Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 88

A song. A Psalm of the sons of Korah. To the Chief Musician; set to chant mournfully. A didactic or reflective poem of Heman the Ezrahite.

¹ O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried to You for help by day; at night I am in Your presence.^(A)

² Let my prayer come before You and really enter into Your presence; incline Your ear to my cry!

³ For I am full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol (the place of the dead).

⁴ I am counted among those who go down into the pit (the grave); I am like a man who has no help or strength [a mere shadow],

⁵ Cast away among the dead, like the slain that lie in a [nameless] grave, whom You [seriously] remember no more, and they are cut off from Your hand.

⁶ You have laid me in the depths of the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

⁷ Your wrath lies hard upon me, and You have afflicted me with all Your waves. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!^(B)

⁸ You have put my [familiar] friends far from me; You have made me an abomination to them. I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.

⁹ My eye grows dim because of sorrow and affliction. Lord, I have called daily on You; I have spread forth my hands to You.

¹⁰ Will You show wonders to the dead? Shall the departed arise and praise You? Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

¹¹ Shall Your steadfast love be declared in the grave? Or Your faithfulness in Abaddon (Sheol, as a place of ruin and destruction)?

¹² Shall Your wonders be known in the dark? And Your righteousness in the place of forgetfulness [where the dead forget and are forgotten]?

¹³ But to You I cry, O Lord; and in the morning shall my prayer come to meet You.

¹⁴ Lord, why do You cast me off? Why do You hide Your face from me?^(C)

¹⁵ I was afflicted and close to death from my youth up; while I suffer Your terrors I am distracted [I faint].

¹⁶ Your fierce wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me.

¹⁷ They surround me like a flood all day long; together they have closed in upon me.

¹⁸ Lover and friend have You put far from me; my familiar friends are darkness and the grave.

¹⁹ And if a woman has a discharge, her [regular] discharge of blood of her body, she shall be in her impurity or separation for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening.

²⁰ And everything that she lies on in her separation shall be unclean; everything also that she sits on shall be unclean.

²¹ And whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until evening.

²² Whoever touches anything she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until evening.

²³ And if her flow has stained her bed or anything on which she sat, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening.

²⁴ And if any man lie with her and her impurity be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.

²⁵ And if a woman has an issue of blood for many days, not during the time of her separation, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her [regular] impurity, all the days of the issue of her uncleanness she shall be as in the days of her impurity; she shall be unclean.^(A)

²⁶ Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be as the bed of her impurity, and whatever she sits on shall be unclean, as in her impurity.

²⁷ And whoever touches those things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until evening.

²⁸ But if she is cleansed of her discharge, then she shall wait seven days, and after that she shall be clean.

²⁹ And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest at the door of the Tent of Meeting;

³⁰ He shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and he shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge.

³¹ Thus you shall separate the Israelites from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling My tabernacle that is in the midst of them.

9 Now about the offering that is [to be made] for the saints (God’s people in Jerusalem), it is quite superfluous that I should write you;

² For I am well acquainted with your willingness (your readiness and your eagerness to promote it) and I have proudly told about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia (most of Greece) has been prepared since last year for this contribution; and [consequently] your enthusiasm has stimulated the majority of them.

³ Still, I am sending the brethren [on to you], lest our pride in you should be made an empty boast in this particular case, and so that you may be all ready, as I told them you would be;

⁴ Lest, if [any] Macedonians should come with me and find you unprepared [for this generosity], we, to say nothing of yourselves, be humiliated for our being so confident.

⁵ That is why I thought it necessary to urge these brethren to go to you before I do and make arrangements in advance for this bountiful, promised gift of yours, so that it may be ready, not as an extortion [wrung out of you] but as a generous and willing gift.