have spoken—
yes, I have summoned him;
I lead him and he will succeed.^[e]
¹⁶Approach me—listen to this!
From the very first I have not spoken in secret;
when it happens,^[f] I am there.”
So now, the Sovereign Lord has sent me, accompanied by his Spirit.^[g]
¹⁷This is what the Lord, your Protector,^[h] says,
the Holy One of Israel:^[i]
“I am the Lord your God,
who teaches you how to succeed,
who leads you in the way you should go.
¹⁸If only you had obeyed my^[j] commandments,
prosperity would have flowed to you like a river,^[k]
deliverance would have come to you like the waves of the sea.^[l]
¹⁹Your descendants would have been as numerous as sand,^[m]
and your children^[n] like its granules.
Their name would not have been cut off
and eliminated from my presence.^[o]
²⁰Leave Babylon!
Flee from the Babylonians!
Announce it with a shout of joy!
Make this known—
proclaim it throughout the earth!^[p]
Say, ‘The Lord protects^[q] his servant Jacob.
²¹They do not thirst as he leads them through dry regions;
he makes water flow out of a rock for them;
he splits open a rock and water flows out.’^[r]

Matthew 9:14-17

The Superiority of the New

¹⁴Then John’s^[a] disciples came to Jesus^[b] and asked, “Why do we and the Pharisees^[c] fast often,^[d] but your disciples don’t fast?” ¹⁵Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests^[e] cannot mourn while the bridegroom^[f] is with them, can they? But the days^[g] are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them,^[h] and then they will fast. ¹⁶No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, because the patch will pull away from the garment and the tear will be worse.^[i] ¹⁷And no one pours new wine into old wineskins;^[j] otherwise the skins burst and the wine is spilled out and the skins are destroyed. Instead they put new wine into new wineskins^[k] and both are preserved.”

Footnotes

Matthew 9:14 sn John refers to John the Baptist.
Matthew 9:14 tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
Matthew 9:14 sn See the note on Pharisees in 3:7.
Matthew 9:14 sn John’s disciples and the Pharisees followed typical practices with regard to fasting and prayer. Many Jews fasted regularly (Lev 16:29-34; 23:26-32; Num 29:7-11). The zealous fasted twice a week (cf. Luke 18:12) on Monday and Thursday (Didache 8:1).
Matthew 9:15 tn Grk “sons of the wedding hall,” an idiom referring to wedding guests, or more specifically friends of the bridegroom present at the wedding celebration (L&N 11.7).
Matthew 9:15 sn The expression while the bridegroom is with them is an allusion to messianic times (John 3:29; Isa 54:5-6; 62:4-5).
Matthew 9:15 tn Grk “days.”
Matthew 9:15 sn The statement the bridegroom will be taken from them is a veiled allusion by Jesus to his death, which he did not make explicit until the incident at Caesarea Philippi in 16:13ff. For Matthew it is unlikely this statement is meant to refer to fasting in the early church following Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation, since Matthew presents the post-resurrection period as a time of Jesus’ presence rather than his absence (18:20; 28:20). Nevertheless, this passage is frequently cited as a justification of the fasting practices of the early church (such a practice may be reflected in Didache 8:1).
Matthew 9:16 sn The point of the saying is the incompatibility of the old and the new, with Jesus and his disciples representing what is new. In the context this explains why Jesus and his disciples do not fast like the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist (v. 14).
Matthew 9:17 sn Wineskins were bags made of skin or leather, used for storing wine in NT times. As the new wine fermented and expanded, it would stretch the new wineskins. Putting new (unfermented) wine in old wineskins, which had already been stretched, would result in the bursting of the wineskins.
Matthew 9:17 sn The meaning of the saying new wine into new wineskins is that the presence and teaching of Jesus was something new and signaled the passing of the old. It could not be confined within the old religion of Judaism, but involved the inauguration and consummation of the kingdom of God.

New English Translation (NET)

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The Superiority of the New

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