Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 146

¹ Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!) Praise the Lord, O my soul!

² While I live will I praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have any being.

³ Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴ When his breath leaves him, he returns to his earth; in that very day his [previous] thoughts, plans, and purposes perish.^(A)

⁵ Happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) is he who has the God of [special revelation to] Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God,^(B)

⁶ Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, Who keeps truth and is faithful forever,

⁷ Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets free the prisoners,

⁸ The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the [uncompromisingly] righteous (those upright in heart and in right standing with Him).^(C)

⁹ The Lord protects and preserves the strangers and temporary residents, He upholds the fatherless and the widow and sets them upright, but the way of the wicked He makes crooked (turns upside down and brings to ruin).

¹⁰ The Lord shall reign forever, even Your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)^(D)

32 Behold, a ^[a]King will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice.

² And each one of them shall be like a hiding place from the wind and a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land [to those who turn to them].

³ Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed or dimmed, and the ears of those who hear will listen.

⁴ And the mind of the rash will understand knowledge and have good judgment, and the tongue of the stammerers will speak readily and plainly.

⁵ The fool (the unbeliever and the ungodly) will no more be called noble, nor the crafty and greedy [for gain] said to be bountiful and princely.

⁶ For the fool speaks folly and his mind plans iniquity: practicing profane ungodliness and speaking error concerning the Lord, leaving the craving of the hungry unsatisfied and causing the drink of the thirsty to fail.

⁷ The instruments and methods of the fraudulent and greedy [for gain] are evil; he devises wicked devices to ruin the poor and the lowly with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is just and right.

⁸ But the noble, openhearted, and liberal man devises noble things; and he stands for what is noble, openhearted, and generous.

¹² All who have sinned without the Law will also perish without [regard to] the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged and condemned by the Law.

¹³ For it is not merely hearing the Law [read] that makes one righteous before God, but it is the doers of the Law who will be held guiltless and acquitted and justified.

¹⁴ When Gentiles who have not the [divine] Law do instinctively what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, since they do not have the Law.

¹⁵ They show that the essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts and are operating there, with which their consciences (sense of right and wrong) also bear witness; and their [moral] ^[a]decisions (their arguments of reason, their condemning or approving ^[b]thoughts) will accuse or perhaps defend and excuse [them]

¹⁶ On that day when, as my Gospel proclaims, God by Jesus Christ will judge men in regard to ^[c]the things which they conceal (their hidden thoughts).^(A)