Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 92

A Psalm. A song for the Sabbath day.

¹ It is a good and delightful thing to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises [with musical accompaniment] to Your name, O Most High,

² To show forth Your loving-kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness by night,

³ With an instrument of ten strings and with the lute, with a solemn sound upon the lyre.

⁴ For You, O Lord, have made me glad by Your works; at the deeds of Your hands I joyfully sing.

¹² The [uncompromisingly] righteous shall flourish like the palm tree [be long-lived, stately, upright, useful, and fruitful]; they shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon [majestic, stable, durable, and incorruptible].

¹³ Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God.

¹⁴ [Growing in grace] they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap [of spiritual vitality] and [rich in the] verdure [of trust, love, and contentment].

¹⁵ [They are living memorials] to show that the Lord is upright and faithful to His promises; He is my Rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.^(A)

14 In the second year of Jehoash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel, Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah reigned.

² He was twenty-five years old when he began his twenty-nine-year reign in Jerusalem. His mother was Jehoaddin of Jerusalem.

³ He did right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David his [forefather]. He did all things as Joash his father did.

⁴ But the high places were not removed; the people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.

⁵ As soon as the kingdom was established in Amaziah’s hand, he slew his servants who had slain the king his father.^(A)

⁶ But he did not slay the children of the murderers, in compliance with what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, in which the Lord commanded, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall die for his own sin only.

⁷ Amaziah slew of Edom in the Valley of Salt 10,000, and took Sela (Greek petra [rock]) by war, and called it Joktheel, which is the name of it to this day.

⁸ Then Amaziah sent messengers to Jehoash son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, king of Israel, saying, Come, let us look one another in the face and test each other.

⁹ Jehoash king of Israel replied to Amaziah king of Judah, The thistle in Lebanon sent to the cedar in Lebanon, saying, Give your daughter to my son as wife. And a wild beast of Lebanon passed by and trampled the thistle [leaving the cedar unharmed].

¹⁰ You have indeed smitten Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Glory in that, and stay at home; for why should you meddle to your hurt and provoke calamity, causing you to fall, you and Judah with you?

¹¹ But Amaziah would not hear. So Jehoash king of Israel went up; and he and Amaziah king of Judah measured swords at Beth-shemesh, which belongs to Judah.

¹² But Judah was defeated by Israel, and every man fled home.

¹³ And Jehoash king of Israel captured Amaziah king of Judah, son of Joash, the son of Ahaziah, at Beth-shemesh, and came to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate, 400 cubits.

¹⁴ He seized all the gold and silver and all the vessels found in the Lord’s house and in the treasuries of the king’s house, also hostages, and returned to Samaria.

4 Again Jesus began to teach beside the lake. And a very great crowd gathered about Him, so that He got into a ship in order to sit in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was at the lakeside on the shore.

² And He taught them many things in parables (illustrations or comparisons put beside truths to explain them), and in His teaching He said to them:

³ Give attention to this! Behold, a sower went out to sow.

⁴ And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

⁵ Other seed [of the same kind] fell on ground full of rocks, where it had not much soil; and at once it sprang up, because it had no depth of soil;

⁶ And when the sun came up, it was scorched, and because it had not taken root, it withered away.

⁷ Other seed [of the same kind] fell among thorn plants, and the thistles grew and pressed together and utterly choked and suffocated it, and it yielded no grain.

⁸ And other seed [of the same kind] fell into good (well-adapted) soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing, and yielded up to thirty times as much, and sixty times as much, and even a hundred times as much as had been sown.

⁹ And He said, He who has ears to hear, let him be hearing [and let him ^[a]consider, and comprehend].

¹⁰ And as soon as He was alone, those who were around Him, with the Twelve [apostles], began to ask Him about the parables.

¹¹ And He said to them, To you has been entrusted the mystery of the kingdom of God [that is, ^[b]the secret counsels of God which are hidden from the ungodly]; but for those outside [^[c]of our circle] everything becomes a parable,

¹² In order that they may [indeed] look and look but not see and perceive, and may hear and hear but not grasp and comprehend, ^[d]lest haply they should turn again, and it [^[e]their willful rejection of the truth] should be forgiven them.^(A)

¹³ And He said to them, Do you not discern and understand this parable? How then is it possible for you to discern and understand all the parables?

¹⁴ The sower sows the Word.

¹⁵ The ones along the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, Satan comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them.

¹⁶ And in the same way the ones sown upon stony ground are those who, when they hear the Word, at once receive and accept and welcome it with joy;

¹⁷ And they have no real root in themselves, and so they endure for a little while; then when trouble or persecution arises on account of the Word, they immediately are offended (become displeased, indignant, resentful) and they stumble and fall away.

¹⁸ And the ones sown among the thorns are others who hear the Word;

¹⁹ Then the cares and anxieties of the world and distractions of the age, and the pleasure and delight and false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things creep in and choke and suffocate the Word, and it becomes fruitless.

²⁰ And those sown on the good (well-adapted) soil are the ones who hear the Word and receive and accept and welcome it and bear fruit—some thirty times as much as was sown, some sixty times as much, and some [even] a hundred times as much.