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.

⁵ Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years.

⁶ In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried the Israelites away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.

⁷ This was so because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, Who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods

⁸ And walked in the customs of the [heathen] nations whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites, customs the kings of Israel had introduced.

⁹ The Israelites did secretly against the Lord their God things not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from [lonely] watchtower to [populous] fortified city.

¹⁰ They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim [symbols of the goddess Asherah] on every high hill and under every green tree.

¹¹ There they burned incense on all the high places, as did the nations whom the Lord carried away before them; and they did wicked things provoking the Lord to anger.

¹² And they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, You shall not do this thing.

¹³ Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all the prophets and all the seers, saying, Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the Law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets.

¹⁴ Yet they would not hear, but hardened their necks as did their fathers who did not believe (trust in, rely on, and remain steadfast to) the Lord their God.

¹⁵ They despised and rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings to them, and they followed vanity (false gods—falsehood, emptiness, and futility) and [they themselves and their prayers] became false (empty and futile). They went after the heathen round about them, of whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do as they did.

¹⁶ And they forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the [starry] hosts of the heavens and served Baal.

¹⁷ They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire and used divination and enchantments and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.

¹⁸ Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah.

²⁹ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,

³⁰ Saying, If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have aided them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

³¹ Thus you are testifying against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ sins to the brim [so ^[a]that nothing may be wanting to a full measure].

³³ You serpents! You spawn of vipers! How can you escape the ^[b]penalty to be suffered in hell (Gehenna)?

³⁴ Because of this, take notice: I am sending you prophets and wise men (interpreters and teachers) and scribes (men learned in the Mosaic Law and the Prophets); some of them you will kill, even crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue and persecute from town to town,

³⁵ So that upon your heads may come all the blood of the righteous (^[c]those who correspond to the divine standard of right) shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [of burnt offering].^(A)

³⁶ Truly I declare to you, all these [^[d]evil, calamitous times] will come upon this generation.^(B)

³⁷ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, murdering the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a mother fowl gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!

³⁸ Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate (abandoned and left destitute of God’s help).^(C)

³⁹ For I declare to you, you will not see Me again until you say, Blessed (magnified in worship, adored, and exalted) is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!^(D)