Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 146

¹ Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!) Praise the Lord, O my soul!

² While I live will I praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have any being.

³ Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴ When his breath leaves him, he returns to his earth; in that very day his [previous] thoughts, plans, and purposes perish.^(A)

⁵ Happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) is he who has the God of [special revelation to] Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God,^(B)

⁶ Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, Who keeps truth and is faithful forever,

⁷ Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets free the prisoners,

⁸ The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the [uncompromisingly] righteous (those upright in heart and in right standing with Him).^(C)

⁹ The Lord protects and preserves the strangers and temporary residents, He upholds the fatherless and the widow and sets them upright, but the way of the wicked He makes crooked (turns upside down and brings to ruin).

¹⁰ The Lord shall reign forever, even Your God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)^(D)

¹⁷ And the Lord said to Moses,

¹⁸ Say to the Israelites, When you come into the land to which I am bringing you,

¹⁹ Then, when you eat of the food of the land, you shall set apart a portion for a gift to the Lord [called a heave or taken-out offering].

²⁰ You shall set apart a cake made of the first of your coarse meal as a gift [to the Lord]; as an offering set apart from the threshing floor, so shall you lift it out or heave it.

²¹ Of the first of your coarse meal you shall give to the Lord a portion for a gift throughout your generations [your heave or lifted-out offering].

²² When you have erred and have not observed all these commandments which the Lord has spoken to Moses,

²³ Even all that the Lord has commanded you through Moses, from the day that the Lord gave commandment and onward throughout your generations,

²⁴ Then it shall be, if it was done unwittingly or in error without the knowledge of the congregation, that all the congregation shall offer one young bull for a burnt offering, for a pleasant and soothing fragrance to the Lord, with its cereal offering and its drink offering, according to the ordinance, and one male goat for a sin offering.

²⁵ And the priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the Israelites, and they shall be forgiven, for it was an error and they have brought their offering, an offering made by fire to the Lord, and their sin offering before the Lord for their error.

²⁶ And all the congregation of the Israelites shall be forgiven and the stranger who lives temporarily among them, because all the people were involved in the error.

26 Then Agrippa said to Paul, You are permitted to speak on your own behalf. At that Paul stretched forth his hand and made his defense [as follows]:

² I consider myself fortunate, King Agrippa, that it is before you that I am to make my defense today in regard to all the charges brought against me by [the] Jews,

³ [Especially] because you are so fully and unusually conversant with all the Jewish customs and controversies; therefore, I beg you to hear me patiently.

⁴ My behavior and manner of living from my youth up is known by all the Jews; [they are aware] that from [its] commencement my youth was spent among my own race in Jerusalem.

⁵ They have had knowledge of me for a long time, if they are willing to testify to it, that in accordance with the strictest sect of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee.

⁶ And now I stand here on trial [to be judged on the ground] of the hope of that promise made to our forefathers by God,^(A)

⁷ Which hope [of the Messiah and the resurrection] our twelve tribes confidently expect to realize as they fervently worship [without ceasing] night and day. And for that hope, O king, I am accused by Jews and considered a criminal!

⁸ Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

⁹ I myself indeed was [once] persuaded that it was my duty to do many things contrary to and in defiance of the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

¹⁰ And that is what I did in Jerusalem; I [not only] locked up many of the [faithful] saints (holy ones) in prison by virtue of authority received from the chief priests, but when they were being condemned to death, I cast my vote against them.

¹¹ And frequently I punished them in all the synagogues to make them blaspheme; and in my bitter fury against them, I harassed (troubled, molested, persecuted) and pursued them even to foreign cities.