Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

68 Arise, O God, and scatter all your enemies! Chase them away! ² Drive them off like smoke before the wind; melt them like wax in fire! So let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

³ But may the godly man exult. May he rejoice and be merry. ⁴ Sing praises to the Lord! Raise your voice in song to him who rides upon the clouds!^[a] Jehovah is his name—oh, rejoice in his presence. ⁵ He is a father to the fatherless; he gives justice to the widows, for he is holy.^{[b] 6} He gives families to the lonely, and releases prisoners from jail, singing with joy! But for rebels there is famine and distress.

⁷ O God, when you led your people through the wilderness, ⁸ the earth trembled and the heavens shook. Mount Sinai quailed before you—the God of Israel. ^9-10 You sent abundant rain upon your land, O God, to refresh it in its weariness! There your people lived, for you gave them this home when they were destitute.

¹⁹ What a glorious Lord! He who daily bears our burdens also gives us our salvation.

²⁰ He frees us! He rescues us from death.

⁹ “The wicked snatch fatherless children from their mother’s breasts, and take a poor man’s baby as a pledge before they will loan him any money or grain. ¹⁰ That is why they must go about naked, without clothing, and are forced to carry food while they are starving. ¹¹ They are forced to press out the olive oil without tasting it and to tread out the grape juice as they suffer from thirst. ¹² The bones of the dying cry from the city; the wounded cry for help; yet God does not respond to their moaning.

¹³ “The wicked rebel against the light and are not acquainted with the right and the good. ^14-15 They are murderers who rise in the early dawn to kill the poor and needy; at night they are thieves and adulterers, waiting for the twilight ‘when no one will see me,’ they say. They mask their faces so no one will know them. ¹⁶ They break into houses at night and sleep in the daytime—they are not acquainted with the light. ¹⁷ The black night is their morning; they ally themselves with the terrors of the darkness.

¹⁸ “But how quickly they disappear from the face of the earth. Everything they own is cursed. They leave no property for their children. ¹⁹ Death consumes sinners as drought and heat consume snow. ²⁰ Even the sinner’s own mother shall forget him. Worms shall feed sweetly on him. No one will remember him anymore. For wicked men are broken like a tree in the storm. ²¹ For they have taken advantage of the childless who have no protecting sons. They refuse to help the needy widows.

^22-23 “Yet sometimes^[a] it seems as though God preserves the rich by his power and restores them to life when anyone else would die. God gives them confidence and strength, and helps them in many ways. ²⁴ But though they are very great now, yet in a moment they shall be gone like all others, cut off like heads of grain. ²⁵ Can anyone claim otherwise? Who can prove me a liar and claim that I am wrong?”

¹¹ But when Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. ¹² For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don’t bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws.^[a] But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say; ¹³ and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter’s example, though they certainly knew better. ¹⁴ When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have long since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them?