Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
10 I said: In the middle of my days,
I shall go to the gates of Sheol;
I am to be deprived of the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord,
even the Lord, in the land of the living;
I shall see man no more
with the inhabitants of the world.
12 My dwelling is pulled up
and removed from me as a shepherd’s tent;
I rolled up my life like a weaver.
He cuts me off from the loom;
from day even to night You make an end of me.
13 I composed my soul until morning,
like a lion, so He breaks all my bones;
from day even to night You make an end of me.
14 Like a crane or a swallow, so I twitter;
I mourn as a dove;
my eyes look wistfully upward.
O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.
15 What shall I say?
For He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done it.
I shall wander about all my years
in the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live,
and in all these things is the life of my spirit;
O restore me to health
and make me live!
17 Surely it was for my own peace
that I had great bitterness;
but You have kept my soul
from the pit of corruption,
for You have cast all my sins
behind Your back.
18 For Sheol cannot thank You,
death cannot praise You;
those who go down into the pit
cannot hope for Your faithfulness.
19 It is the living who give thanks to You,
as I do this day;
a father explains to his sons
about Your faithfulness.
20 The Lord shall surely save me;
therefore, we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments
all the days of our lives
in the house of the Lord.
9 Then the Philistines went up and set up camp in Judah. They deployed against Lehi. 10 The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?”
They said, “It is to take Samson prisoner that we have come up, to do to him what he did to us.”
11 So three thousand men from Judah went to the cave in Etam Rock and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling us? Why have you done this to us?”
He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12 They said to him, “We have come to take you prisoner, to give you into the hands of the Philistines.”
Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me.”
13 They said to him, “No, we will bind you securely and give you into their hands, but we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes and took him away from the rock. 14 He came to Lehi, and the Philistines shouted as they approached him. Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. The ropes on his arms became like burned flax and the ties on his hands dissolved. 15 Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and with it struck down a thousand men.
16 Samson said,
“With a jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps.
With a jawbone of a donkey
I have slain a thousand men.”
17 When he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone away and called that place Ramath Lehi.
18 He was very thirsty, and he called out to the Lord, “You gave this great deliverance through Your servant, but now may I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split open the basin at Lehi, and water flowed out of it. He drank, was refreshed, and revived. Because of this he called the place En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
The Healing of a Boy with a Demon(A)
14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to Him and knelt before Him, saying, 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not heal him.”
17 Then Jesus answered, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and he came out of him. And the child was healed instantly.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast him out?”
20 Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief. For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. And nothing will be impossible for you. 21 But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.