Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹⁶ But to the wicked, God says: What right have you to recite My statutes or take My covenant or pledge on your lips,

¹⁷ Seeing that you hate instruction and correction and cast My words behind you [discarding them]?

¹⁸ When you see a thief, you associate with him, and you have taken part with adulterers.

¹⁹ You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit.

²⁰ You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.

²¹ These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was once entirely like you. But [now] I will reprove you and put [the charge] in order before your eyes.

²² Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

²³ He who brings an offering of praise and thanksgiving honors and glorifies Me; and he who orders his way aright [who prepares the way that I may show him], to him I will demonstrate the salvation of God.

¹⁵ Then Nathan departed to his house. And the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s widow bore to David, and he was very sick.

¹⁶ David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted and went in and lay all night [repeatedly] on the floor.

¹⁷ His older house servants arose [in the night] and went to him to raise him up from the floor, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them.

¹⁸ And on the seventh day the child died. David’s servants feared to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, While the child was yet alive, we spoke to him and he would not listen to our voices; will he then harm himself if we tell him the child is dead?

¹⁹ But when David saw that his servants whispered, he perceived that the child was dead. So he said to them, Is the child dead? And they said, He is.

²⁰ Then David arose from the floor, washed, anointed himself, changed his apparel, and went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he came to his own house, and when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate.

²¹ Then his servants said to him, What is this that you have done? You fasted and wept while the child was alive, but when the child was dead, you arose and ate food.

²² David said, While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live?

²³ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.

²⁴ David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went to her and lay with her; and she bore a son, and she called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved [the child];

²⁵ He sent [a message] by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and [Nathan] called the boy’s [special] name Jedidiah [beloved of the Lord], because the Lord [loved the child].

¹⁷ So this I say and solemnly testify in [the name of] the Lord [as in His presence], that you must no longer live as the heathen (the Gentiles) do in their perverseness [in the folly, vanity, and emptiness of their souls and the futility] of their minds.

¹⁸ Their ^[a]moral understanding is darkened and their reasoning is beclouded. [They are] alienated (estranged, self-banished) from the life of God [with no share in it; this is] because of the ignorance (the want of knowledge and perception, the willful blindness) that is ^[b]deep-seated in them, due to their hardness of heart [to the insensitiveness of their moral nature].

¹⁹ In their spiritual apathy they have become callous and past feeling and reckless and have abandoned themselves [a prey] to unbridled sensuality, eager and greedy to indulge in every form of impurity [that their depraved desires may suggest and demand].

²⁰ But you did not so learn Christ!

²¹ Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him],

²² Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion;

²³ And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude],

²⁴ And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.