Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 48

A song; a Psalm of the sons of Korah.

¹ Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain,

² Fair and beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth—^[a]Mount Zion [the City of David], to the northern side [Mount Moriah and the temple], the [whole] city of the Great King!^(A)

³ God has made Himself known in her palaces as a Refuge (a High Tower and a Stronghold).

⁴ For, behold, the kings assembled, they came onward and they passed away together.

⁵ They looked, they were amazed; they were stricken with terror and took to flight [affrighted and dismayed].

⁶ Trembling took hold of them there, and pain as of a woman in childbirth.

⁷ With the east wind You shattered the ships of Tarshish.

⁸ As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it forever. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

⁹ We have thought of Your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of Your temple.

¹⁰ As is Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness (rightness and justice).

¹¹ Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of Your [righteous] judgments!

¹² Walk about Zion, and go round about her, number her towers (her lofty and noble deeds of past days),

¹³ Consider well her ramparts, go through her palaces and citadels, that you may tell the next generation [and cease recalling disappointments].

¹⁴ For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide [even] until death.

¹⁸ Then was the Lord jealous for His land and had pity on His people.

¹⁹ Yes, the Lord answered and said to His people, Behold, I am sending you grain and juice [of the grape] and oil, and you shall be satisfied with them; and I will no more make you a reproach among the [heathen] nations.

²⁰ But I will remove far off from you the northern [destroyer’s] army and will drive it into a land barren and desolate, with its front toward the eastern [Dead] Sea and with its rear toward the western [Mediterranean] Sea. And its stench shall come up [like that of a decaying mass of locusts, a symbol and forecast of the fate of the northern army in the final day of the Lord], and its foul odor shall come up, because ^[a]He has done great things [the Lord will have destroyed the invaders]!^(A)

²¹ Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!^(B)

²² Be not afraid, you wild beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness have sprung up and are green; the tree bears its fruit, and the fig tree and the vine yield their [full] strength.

²³ Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord, your God; for He gives you the former or early rain in just measure and in righteousness, and He causes to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, as before.

²⁴ And the [threshing] floors shall be full of grain and the vats shall overflow with juice [of the grape] and oil.

²⁵ And I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust has eaten—the hopping locust, the stripping locust, and the crawling locust, My great army which I sent among you.

²⁶ And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord, your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you. And My people shall never be put to shame.

²⁷ And you shall know, understand, and realize that I am in the midst of Israel and that I the Lord am your God and there is none else. My people shall never be put to shame.

²⁸ And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

²⁹ Even upon the menservants and upon the maidservants in those days will I pour out My Spirit.

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.

⁶ Yet when we are among the full-grown (spiritually mature Christians who are ripe in understanding), we do impart a [higher] wisdom (the knowledge of the divine plan previously hidden); but it is indeed not a wisdom of this present age or of this world nor of the leaders and rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing and are doomed to pass away.

⁷ But rather what we are setting forth is a wisdom of God once hidden [from the human understanding] and now revealed to us by God—[that wisdom] which God devised and decreed before the ages for our glorification [to lift us into the glory of His presence].

⁸ None of the rulers of this age or world perceived and recognized and understood this, for if they had, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.

⁹ But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [^[e]who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed].^(A)

¹⁰ Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the ^[f]divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man’s scrutiny].

¹¹ For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man’s thoughts except the man’s own spirit within him? Just so no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.