◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Isaiah 55:1-5 (Eat and drink what truly satisfies); Psalm 145:8-9 14-21 (You open wide your hand); Romans 9:1-5 (The glory of God’s people in Israel); Matthew 14:13-21 (Jesus feeds 5000) (New English Translation)

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August 2, 2026

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

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

Duration: 1245 days

Isaiah 55:1-5

The Lord Gives an Invitation

55 “Hey,^[a] all who are thirsty, come to the water!
You who have no money, come!
Buy and eat!
Come! Buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.^[b]
²Why pay money for something that will not nourish you?^[c]
Why spend^[d] your hard-earned money^[e] on something that will not satisfy?
Listen carefully^[f] to me and eat what is nourishing!^[g]
Enjoy fine food.^[h]
³Pay attention and come to me.
Listen, so you can live.^[i]
Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to^[j] you,
just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David.^[k]
⁴Look, I made him a witness to nations,^[l]
a ruler and commander of nations.”
⁵Look, you will summon nations^[m] you did not previously know;
nations^[n] that did not previously know you will run to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,^[o]
for he bestows honor on you.

Footnotes

Isaiah 55:1 tn The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments and is often prefixed to judgment oracles for rhetorical effect. But here it appears to be a simple interjection, designed to grab the audience’s attention. Perhaps there is a note of sorrow or pity. See BDB 223 s.v.
Isaiah 55:1 sn The statement is an oxymoron. Its ironic quality adds to its rhetorical impact. The statement reminds one of the norm (one must normally buy commodities) as it expresses the astounding offer. One might paraphrase the statement: “Come and take freely what you normally have to pay for.”
Isaiah 55:2 tn Heb “for what is not food.”
Isaiah 55:2 tn The interrogative particle and the verb “spend” are understood here by ellipsis (note the preceding line).
Isaiah 55:2 tn Heb “your labor,” which stands by metonymy for that which one earns.
Isaiah 55:2 tn The infinitive absolute follows the imperative and lends emphasis to the exhortation.
Isaiah 55:2 tn Heb “good” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).
Isaiah 55:2 tn Heb “Let your appetite delight in fine food.”sn Nourishing, fine food here represents the blessings God freely offers. These include forgiveness, a new covenantal relationship with God, and national prominence (see vv. 3-6).
Isaiah 55:3 tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.sn To live here refers to covenantal blessing, primarily material prosperity and national security (see vv. 4-5, 13, and Deut 30:6, 15, 19-20).
Isaiah 55:3 tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”
Isaiah 55:3 tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (b^erit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”
Isaiah 55:4 sn Ideally the Davidic king was to testify to the nations of God’s greatness (cf. Pss 18:50 HT [18:49 ET]; 22:28 HT [22:27 ET]). See J. H. Eaton, Kingship in the Psalms (SBT), 182-84.
Isaiah 55:5 tn Heb “a nation,” but the singular is collective here, as the plural verbs in the next line indicate (note that both “know” and “run” are third plural forms).
Isaiah 55:5 tn Heb “a nation,” but the singular is collective here, as the plural verbs that follow indicate.
Isaiah 55:5 sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

Psalm 145:8-9

⁸The Lord is merciful and compassionate;
he is patient^[a] and demonstrates great loyal love.^[b]
⁹The Lord is good to all,
and has compassion on all he has made.^[c]

Psalm 145:14-21

¹⁴^[a] The Lord supports all who fall,
and lifts up all who are bent over.^[b]
¹⁵Everything looks to you in anticipation,^[c]
and you provide them with food on a regular basis.^[d]
¹⁶You open your hand,
and fill every living thing with the food it desires.^[e]
¹⁷The Lord is just in all his actions,^[f]
and exhibits love in all he does.^[g]
¹⁸The Lord is near all who cry out to him,
all who cry out to him sincerely.^[h]
¹⁹He satisfies the desire^[i] of his loyal followers;^[j]
he hears their cry for help and delivers them.
²⁰The Lord protects all those who love him,
but he destroys all the wicked.
²¹My mouth will praise the Lord.^[k]
Let all who live^[l] praise his holy name forever.

