Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
5 1-2 O Lord, hear me praying; listen to my plea, O God my King, for I will never pray to anyone but you. 3 Each morning I will look to you in heaven and lay my requests before you, praying earnestly.
4 I know you get no pleasure from wickedness and cannot tolerate the slightest sin. 5 Therefore, proud sinners will not survive your searching gaze, for how you hate their evil deeds. 6 You will destroy them for their lies; how you abhor all murder and deception.
7 But as for me, I will come into your Temple protected by your mercy and your love; I will worship you with deepest awe.
8 Lord, lead me as you promised me you would; otherwise my enemies will conquer me. Tell me clearly what to do, which way to turn.
20 King Ben-hadad of Syria now mobilized his army and, with thirty-two allied nations and their hordes of chariots and horses, besieged Samaria, the Israeli capital. 2-3 He sent this message into the city to King Ahab of Israel: “Your silver and gold are mine, as are your prettiest wives and the best of your children!”
4 “All right, my lord,” Ahab replied. “All that I have is yours!”
5-6 Soon Ben-hadad’s messengers returned again with another message: “You must not only give me your silver, gold, wives, and children, but about this time tomorrow I will send my men to search your palace and the homes of your people, and they will take away whatever they like!”
7 Then Ahab summoned his advisors. “Look what this man is doing,” he complained to them. “He is stirring up trouble despite the fact that I have already told him he could have my wives and children and silver and gold, just as he demanded.”
8 “Don’t give him anything more,” the elders advised.
9 So he told the messengers from Ben-hadad, “Tell my lord the king, ‘I will give you everything you asked for the first time, but your men may not search the palace and the homes of the people.’”[a] So the messengers returned to Ben-hadad.
10 Then the Syrian king sent this message to Ahab: “May the gods do more to me than I am going to do to you if I don’t turn Samaria into handfuls of dust!”
11 The king of Israel retorted, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!”
12 This reply of Ahab’s reached Ben-hadad and the other kings as they were drinking in their tents.
“Prepare to attack!” Ben-hadad commanded his officers.
13 Then a prophet came to see King Ahab and gave him this message from the Lord: “Do you see all these enemy forces? I will deliver them all to you today. Then at last you will know that I am the Lord.”
14 Ahab asked, “How will he do it?”
And the prophet replied, “The Lord says, ‘By the troops from the provinces.’”
“Shall we attack first?” Ahab asked.
“Yes,” the prophet answered.
15 So he mustered the troops from the provinces, 232 of them, then the rest of his army of 7,000 men. 16 About noontime, as Ben-hadad and the thirty-two allied kings were still drinking themselves drunk, the first of Ahab’s troops marched out of the city.
17 As they approached, Ben-hadad’s scouts reported to him, “Some troops are coming!”
18 “Take them alive,” Ben-hadad commanded, “whether they have come for truce or for war.”
19 By now Ahab’s entire army had joined the attack. 20 Each one killed a Syrian soldier, and suddenly the entire Syrian army panicked and fled. The Israelis chased them, but King Ben-hadad and a few others escaped on horses. 21 However, the great bulk of the horses and chariots were captured, and most of the Syrian army was killed in a great slaughter.
22 Then the prophet approached King Ahab and said, “Get ready for another attack by the king of Syria.”
4 What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Isn’t it because there is a whole army of evil desires within you? 2 You want what you don’t have, so you kill to get it. You long for what others have, and can’t afford it, so you start a fight to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you do ask you don’t get it because your whole aim is wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
4 You are like an unfaithful wife who loves her husband’s enemies. Don’t you realize that making friends with God’s enemies—the evil pleasures of this world—makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy the evil pleasure of the unsaved world, you cannot also be a friend of God. 5 Or what do you think the Scripture means when it says that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, watches over us with tender jealousy? 6 But he gives us more and more strength to stand against all such evil longings. As the Scripture says, God gives strength to the humble but sets himself against the proud and haughty.
7 So give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.