Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 96

¹ O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth!

² Sing to the Lord, bless (affectionately praise) His name; show forth His salvation from day to day.

³ Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples.

⁴ For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; He is to be reverently feared and worshiped above all [so-called] gods.^(A)

⁵ For all the gods of the nations are [lifeless] idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

⁶ Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.

⁷ Ascribe to the Lord, O you families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

⁸ Give to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come [before Him] into His courts.

⁹ O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; tremble before and reverently fear Him, all the earth.

¹⁰ Say among the nations that the Lord reigns; the world also is established, so that it cannot be moved; He shall judge and rule the people righteously and with justice.^(B)

¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all the things which fill it;

¹² Let the field be exultant, and all that is in it! Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy

¹³ Before the Lord, for He comes, for He comes to judge and govern the earth! He shall judge the world with righteousness and justice and the peoples with His faithfulness and truth.^(C)

²⁹ In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri began his reign of twenty-two years over Israel in Samaria.

³⁰ And Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all before him.

³¹ As if it had been a light thing for Ahab to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he took for a wife Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and served Baal and worshiped him.

³² He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria.

³³ And Ahab made an Asherah [idolatrous symbol of the goddess Asherah]. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel before him.

³⁴ In his days, Hiel the Bethelite built Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of the life of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Joshua son of Nun.^(A)

11 I wish you would bear with me while I indulge in a little [so-called] foolishness. Do bear with me!

² For I am ^[a]zealous for you with a godly eagerness and a divine jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one Husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.^(A)

³ But [now] I am fearful, lest that even as the serpent beguiled Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted and seduced from wholehearted and sincere and pure devotion to Christ.^(B)

⁴ For [you seem readily to endure it] if a man comes and preaches another Jesus than the One we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the [Spirit] you [once] received or a different gospel from the one you [then] received and welcomed; you tolerate [all that] well enough!

⁵ Yet I consider myself as in no way inferior to these [precious] ^[b]extra-super [false] apostles.

⁶ But even if [I am] unskilled in speaking, yet [I am] not [unskilled] in knowledge [I know what I am talking about]; we have made this evident to you in all things.