◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 103:1-8 (Crowned with mercy); Nehemiah 13:15-22 (Nehemiah enforces sabbath law); Luke 6:1-5 (Picking grain on the sabbath) (New English Translation)

Prev Day

August 23, 2025

Next Day

Use the calendar to view readings from this devotional.

August 2025
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Return to today's reading

Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with thematically matched Old and New Testament readings.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 103:1-8

Psalm 103^[a]

By David.

103 Praise the Lord, O my soul.
With all that is within me, praise^[b] his holy name.
²Praise the Lord, O my soul.
Do not forget all his kind deeds.^[c]
³He is the one who forgives all your sins,
who heals all your diseases,^[d]
⁴who delivers^[e] your life from the Pit,^[f]
who crowns you with his loyal love and compassion,
⁵who satisfies your life with good things,^[g]
so your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.^[h]
⁶The Lord does what is fair,
and executes justice for all the oppressed.^[i]
⁷The Lord revealed his faithful acts^[j] to Moses,
his deeds to the Israelites.
⁸The Lord is compassionate and merciful;
he is patient^[k] and demonstrates great loyal love.^[l]

Nehemiah 13:15-22

¹⁵In those days I saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath, bringing in heaps of grain and loading them onto donkeys, along with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, and bringing them to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them on the day that they sold these provisions. ¹⁶The people from Tyre who lived there were bringing fish and all kinds of merchandise and were selling it on the Sabbath to the people of Judah—and in Jerusalem, of all places!^[a] ¹⁷So I registered a complaint with the nobles of Judah, saying to them, “What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day? ¹⁸Isn’t this the way your ancestors^[b] acted, causing our God to bring on them and on this city all this misfortune? And now you are causing even more wrath on Israel, profaning the Sabbath like this!”^[c]

¹⁹When the evening shadows began to fall on^[d] the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered^[e] the doors to be closed. I further directed that they were not to be opened until after the Sabbath. I positioned^[f] some of my young men at the gates so that no load could enter on the Sabbath day. ²⁰The traders and sellers of all kinds of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem once or twice. ²¹But I warned them and said,^[g] “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you repeat this, I will forcibly remove you!”^[h] From that time on they did not show up on the Sabbath.^[i] ²²Then I directed the Levites to purify themselves and come and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy.

For this please remember me, O my God, and have pity on me in keeping with your great love.

Luke 6:1-5

Lord of the Sabbath

6 Jesus^[a] was going through the grain fields on^[b] a Sabbath,^[c] and his disciples picked some heads of wheat,^[d] rubbed them in their hands, and ate them.^[e] ²But some of the Pharisees^[f] said, “Why are you^[g] doing what is against the law^[h] on the Sabbath?” ³Jesus^[i] answered them,^[j] “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry— ⁴how he entered the house of God, took^[k] and ate the sacred bread,^[l] which is not lawful^[m] for any to eat but the priests alone, and^[n] gave it to his companions?”^[o] ⁵Then^[p] he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord^[q] of the Sabbath.”

Footnotes

Luke 6:1 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
Luke 6:1 tn Grk “Now it happened that on.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.
Luke 6:1 tc Most later mss (A C D Θ Ψ [ƒ¹³] M lat) read ἐν σαββάτῳ δευτεροπρώτῳ (en sabbatō deuteroprōtō, “a second-first Sabbath”), while the earlier and better witnesses have simply ἐν σαββάτῳ (P⁴ א B L W ƒ¹ 33 579 1241 2542 it sa). The longer reading is most likely secondary, though various explanations may account for it (for discussion, see TCGNT 116).
Luke 6:1 tn Or “heads of grain.” While the generic term στάχυς (stachus) can refer to the cluster of seeds at the top of grain such as barley or wheat, in the NT the term is restricted to wheat (L&N 3.40; BDAG 941 s.v. 1). KJV “corn” is the result of British English, in which “corn” refers to the main cereal crop of a district, wheat in England and oats in Scotland (British English uses “maize” to refer to American corn).
Luke 6:1 tn Grk “picked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.” The participle ψώχοντες (psōchontes) has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style, and the order of the clauses has been transposed to reflect the logical order, which sounds more natural in English.
Luke 6:2 sn See the note on Pharisees in 5:17.
Luke 6:2 tn Note that the verb is second person plural (with an understood plural pronominal subject in Greek). The charge is again indirectly made against Jesus by charging the disciples.
Luke 6:2 sn The alleged violation expressed by the phrase what is against the law is performing work on the Sabbath. That the disciples ate from such a field is no problem given Deut 23:25, but Sabbath activity is another matter in the leaders’ view (Exod 20:8-11 and Mishnah, m. Shabbat 7.2). The supposed violation involved reaping, threshing, winnowing, and preparing food. This probably explains why the clause describing the disciples “rubbing” the heads of grain in their hands is mentioned last, in emphatic position. This was preparation of food.
Luke 6:3 tn Grk “And Jesus.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
Luke 6:3 tn Grk “Jesus, answering them, said.” This is redundant in contemporary English and has been simplified to “Jesus answered them.”
Luke 6:4 tn Grk “and took.”
Luke 6:4 tn Grk “the bread of presentation.” sn The sacred bread refers to the “bread of presentation,” “showbread,” or “bread of the Presence,” twelve loaves prepared weekly for the tabernacle and later, the temple. See Exod 25:30; 35:13; 39:36; Lev 24:5-9. Each loaf was made from 3 quarts (3.5 liters; Heb “two-tenths of an ephah”) of fine flour. The loaves were placed on a table in the holy place of the tabernacle, on the north side opposite the lampstand (Exod 26:35). It was the duty of the priest each Sabbath to place fresh bread on the table; the loaves from the previous week were then given to Aaron and his descendants, who ate them in the holy place, because they were considered sacred (Lev 24:9). These were the loaves that David requested from Ahimelech for himself and his men (1 Sam 21:1-6; cf. also Matt 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28).
Luke 6:4 sn Jesus’ response to the charge that what his disciples were doing was not lawful is one of analogy: ‘If David did it for his troops in a time of need, then so can I with my disciples.’ Jesus is clear that on the surface there was a violation here. What is not as clear is whether he is arguing a “greater need” makes this permissible or that this was within the intention of the law all along.
Luke 6:4 tc Most mss (א A D Θ ƒ¹³ 33 M) read “also” here, but this looks like it is a reading made to agree with Mark 2:26. A better combination of witnesses (B L W Ψ ƒ¹ lat sa) lacks the word “also.”
Luke 6:4 tc The Western ms D adds here a full saying that reads, “On the same day, as he saw someone working on the Sabbath he said, ‘Man, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed, but if you do not know, you are cursed and a violator of the law.’” Though this is not well enough attested to be considered authentic, many commentators have debated whether this saying might go back to Jesus. Most reject it, though it does have wording that looks like Rom 2:25, 27 and Jas 2:11.sn See 1 Sam 21:1-6.
Luke 6:5 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.
Luke 6:5 tn The term “lord” is in emphatic position in the Greek text. To make this point even clearer a few mss add “also” before the reference to the Son of Man, while a few others add it before the reference to the Sabbath.sn A second point in Jesus’ defense of his disciples’ actions was that his authority as Son of Man also allowed it, since as Son of Man he was lord of the Sabbath.

New English Translation (NET)

Prev Day

Top

Next Day

Use the calendar to view readings from this devotional.

Log in to read this devotional and:

Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 103[a]

By David.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Lord of the Sabbath

Footnotes

Psalm 103^[a]