◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 69:1-5 30-36 (God will save through water); Isaiah 41:14-20 (God gives water in the desert); John 1:29-34 (John’s account of Jesus’ baptism) (New English Translation)

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January 13, 2021

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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 69:1-5

Psalm 69^[a]

For the music director, according to the tune of “Lilies”;^[b] by David.

69 Deliver me, O God,
for the water has reached my neck.^[c]
²I sink into the deep mire
where there is no solid ground;^[d]
I am in^[e] deep water,
and the current overpowers me.
³I am exhausted from shouting for help.
My throat is sore;^[f]
my eyes grow tired from looking for my God.^[g]
⁴Those who hate me without cause
are more numerous than the hairs of my head.
Those who want to destroy me,
my enemies for no reason,^[h]
outnumber me.^[i]
They make me repay what I did not steal.^[j]
⁵O God, you are aware of my foolish sins;^[k]
my guilt is not hidden from you.^[l]

Psalm 69:30-36

³⁰I will sing praises to God’s name.^[a]
I will magnify him as I give him thanks.^[b]
³¹That will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull
with horns and hooves.
³²The oppressed look on—let them rejoice.
You who seek God,^[c] may you be encouraged.^[d]
³³For the Lord listens to the needy;
he does not despise his captive people.^[e]
³⁴Let the heavens and the earth praise him,
along with the seas and everything that swims in them.
³⁵For God will deliver Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah,
and his people^[f] will again live in them and possess Zion.^[g]
³⁶The descendants of his servants will inherit it,
and those who are loyal to him^[h] will live in it.^[i]

Isaiah 41:14-20

¹⁴Don’t be afraid, despised insignificant Jacob,^[a]
men of^[b] Israel.
I am helping you,” says the Lord,
your Protector,^[c] the Holy One of Israel.^[d]
¹⁵“Look, I am making you like^[e] a sharp threshing sledge,
new and double-edged.^[f]
You will thresh the mountains and crush them;
you will make the hills like straw.^[g]
¹⁶You will winnow them and the wind will blow them away;
the wind will scatter them.
You will rejoice in the Lord;
you will boast in the Holy One of Israel.
¹⁷The oppressed and the poor look for water, but there is none;
their tongues are parched from thirst.
I, the Lord, will respond to their prayers;^[h]
I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them.
¹⁸I will make streams flow down the slopes
and produce springs in the middle of the valleys.
I will turn the wilderness into a pool of water
and the arid land into springs.
¹⁹I will make cedars, acacias, myrtles, and olive trees grow in the wilderness;
I will make evergreens, firs, and cypresses grow together in the arid rift valley.^[i]
²⁰I will do this so^[j] people^[k] will observe and recognize,
so they will pay attention and understand
that the Lord’s power^[l] has accomplished this,
and that the Holy One of Israel has brought it into being.^[m]

John 1:29-34

²⁹On the next day John^[a] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God^[b] who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am,^[c] because he existed before me.’ ³¹I did not recognize^[d] him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel.”^[e]

³²Then^[f] John testified,^[g] “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove^[h] from heaven,^[i] and it remained on him.^[j] ³³And I did not recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining—this is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴I have both seen and testified that this man is the Chosen One of God.”^[k]

