Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 54
To the Chief Musician; with stringed instruments. A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of David, when the Ziphites went and told Saul, David is hiding among us.
1 Save me, O God, by Your name; judge and vindicate me by Your mighty strength and power.
2 Hear my pleading and my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.
3 For strangers and insolent men are rising up against me, and violent men and ruthless ones seek and demand my life; they do not set God before them. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
4 Behold, God is my helper and ally; the Lord is my upholder and is with them who uphold my life.
5 He will pay back evil to my enemies; in Your faithfulness [Lord] put an end to them.
6 With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks and praise Your name, O Lord, for it is good.
7 For He has delivered me out of every trouble, and my eye has looked [in triumph] on my enemies.
6 But the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years.
2 And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel. Because of Midian the Israelites made themselves the dens which are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds.
3 For whenever Israel had sown their seed, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east came up against them.
4 They would encamp against them and destroy the crops as far as Gaza and leave no nourishment for Israel, and no ox or sheep or donkey.
5 For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came like locusts for multitude; both they and their camels could not be counted. So they wasted the land as they entered it.
6 And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites, and the Israelites cried to the Lord.
7 And when they cried to the Lord because of Midian,
8 The Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites, who said to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you forth out of the house of bondage.
9 And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out from before you and gave you their land.
10 And I said to you, I am the Lord your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But you have not obeyed My voice.
2 As for myself, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony and evidence or [a]mystery and secret of God [concerning what He has done through Christ for the salvation of men] in lofty words of eloquence or human philosophy and wisdom;
2 For I resolved to know nothing (to be acquainted with nothing, to make a display of the knowledge of nothing, and to be conscious of nothing) among you except Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and Him crucified.
3 And I was in ([b]passed into a state of) weakness and fear (dread) and great trembling [[c]after I had come] among you.
4 And my language and my message were not set forth in persuasive (enticing and plausible) words of wisdom, but they were in demonstration of the [Holy] Spirit and power [[d]a proof by the Spirit and power of God, operating on me and stirring in the minds of my hearers the most holy emotions and thus persuading them],
5 So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men (human philosophy), but in the power of God.
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation