Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
11 Tell me where you want me to go and I will go there. May every fiber of my being unite in reverence to your name. 12 With all my heart I will praise you. I will give glory to your name forever, 13 for you love me so much! You are constantly so kind! You have rescued me from deepest hell.
14 O God, proud and insolent men defy me; violent, godless men are trying to kill me. 15 But you are merciful and gentle, Lord, slow in getting angry, full of constant loving-kindness and of truth; 16 so look down in pity and grant strength to your servant and save me. 17 Send me a sign of your favor. When those who hate me see it, they will lose face because you help and comfort me.
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.
2
“I write to inform you of a message from him who walks among the churches and holds their leaders in his right hand.
“He says to you: 2 I know how many good things you are doing. I have watched your hard work and your patience; I know you don’t tolerate sin among your members, and you have carefully examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but aren’t. You have found out how they lie. 3 You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.
4 “Yet there is one thing wrong; you don’t love me as at first! 5 Think about those times of your first love (how different now!) and turn back to me again and work as you did before; or else I will come and remove your candlestick from its place among the churches.
6 “But there is this about you that is good: You hate the deeds of the licentious Nicolaitans,[b] just as I do.
7 “Let this message sink into the ears of anyone who listens to what the Spirit is saying to the churches: To everyone who is victorious, I will give fruit from the Tree of Life in the Paradise of God.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.