Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
1 There lived in the land of Uz a man named Job—a good[a] man who feared God and stayed away from evil.
2 Now the angels[a] came again to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan was with them.
2 “Where have you come from?” the Lord asked Satan.
“From earth, where I’ve been watching everything that’s going on,” Satan replied.
3 “Well, have you noticed my servant Job?” the Lord asked. “He is the finest man in all the earth—a good man who fears God and turns away from all evil. And he has kept his faith in me despite the fact that you persuaded me to let you harm him without any cause.”
4-5 “Skin for skin,” Satan replied. “A man will give anything to save his life. Touch his body with sickness, and he will curse you to your face!”
6 “Do with him as you please,” the Lord replied; “only spare his life.”
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with a terrible case of boils from head to foot. 8 Then Job took a broken piece of pottery to scrape himself and sat among the ashes.
9 His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to be godly when God has done all this to you? Curse him and die.”
10 But he replied, “You talk like some heathen woman. What? Shall we receive only pleasant things from the hand of God and never anything unpleasant?” So in all this Job said nothing wrong.
26 Dismiss all the charges against me, Lord, for I have tried to keep your laws and have trusted you without wavering. 2 Cross-examine me, O Lord, and see that this is so; test my motives and affections too. 3 For I have taken your loving-kindness and your truth as my ideals. 4 I do not have fellowship with tricky, two-faced men; they are false and hypocritical. 5 I hate the sinners’ hangouts and refuse to enter them. 6 I wash my hands to prove my innocence and come before your altar, 7 singing a song of thanksgiving and telling about your miracles.
8 Lord, I love your home, this shrine where the brilliant, dazzling splendor of your presence lives.
9-10 Don’t treat me as a common sinner or murderer who plots against the innocent and demands bribes.
11 No, I am not like that, O Lord; I try to walk a straight and narrow path of doing what is right; therefore in mercy save me.
12 I publicly praise the Lord for keeping me from slipping and falling.
1 Long ago God spoke in many different ways to our fathers through the prophets, in visions, dreams, and even face to face,[a] telling them little by little about his plans.
2 But now in these days he has spoken to us through his Son to whom he has given everything and through whom he made the world and everything there is.
3 God’s Son shines out with God’s glory, and all that God’s Son is and does marks him as God. He regulates the universe by the mighty power of his command. He is the one who died to cleanse us and clear our record of all sin, and then sat down in highest honor beside the great God of heaven.
4 Thus he became far greater than the angels, as proved by the fact that his name “Son of God,” which was passed on to him from his Father, is far greater than the names and titles of the angels.
5 And the future world we are talking about will not be controlled by angels. 6 No, for in the book of Psalms David says to God, “What is mere man that you are so concerned about him? And who is this Son of Man you honor so highly? 7 For though you made him lower than the angels for a little while, now you have crowned him with glory and honor. 8 And you have put him in complete charge of everything there is. Nothing is left out.”
We have not yet seen all of this take place, 9 but we do see Jesus—who for a while was a little lower than the angels—crowned now by God with glory and honor because he suffered death for us. Yes, because of God’s great kindness, Jesus tasted death for everyone in all the world.
10 And it was right and proper that God, who made everything for his own glory, should allow Jesus to suffer, for in doing this he was bringing vast multitudes of God’s people to heaven; for his suffering made Jesus a perfect Leader, one fit to bring them into their salvation.
11 We who have been made holy by Jesus, now have the same Father he has. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers. 12 For he says in the book of Psalms, “I will talk to my brothers about God my Father, and together we will sing his praises.”
2 Some Pharisees came and asked him, “Do you permit divorce?” Of course they were trying to trap him.
3 “What did Moses say about divorce?” Jesus asked them.
4 “He said it was all right,” they replied. “He said that all a man has to do is write his wife a letter of dismissal.”
5 “And why did he say that?” Jesus asked. “I’ll tell you why—it was a concession to your hardhearted wickedness. 6-7 But it certainly isn’t God’s way. For from the very first he made man and woman to be joined together permanently in marriage; therefore a man is to leave his father and mother, 8 and he and his wife are united so that they are no longer two, but one. 9 And no man may separate what God has joined together.”
10 Later, when he was alone with his disciples in the house, they brought up the subject again.
11 He told them, “When a man divorces his wife to marry someone else, he commits adultery against her. 12 And if a wife divorces her husband and remarries, she, too, commits adultery.”
13 Once when some mothers[a] were bringing their children to Jesus to bless them, the disciples shooed them away, telling them not to bother him.
14 But when Jesus saw what was happening he was very much displeased with his disciples and said to them, “Let the children come to me, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as they. Don’t send them away! 15 I tell you as seriously as I know how that anyone who refuses to come to God as a little child will never be allowed into his Kingdom.”
16 Then he took the children into his arms and placed his hands on their heads and he blessed them.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.