Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 68
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. A song.
1 God is [already] beginning to arise, and His enemies to scatter; let them also who hate Him flee before Him!
2 As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish before the presence of God.
3 But let the [uncompromisingly] righteous be glad; let them be in high spirits and glory before God, yes, let them [jubilantly] rejoice!
4 Sing to God, sing praises to His name, cast up a highway for Him Who rides through the deserts—His name is the Lord—be in high spirits and glory before Him!
5 A father of the fatherless and a judge and protector of the widows is God in His holy habitation.
6 God places the solitary in families and gives the desolate a home in which to dwell; He leads the prisoners out to prosperity; but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.
7 O God, when You went forth before Your people, when You marched through the wilderness—Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!—
8 The earth trembled, the heavens also poured down [rain] at the presence of God; yonder Sinai quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
9 You, O God, did send a plentiful rain; You did restore and confirm Your heritage when it languished and was weary.
10 Your flock found a dwelling place in it; You, O God, in Your goodness did provide for the poor and needy.
19 Blessed be the Lord, Who bears our burdens and carries us day by day, even the God Who is our salvation! Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
20 God is to us a God of deliverances and salvation; and to God the Lord belongs escape from death [setting us free].
22 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered [Job],
2 Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he that is wise is profitable to himself.(A)
3 Is it any pleasure or advantage to the Almighty that you are righteous (upright and in right standing with Him)? Or is it gain to Him that you make your ways perfect?(B)
4 Is it for your [reverential] fear of Him that He [thus] reproves you, that He enters with you into judgment?
5 Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities.
6 For you have taken pledges of your brother for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing.
7 You have not given water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry.(C)
8 But [you, Job] the man with power possessed the land, and the favored and accepted man dwelt in it.
9 You have sent widows away empty-handed, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
10 Therefore snares are round about you, and sudden fear troubles and overwhelms you;
11 Your light is darkened, so that you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you.
12 Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!
13 Therefore you say, How and what does God know [about me]? Can He judge through the thick darkness?
14 Thick clouds are a covering to Him, so that He does not see, and He walks on the vault of the heavens.
15 Will you pay attention and keep to the old way that wicked men trod [in Noah’s time],(D)
16 Men who were snatched away before their time, whose foundations were poured out like a stream [during the flood]?
17 They said to God, Depart from us, and, What can the Almighty do for or to us?
18 Yet He filled their houses with good [things]. But the counsel of the ungodly is far from me.
19 The righteous see it and are glad; and the innocent laugh them to scorn [saying],
20 Surely those who rose up against us are cut off, and that which remained to them the fire has consumed.
2 Then after [an interval] of fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem. [This time I went] with Barnabas, taking Titus along with [me] also.
2 I went because it was specially and divinely revealed to me that I should go, and I put before them the Gospel [declaring to them that] which I preach among the Gentiles. However, [I presented the matter] privately before those of repute, [for I wanted to make certain, by thus at first confining my communication to this private conference] that I was not running or had not run in vain [guarding against being discredited either in what I was planning to do or had already done].
3 But [all went well!] even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled [as some had anticipated] to be circumcised, although he was a Greek.
4 [My precaution was] because of false brethren who had been secretly smuggled in [to the Christian brotherhood]; they had slipped in to spy on our liberty and the freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might again bring us into bondage [under the Law of Moses].
5 To them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the Gospel might continue to be [preserved] for you [in its purity].
6 Moreover, [no new requirements were made] by those who were reputed to be something—though what was their individual position and whether they really were of importance or not makes no difference to me; God is not impressed with the positions that men hold and He is not partial and recognizes no external distinctions—those [I say] who were of repute imposed no new requirements upon me [had nothing to add to my Gospel, and from them I received no new suggestions].(A)
7 But on the contrary, when they [really] saw that I had been entrusted [to carry] the Gospel to the uncircumcised [Gentiles, just as definitely] as Peter had been entrusted [to proclaim] the Gospel to the circumcised [Jews, they were agreeable];
8 For He Who motivated and fitted Peter and worked effectively through him for the mission to the circumcised, motivated and fitted me and worked through me also for [the mission to] the Gentiles.
9 And when they knew (perceived, recognized, understood, and acknowledged) the grace (God’s unmerited favor and spiritual blessing) that had been bestowed upon me, James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who were reputed to be pillars of the Jerusalem church, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, with the understanding that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised (Jews).
10 They only [made one stipulation], that we were to remember the poor, which very thing I was also eager to do.
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