Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Security of Those Who Trust in the Lord, and Insecurity of the Wicked.

A Psalm of David.

¹⁸ Then Judah approached him, and said, “O my lord, please let your servant say a word to you in private, and do not let your anger blaze against your servant, for you are equal to Pharaoh [so I speak as if directly to him]. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, saying, ‘Have you a father or a brother?’ ²⁰ We said to my lord, ‘We have an old father and a young [brother, Benjamin, the] child of his old age. Now his brother [Joseph] is dead, and he alone is left of [the two sons born of] his mother, and his father loves him.’ ²¹ Then you said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me that I may actually see him.’ ²² But we said to my lord, ‘The ^[a]young man cannot leave his father, for if he should leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³ You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes with you, you shall not see my face again.’ ²⁴ So when we went back to your servant my father, we told him what my lord had said. ²⁵ Our father said, ‘Go back [to Egypt], and buy us a little food.’ ²⁶ But we said, ‘We cannot go down [to Egypt]. If our youngest brother is with us, then we will go down [there]; for we [were sternly told that we] cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷ Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife [Rachel] bore me [only] two sons. ²⁸ And one [son] went out from me, and I said, “Surely he is torn to pieces,” and I have not seen him since. ²⁹ If you take this one also from me, and harm or an accident happens to him, you will bring my gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow.’ ³⁰ Now, therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the young man is not with us, since ^[b]his life is bound up in the young man’s life, ³¹ when he sees that the young man is not with us, he will die; and your servants will bring the gray hair of your servant our father down to Sheol in [great] sorrow. ³² For your servant became security for the young man to my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame before my father forever.’ ³³ Now, therefore, please let your servant (Judah) remain here instead of the youth [to be] a slave to my lord, and let the young man go home with his brothers. ³⁴ How can I go up to my father if the young man is not with me—for fear that I would see the tragedy that would overtake my [elderly] father [if Benjamin does not return]?”

⁵⁷ “And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right? ⁵⁸ For while you are going with your opponent [at law] to appear before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle, so that he does not drag you before the judge, and the judge does not [rule against you and] turn you over to the officer, and the officer does not throw you into prison.^{(A) 59} I say to you, you [absolutely] will not get out of there until you have paid the very last ^[a]cent.”