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September 5, 2022

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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 101

Psalm 101^[a]

A psalm of David.

101 I will sing about loyalty and justice.
To you, O Lord, I will sing praises.
²I will walk^[b] in the way of integrity.
When will you come to me?
I will conduct my business with integrity in the midst of my palace.^[c]
³I will not even consider doing what is dishonest.^[d]
I hate doing evil;^[e]
I will have no part of it.^[f]
⁴I will have nothing to do with a perverse person;^[g]
I will not permit^[h] evil.
⁵I will destroy anyone who slanders his neighbor in secret.
I will not tolerate anyone who has a haughty demeanor and an arrogant attitude.^[i]
⁶I will favor the honest people of the land,^[j]
and allow them to live with me.^[k]
Those who walk in the way of integrity will attend me.^[l]
⁷Deceitful people will not live in my palace.^[m]
Liars will not be welcome in my presence.^[n]
⁸Each morning I will destroy all the wicked people in the land,
and remove all evildoers from the city of the Lord.

2 Kings 17:24-41

The King of Assyria Populates Israel with Foreigners

²⁴The king of Assyria brought foreigners^[a] from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them in the cities of Samaria^[b] in place of the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. ²⁵When they first moved in,^[c] they did not worship^[d] the Lord. So the Lord sent lions among them and the lions were killing them. ²⁶The king of Assyria was told,^[e] “The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the requirements of the God of the land, so he has sent lions among them. They are killing the people^[f] because they do not know the requirements of the God of the land.” ²⁷So the king of Assyria ordered, “Take back one of the priests whom you^[g] deported from there. He must settle there and teach them the requirements of the God of the land.”^[h] ²⁸So one of the priests whom they had deported from Samaria went back and settled in Bethel. He taught them how to worship^[i] the Lord.

²⁹But each of these nations made^[j] its own gods and put them in the shrines on the high places that the people of Samaria^[k] had made. Each nation did this in the cities where they lived. ³⁰The people from Babylon made Sukkoth Benoth,^[l] the people from Cuth made Nergal,^[m] the people from Hamath made Ashima,^[n] ³¹the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak,^[o] and the Sepharvites burned their sons in the fire as an offering to Adrammelech and Anammelech,^[p] the gods of Sepharvaim. ³²At the same time they worshiped^[q] the Lord. They appointed some of their own people to serve as priests in the shrines on the high places.^[r] ³³They were worshiping^[s] the Lord and at the same time serving their own gods in accordance with the practices of the nations from which they had been deported.

³⁴To this very day they observe their earlier practices. They do not worship^[t] the Lord; they do not obey the rules, regulations, law, and commandments that the Lord gave^[u] the descendants of Jacob, whom he renamed Israel. ³⁵The Lord made a covenant with them^[v] and instructed them, “You must not worship other gods. Do not bow down to them, serve them, or offer sacrifices to them. ³⁶Instead you must worship the Lord, who brought you up from the land of Egypt by his great power and military ability;^[w] bow down to him and offer sacrifices to him. ³⁷You must carefully obey at all times the rules, regulations, law, and commandments he wrote down for you. You must not worship other gods. ³⁸You must never forget the covenant I made with you, and you must not worship other gods. ³⁹Instead you must worship the Lord your God; then he will rescue you from the power of all your enemies.” ⁴⁰But they^[x] paid no attention; instead they observed their earlier practices. ⁴¹These nations were worshiping the Lord and at the same time serving their idols; their sons and grandsons are doing just as their fathers have done, to this very day.