Romans 9:1-5

Israel’s Rejection Considered

9 ^[a] I am telling the truth in Christ (I am not lying!), for my conscience assures me^[b] in the Holy Spirit— ²I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.^[c] ³For I could wish^[d] that I myself were accursed—cut off from Christ—for the sake of my people,^[e] my fellow countrymen,^[f] ⁴who are Israelites. To them belong^[g] the adoption as sons,^[h] the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship,^[i] and the promises. ⁵To them belong the patriarchs,^[j] and from them,^[k] by human descent,^[l] came the Christ,^[m] who is God over all, blessed forever!^[n] Amen.

Footnotes

Romans 9:1 sn Rom 9:1-11:36. These three chapters are among the most difficult and disputed in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. One area of difficulty is the relationship between Israel and the church, especially concerning the nature and extent of Israel’s election. Many different models have been constructed to express this relationship. For a representative survey, see M. Barth, The People of God (JSNTSup), 22-27. The literary genre of these three chapters has been frequently identified as a diatribe, a philosophical discussion or conversation evolved by the Cynic and Stoic schools of philosophy as a means of popularizing their ideas (E. Käsemann, Romans, 261 and 267). But other recent scholars have challenged the idea that Rom 9-11 is characterized by diatribe. Scholars like R. Scroggs and E. E. Ellis have instead identified the material in question as midrash. For a summary and discussion of the rabbinic connections, see W. R. Stegner, “Romans 9.6-29—A Midrash,” JSNT 22 (1984): 37-52.
Romans 9:1 tn Or “my conscience bears witness to me.”
Romans 9:2 tn Grk “my sorrow is great and the anguish in my heart is unceasing.”
Romans 9:3 tn Or “For I would pray.” The implied condition is “if this could save my fellow Jews.”
Romans 9:3 tn Grk “brothers.” See BDAG 18-19 s.v. ἀδελφός 2.b.
Romans 9:3 tn Grk “my kinsmen according to the flesh.”
Romans 9:4 tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
Romans 9:4 tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (huiothesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e., in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as sons.”
Romans 9:4 tn Or “cultic service.”
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “of whom are the fathers.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “according to the flesh.”
Romans 9:5 tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)
Romans 9:5 tn Or “the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever,” or “the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever!” or “the Messiah who is over all. God be blessed forever!” The translational difficulty here is not text-critical in nature, but is a problem of punctuation. Since the genre of these opening verses of Romans 9 is a lament, it is probably best to take this as an affirmation of Christ’s deity (as the text renders it). Although the other renderings are possible, to see a note of praise to God at the end of this section seems strangely out of place. But for Paul to bring his lament to a crescendo (that is to say, his kinsmen had rejected God come in the flesh), thereby deepening his anguish, is wholly appropriate. This is also supported grammatically and stylistically: The phrase ὁ ὢν (ho ōn, “the one who is”) is most naturally taken as a phrase which modifies something in the preceding context, and Paul’s doxologies are always closely tied to the preceding context. For a detailed examination of this verse, see B. M. Metzger, “The Punctuation of Rom. 9:5, ” Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, 95-112; and M. J. Harris, Jesus as God, 144-72.

Matthew 14:13-21

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

¹³Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat^[a] to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it,^[b] they followed him on foot from the towns.^[c] ¹⁴As he got out he saw the large crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. ¹⁵When evening arrived, his disciples came to him saying, “This is an isolated place^[d] and the hour is already late. Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶But he^[e] replied, “They don’t need to go. You^[f] give them something to eat.” ¹⁷They^[g] said to him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸“Bring them here to me,” he replied. ¹⁹Then^[h] he instructed the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven he gave thanks and broke the loaves. He gave them to the disciples,^[i] who in turn gave them to the crowds.^[j] ²⁰They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the broken pieces left over, twelve baskets full. ²¹Not counting women and children, there were about 5,000 men who ate.

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Lord Gives an Invitation

Footnotes

Footnotes

Footnotes

Israel’s Rejection Considered

Footnotes

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

Footnotes