Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Deliver Me, O Lord

A Song of ^(A)Ascents.

The Proclamation of Cyrus

1 ^(A)In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, ^(B)that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so ^(C)that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:

² “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and ^(D)he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. ³ Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—^(E)he is the God who is in Jerusalem. ⁴ And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

⁵ Then rose up the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, ^(F)everyone whose spirit ^(G)God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. ⁶ And all who were about them ^(H)aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered. ^7 (I)Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that ^(J)Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. ⁸ Cyrus king of Persia brought these out in the charge of ^(K)Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to ^(L)Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. ⁹ And this was the number of them: ^(M)30 basins of gold, 1,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, ¹⁰ 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver, and 1,000 other vessels; ¹¹ all the vessels of gold and of silver were 5,400. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

Paul's Change of Plans

¹² For our boast is this, ^(A)the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity^[a] and ^(B)godly sincerity, ^(C)not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. ¹³ For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— ¹⁴ just as you did ^(D)partially understand us—that ^(E)on the day of our Lord Jesus ^(F)you will boast of us as ^(G)we will boast of you.

¹⁵ Because I was sure of this, ^(H)I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have ^(I)a second ^(J)experience of grace. ¹⁶ I wanted to visit you ^(K)on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. ¹⁷ Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans ^(L)according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? ¹⁸ As surely as ^(M)God is faithful, ^(N)our word to you has not been Yes and No. ¹⁹ For ^(O)the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, ^(P)Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but ^(Q)in him it is always Yes.