Footnotes

2 Kings 17:24 tn The object is supplied in the translation.
2 Kings 17:24 sn In vv. 24-29 Samaria stands for the entire northern kingdom of Israel.
2 Kings 17:25 tn Heb “in the beginning of their living there.”
2 Kings 17:25 tn Heb “fear.”
2 Kings 17:26 tn Heb “and they said to the king of Assyria, saying.” The plural subject of the verb is indefinite.
2 Kings 17:26 tn Heb “Look, they are killing them.”
2 Kings 17:27 tc The second plural subject may refer to the leaders of the Assyrian army. However, some prefer to read “whom I deported,” changing the verb to a first person singular form with a third masculine plural pronominal suffix. This reading has some support from Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic witnesses.
2 Kings 17:27 tc Heb “and let them go and let them live there, and let him teach them the requirements of the God of the land.” The two plural verbs seem inconsistent with the preceding and following contexts, where only one priest is sent back to Samaria. The singular has the support of Greek, Syriac, and Latin witnesses.
2 Kings 17:28 tn Heb “fear.”
2 Kings 17:29 sn The verb “make” refers to the production of idols. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 210-11.
2 Kings 17:29 tn Heb “Samaritans.” This refers to the Israelites who had been deported from the land.
2 Kings 17:30 sn No deity is known by the name Sukkoth Benoth in extant Mesopotamian literature. For speculation as to the identity of this deity, see M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 211.
2 Kings 17:30 sn Nergal was a Mesopotamian god of the underworld.
2 Kings 17:30 sn This deity is unknown in extra-biblical literature. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 211-12.
2 Kings 17:31 sn Nibhaz and Tartak were two Elamite deities. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 212.
2 Kings 17:31 sn Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of the Sepharvaim are unknown in extra-biblical literature. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 212.
2 Kings 17:32 tn Heb “feared.”
2 Kings 17:32 tn Heb “and they appointed for themselves from their whole people priests for the high places and they were serving for them in the house[s] of the high places.”
2 Kings 17:33 tn Heb “fearing.”
2 Kings 17:34 tn Heb “fear.”
2 Kings 17:34 tn Heb “commanded.”
2 Kings 17:35 sn That is, the descendants of Jacob/Israel (see v. 35b).
2 Kings 17:36 tn Heb “and outstretched arm.”
2 Kings 17:40 sn This refers to the foreigners whom the king of Assyria settled in the land (see v. 35a).

1 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Conduct in God’s Church

¹⁴I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions^[a] to you ¹⁵in case I am delayed, to let you know how people ought to conduct themselves^[b] in the household of God, because it is^[c] the church of the living God, the support and bulwark of the truth. ¹⁶And we all agree,^[d] our religion contains amazing revelation:^[e]

He^[f] was revealed in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,^[g]
seen by angels,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.

Timothy’s Ministry in the Later Times

4 Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and occupy themselves^[h] with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings,^[i] ²influenced by the hypocrisy of liars^[j] whose consciences are seared.^[k] ³They will prohibit marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. ⁴For every creation of God is good and no food^[l] is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. ⁵For it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.

