Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 63

A Psalm of David; when he was in the Wilderness of Judah.

¹ O God, You are my God, earnestly will I seek You; my inner self thirsts for You, my flesh longs and is faint for You, in a dry and weary land where no water is.

² So I have looked upon You in the sanctuary to see Your power and Your glory.

³ Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You.

⁴ So will I bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.

⁵ My whole being shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips

⁶ When I remember You upon my bed and meditate on You in the night watches.

⁷ For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice.

⁸ My whole being follows hard after You and clings closely to You; Your right hand upholds me.

5 Let me [as God’s representative] sing of and for my greatly Beloved [God, the Son] a tender song of my Beloved concerning His vineyard [His chosen people]. My greatly Beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill.^(A)

² And He dug and trenched the ground and gathered out the stones from it and planted it with the choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it and hewed out a winepress in it. And He looked for it to bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

³ And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between Me and My vineyard [My people, says the Lord].

⁴ What more could have been done for My vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to bring forth grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

⁵ And now I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be eaten and burned up; and I will break down its wall, and it shall be trodden down [by enemies].

⁶ And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned or cultivated, but there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

⁷ For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant planting [the plant of His delight]. And He looked for justice, but behold, [He saw] oppression and bloodshed; [He looked] for righteousness (for uprightness and right standing with God), but behold, [He heard] a cry [of oppression and distress]!

⁴³ For there is no good (healthy) tree that bears decayed (worthless, stale) fruit, nor on the other hand does a decayed (worthless, sickly) tree bear good fruit.

⁴⁴ For each tree is known and identified by its own fruit; for figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor is a cluster of grapes picked from a bramblebush.

⁴⁵ The upright (honorable, intrinsically good) man out of the good treasure [stored] in his heart produces what is upright (honorable and intrinsically good), and the evil man out of the evil storehouse brings forth that which is depraved (wicked and intrinsically evil); for out of the abundance (overflow) of the heart his mouth speaks.