Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 139

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ O Lord, you have searched me [thoroughly] and have known me.

² You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off.^(A)

³ You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways.

⁴ For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.^(B)

⁵ You have beset me and shut me in—behind and before, and You have laid Your hand upon me.

⁶ Your [infinite] knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high above me, I cannot reach it.

¹³ For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I will confess and praise You for You are fearful and wonderful and for the awful wonder of my birth! Wonderful are Your works, and that my inner self knows right well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You when I was being formed in secret [and] intricately and curiously wrought [as if embroidered with various colors] in the depths of the earth [a region of darkness and mystery].

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them.

¹⁷ How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!^(A)

¹⁸ If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awoke, [could I count to the end] I would still be with You.

¹⁹ The family rose early the next morning, worshiped before the Lord, and returned to their home in Ramah. Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her.

²⁰ Hannah became pregnant and in due time bore a son and named him Samuel [heard of God], Because, she said, I have asked him of the Lord.

²¹ And Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and pay his vow.

²² But Hannah did not go, for she said to her husband, I will not go until the child is weaned, and then I will bring him, that he may appear before the Lord and remain there as long as he lives.

²³ Elkanah her husband said to her, Do what seems best to you. Wait until you have weaned him; only may the Lord establish His word. So Hannah remained and nursed her son until she weaned him.

²⁴ When she had ^[a]weaned him, she took him with her, with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin bottle of wine [to pour over the burnt offering for a sweet odor], and brought Samuel to the Lord’s house in Shiloh. The child was growing.

²⁵ Then they slew the bull, and brought the child to Eli.

²⁶ Hannah said, Oh, my lord! As your soul lives, my lord, I am the woman who stood by you here praying to the Lord.

²⁷ For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted my petition made to Him.

³¹ What then shall we say to [all] this? If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]^(A)

³² He who did not withhold or spare [even] His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all [other] things?

³³ Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect [when it is] God Who justifies [that is, Who puts us in right relation to Himself? Who shall come forward and accuse or impeach those whom God has chosen? Will God, Who acquits us?]

³⁴ Who is there to condemn [us]? Will Christ Jesus (the Messiah), Who died, or rather Who was raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God actually pleading as He intercedes for us?

³⁵ Who shall ever separate us from Christ’s love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword?

³⁶ Even as it is written, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are regarded and counted as sheep for the slaughter.^(B)

³⁷ Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors ^[a]and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us.

³⁸ For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things ^[b]impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers,

³⁹ Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.