Footnotes

1 Timothy 3:14 tn Grk “these things.” sn These instructions refer to the instructions about local church life, given in 1 Tim 2:1-3:13.
1 Timothy 3:15 tn Grk “how it is necessary to behave.”
1 Timothy 3:15 tn Grk “which is” (but the relative clause shows the reason for such conduct).
1 Timothy 3:16 tn Grk “confessedly, admittedly, most certainly.”
1 Timothy 3:16 tn Grk “great is the mystery of [our] religion,” or “great is the mystery of godliness.” The word “mystery” denotes a secret previously hidden in God, but now revealed and made widely known (cf. Rom 16:25; 1 Cor 2:7; 4:1; Eph 1:9; 3:3, 4, 9; 6:19; Col 1:26-27; 4:3). “Religion” (εὐσέβεια, eusebeia) is a word used frequently in the pastorals with a range of meanings: (1) a certain attitude toward God—“devotion, reverence”; (2) the conduct that befits that attitude—“godliness, piety”; and (3) the whole system of belief and approach to God that forms the basis for such attitude and conduct—“religion, creed.” See BDAG 412-13 s.v.; 2 Tim 3:5; 4 Macc 9:6-7, 29-30; 15:1-3; 17:7. So the following creedal statements are illustrations of the great truths that the church is charged with protecting (v. 15).
1 Timothy 3:16 tc The Byzantine text along with a few other witnesses (א³ A^c C² D² Ψ [88] 1241 1505 1739 1881 M al vg^ms) read θεός (theos, “God”) for ὅς (hos, “who”). Most significant among these witnesses is 1739; the second correctors of some of the other mss tend to conform to the medieval standard, the Byzantine text, and add no independent voice to the textual problem. At least two mss have ὁ θεός (69 88), a reading that is a correction on the anarthrous θεός. On the other side, the masculine relative pronoun ὅς is strongly supported by א* A* C* F G 33 365 1175 Did Epiph. Significantly, D* and virtually the entire Latin tradition read the neuter relative pronoun, ὅ (ho, “which”), a reading that indirectly supports ὅς since it could not easily have been generated if θεός had been in the text. Thus, externally, there is no question as to what should be considered the Ausgangstext: The Alexandrian and Western traditions are decidedly in favor of ὅς. Internally, the evidence is even stronger. What scribe would change θεός to ὅς intentionally? “Who” is not only a theologically pale reading by comparison; it also is much harder (since the relative pronoun has no obvious antecedent, probably the reason for the neuter pronoun of the Western tradition). Intrinsically, the rest of 3:16, beginning with ὅς, appears to form a hymn with six strophes. As such, it is a text that is seemingly incorporated into the letter without syntactical connection. Hence, not only should we not look for an antecedent for ὅς (as is often done by commentators), but the relative pronoun thus is not too hard a reading (or impossible, as Dean Burgon believed). Once the genre is taken into account, the relative pronoun fits neatly into the author’s style (cf. also Col 1:15; Phil 2:6 for other places in which the relative pronoun begins a hymn, as was often the case in poetry of the day). On the other hand, with θεός written as a nomen sacrum, it would have looked very much like the relative pronoun: q-=s vs. os. Thus, it may have been easy to confuse one for the other. This, of course, does not solve which direction the scribes would go, although given their generally high Christology and the bland and ambiguous relative pronoun, it is doubtful that they would have replaced θεός with ὅς. How then should we account for θεός? It appears that sometime after the 2nd century the θεός reading came into existence, either via confusion with ὅς or as an intentional alteration to magnify Christ and clear up the syntax at the same time. Once it got in, this theologically rich reading was easily able to influence all the rest of the mss it came in contact with (including mss already written, such as א A C D). That this reading did not arise until after the 2nd century is evident from the Western reading, ὅ. The neuter relative pronoun is certainly a “correction” of ὅς, conforming the gender to that of the neuter μυστήριον (mustērion, “mystery”). What is significant in this reading is (1) since virtually all the Western witnesses have either the masculine or neuter relative pronoun, the θεός reading was apparently unknown to them in the 2nd century (when the “Western” text seems to have originated, though its place of origination was most likely in the east); they thus supply strong indirect evidence of ὅς outside of Egypt in the 2nd century; (2) even 2nd century scribes were liable to misunderstand the genre, feeling compelled to alter the masculine relative pronoun because it appeared to them to be too harsh. The evidence, therefore, for ὅς is quite compelling, both externally and internally. As TCGNT 574 notes, “no uncial (in the first hand) earlier than the eighth or ninth century (Ψ) supports θεός; all ancient versions presuppose ὅς or ὅ; and no patristic writer prior to the last third of the fourth century testifies to the reading θεός.” Thus, the cries of certain groups that θεός has to be original must be seen as special pleading. To argue that heretics tampered with the text here is self-defeating, for most of the Western fathers who quoted the verse with the relative pronoun were quite orthodox, strongly affirming the deity of Christ. They would have dearly loved such a reading as θεός. Further, had heretics introduced a variant to θεός, a far more natural choice would have been Χριστός (Christos, “Christ”) or κύριος (kurios, “Lord”), since the text is self-evidently about Christ, but it is not self-evidently a proclamation of his deity. (See ExSyn 341-42, for a summary discussion on this issue and additional bibliographic references.)tn Grk “who.”sn This passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.
1 Timothy 3:16 tn Or “in spirit.”
1 Timothy 4:1 tn Or “desert the faith by occupying themselves.”
1 Timothy 4:1 tn Grk “teachings of demons” (speaking of the source of these doctrines).
1 Timothy 4:2 tn Grk “in the hypocrisy of liars.”
1 Timothy 4:2 tn Or “branded.” The Greek verb καυστηριάζω (kaustēriazō) can be used to refer either to the cause (“brand”) or the effect (“seared”).sn Consciences are seared. The precise meaning of this phrase is somewhat debated. Three primary interpretations are (1) the consciences of these false teachers are “branded” with Satan’s mark to indicate ownership, (2) their consciences are “branded” with a penal mark to show they are lawbreakers, or (3) their consciences have been “seared” (i.e., totally burnt and desensitized) so that they are unable to notice the difference between right and wrong. See G. W. Knight, Pastoral Epistles (NIGTC), 189.
1 Timothy 4:4 tn Grk “nothing.”

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 101[a]

A psalm of David.

Footnotes

The King of Assyria Populates Israel with Foreigners

Footnotes

Conduct in God’s Church

Timothy’s Ministry in the Later Times

Footnotes

Psalm 101^[a]