Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
40-42 I long to obey them! Therefore in fairness renew my life, for this was your promise—yes, Lord, to save me! Now spare me by your kindness and your love. Then I will have an answer for those who taunt me, for I trust your promises.
43 May I never forget your words, for they are my only hope. 44-46 Therefore I will keep on obeying you forever and forever, free within the limits of your laws. I will speak to kings about their value, and they will listen with interest and respect.
47 How I love your laws! How I enjoy your commands! 48 “Come, come to me,” I call to them, for I love them and will let them fill my life.
16 But Sarai and Abram had no children. So Sarai took her maid, an Egyptian girl named Hagar, 2-3 and gave her to Abram to be his second wife.
“Since the Lord has given me no children,” Sarai said, “you may sleep with my servant girl, and her children shall be mine.”
And Abram agreed. (This took place ten years after Abram had first arrived in the land of Canaan.) 4 So he slept with Hagar, and she conceived; and when she realized she was pregnant, she became very proud and arrogant toward her mistress Sarai.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “It’s all your fault. For now this servant girl of mine despises me, though I myself gave her the privilege of being your wife. May the Lord judge you for doing this to me!”[a]
6 “You have my permission to punish the girl as you see fit,” Abram replied. So Sarai beat her and she ran away.
7 The Angel of the Lord found her beside a desert spring along the road to Shur.
8 The Angel: “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
Hagar: “I am running away from my mistress.”
9-12 The Angel: “Return to your mistress and act as you should, for I will make you into a great nation. Yes, you are pregnant and your baby will be a son, and you are to name him Ishmael (‘God hears’), because God has heard your woes. This son of yours will be a wild one—free and untamed as a wild ass! He will be against everyone, and everyone will feel the same toward him. But he will live near the rest of his kin.”
13 Thereafter[b] Hagar spoke of Jehovah—for it was he who appeared to her—as “the God who looked upon me,” for she thought, “I saw God and lived to tell it.”
14 Later that well was named “The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.” It lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar gave Abram a son, and Abram named him Ishmael.
14 Don’t be teamed with those who do not love the Lord, for what do the people of God have in common with the people of sin? How can light live with darkness? 15 And what harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a Christian be a partner with one who doesn’t believe? 16 And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For you are God’s temple, the home of the living God, and God has said of you, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” 17 That is why the Lord has said, “Leave them; separate yourselves from them; don’t touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you 18 and be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters.”
7 Having such great promises as these, dear friends, let us turn away from everything wrong, whether of body or spirit, and purify ourselves, living in the wholesome fear of God, giving ourselves to him alone. 2 Please open your hearts to us again, for not one of you has suffered any wrong from us. Not one of you was led astray. We have cheated no one nor taken advantage of anyone.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.