Footnotes

John 1:29 tn Grk “he”; the referent (John) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
John 1:29 sn Gen 22:8 is an important passage in the background of the title Lamb of God as applied to Jesus. In Jewish thought this was held to be a supremely important sacrifice. G. Vermès stated: “For the Palestinian Jew, all lamb sacrifice, and especially the Passover lamb and the Tamid offering, was a memorial of the Akedah with its effects of deliverance, forgiveness of sin and messianic salvation” (Scripture and Tradition in Judaism [StPB], 225).
John 1:30 tn Or “has a higher rank than I.”
John 1:31 tn Or “know.”
John 1:31 sn John the Baptist, who has been so reluctant to elaborate his own role, now more than willingly gives his testimony about Jesus. For the author, the emphasis is totally on John the Baptist as a witness to Jesus. No attention is given to the Baptist’s call to national repentance and very little to his baptizing. Everything is focused on what he has to say about Jesus: so that he could be revealed to Israel.
John 1:32 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events in the narrative. Greek style often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” but English style generally does not.
John 1:32 tn Grk “testified, saying.” The participle λέγων (legōn) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.
John 1:32 sn The phrase like a dove is a descriptive comparison. The Spirit is not a dove, but descended like one in some sort of bodily representation.
John 1:32 tn Or “from the sky.” The Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context.
John 1:32 sn John says the Spirit remained on Jesus. The Greek verb μένω (menō) is a favorite Johannine word, used 40 times in the Gospel and 27 times in the Epistles (67 together) against 118 times total in the NT. The general significance of the verb μένω for John is to express the permanency of relationship between Father and Son and Son and believer. Here the use of the word implies that Jesus permanently possesses the Holy Spirit, and because he does, he will dispense the Holy Spirit to others in baptism. Other notes on the dispensation of the Spirit occur at John 3:5 and following (at least implied by the wordplay), John 3:34; 7:38-39, numerous passages in John 14-16 (the Paraclete passages) and John 20:22. Note also the allusion to Isa 42:1—“Behold my servant…my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my Spirit on him.”
John 1:34 tc ‡ What did John the Baptist declare about Jesus on this occasion? Did he say, “This is the Son of God” (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, houtos estin ho huios tou theou), or “This is the Chosen One of God” (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκλεκτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, houtos estin ho eklektos tou theou)? The majority of the witnesses, impressive because of their diversity in age and locales, read “This is the Son of God” (so P^66,75 A B C L Θ Ψ 0233^vid ƒ^1,13 33 1241 aur c f l q bo as well as the majority of Byzantine minuscules and many others). Most scholars take this to be sufficient evidence to regard the issue as settled without much of a need to reflect on internal evidence. On the other hand, one of the earliest mss for this verse, P⁵ (3rd century), evidently read οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκλεκτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ. (There is a gap in the ms at the point of the disputed words; it is too large for υἱός especially if written, as it surely would have been, as a nomen sacrum [uMs]. The term ἐκλεκτός was not a nomen sacrum and would have therefore taken up much more space [eklektos]. Given these two variants, there is hardly any question as to what P⁵ read.) This papyrus has many affinities with א*, which here also has ὁ ἐκλεκτός. In addition to their combined testimony P^106vid b e ff^2* sy^s,c also support this reading. P¹⁰⁶ is particularly impressive, for it is a second third-century papyrus in support of ὁ ἐκλεκτός. A third reading combines these two: “the elect Son” (electus filius in ff^2c sa and a [with slight variation]). Although the evidence for ἐκλεκτός is not as impressive as that for υἱός, the reading is found in early Alexandrian and Western witnesses. Turning to the internal evidence, “the Chosen One” clearly comes out ahead. “Son of God” is a favorite expression of the author (cf. 1:49; 3:18; 5:25; 10:36; 11:4, 27; 19:7; 20:31); further, there are several other references to “his Son,” “the Son,” etc. Scribes would be naturally motivated to change ἐκλεκτός to υἱός since the latter is both a Johannine expression and is, on the surface, richer theologically in 1:34. On the other hand, there is not a sufficient reason for scribes to change υἱός to ἐκλεκτός. The term never occurs in John; even its verbal cognate (ἐκλέγω, eklegō) is never affirmed of Jesus in this Gospel. ἐκλεκτός clearly best explains the rise of υἱός. Further, the third reading (“Chosen Son of God”) is patently a conflation of the other two. It has all the earmarks of adding υἱός to ἐκλεκτός. Thus, ὁ υἱός τοῦ θεοῦ is almost certainly a motivated reading. As R. E. Brown notes (John [AB], 1:57), “On the basis of theological tendency…it is difficult to imagine that Christian scribes would change ‘the Son of God’ to ‘God’s chosen one,’ while a change in the opposite direction would be quite plausible. Harmonization with the Synoptic accounts of the baptism (‘You are [This is] my beloved Son’) would also explain the introduction of ‘the Son of God’ into John; the same phenomenon occurs in vi 69. Despite the weaker textual evidence, therefore, it seems best—with Lagrange, Barrett, Boismard, and others—to accept ‘God’s chosen one’ as original.”

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 69[a]

For the music director, according to the tune of “Lilies”;[b] by David.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Footnotes

Footnotes

Psalm 69^[a]

For the music director, according to the tune of “Lilies”;^[b] by David.