Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
This psalm is a song that Asaph wrote.
Israel's enemies
83 God, do not continue to be silent!
Do not remain quiet.
Please do something!
2 Look! Your enemies are causing trouble.
The people who hate you are ready to attack.
3 They decide carefully how they will attack your people.
They want to hurt the people that you love.
4 They say, ‘Come now! We will destroy them.
They will no longer be a nation.
Nobody will remember the name of Israel any more.’
5 They agree together what they will do.
They join one another to fight against you.
6 Those enemies are Edomites and Ishmaelites,
Moabites and Hagrites.
7 They also come from Gebal, Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia and Tyre.
8 Even the Assyrian army has joined with them.
They have given strength to Lot's descendants,
the Moabites and the Ammonites.
Selah.
9 God, punish them as you punished Midian.
Do what you did to Sisera and Jabin at the River Kishon.[a]
10 You destroyed them at Endor.
Their bodies remained on the ground, like dirt.
11 Do to their leaders
what you did to Oreb and Zeeb.
Let their rulers die,
like Zebah and Zalmunna.[b]
12 Those people said,
‘Let us take God's valuable country for ourselves!’
13 God, blow them away like dust,
like chaff that blows away in the wind!
14 Go after them,
like a fire that burns both forest and mountains.
15 Chase them away with your storms.
Frighten them with your strong winds.
16 Cause them to be very ashamed, Lord,
so that they might turn to you.
17 May they always be ashamed and frightened.
Let them die with shame![c]
18 Then they will understand that you are the Lord.
They will know that you are the Most High God
who rules over all the earth.
David and Barzillai
31 Barzillai, the man from Gilead, came from Rogelim to meet the king at the Jordan River. He wanted to help the king to come across the river and to continue his journey. 32 But Barzillai was a very old man, 80 years old. He had taken care of David when David was living in Mahanaim. He had helped David with many gifts, because he was a very rich man. 33 King David said to him, ‘Come with me to live in Jerusalem. I will take care of you while you are with me there.’
34 Barzillai answered the king, ‘I will not live many more years. Why should I go to live in Jerusalem with the king? 35 I am already 80 years old. I can no longer tell what is nice or what is bad. I cannot taste what I eat and drink. I cannot still hear people's voices when they sing. I would only cause trouble to you, my lord the king. 36 I will come across the river and I will travel a short way with you. But I cannot accept your kind gift. 37 Let me return to my own town, sir. Then I will die there. They can bury me near the grave of my father and my mother. Look! Here is my son, Kimham. Let him go with you, my lord the king. Please do for him whatever you think is right.’
38 The king said, ‘Kimham can go with me. I will do for him whatever you think is good. I will also help you in any way that you choose.’
39 So all the people went across the Jordan River with the king. The king kissed Barzillai and he asked God to bless him. Then Barzillai returned to his home.
40 The king went across the river to Gilgal. Kimham went with him.[a] All Judah's army and half of Israel's soldiers helped the king to cross the river.
The men from Israel are angry with the men from Judah
41 Then all the men of Israel's tribes came to the king. They complained, ‘Why did our brothers, the men of Judah's tribe, take you for themselves? Why were they the only people who could help the king to cross the Jordan River? They helped you and your family and your soldiers to cross, and we had no part in it.’
42 The men of Judah's tribe replied, ‘We did it because the king belongs to our own family. Do not be angry about it. The king did not pay for the food that we ate. We have not taken any of his things for ourselves.’
43 The men of Israel's tribes replied, ‘In Israel we are ten tribes, and Judah is only one tribe. So he is our king ten times more than he is your king! So why have you tried to insult us? We were the first people to say that we should bring the king back to Jerusalem.’
But the words that the men of Judah spoke were much stronger than the words of the men of Israel.
10 But some people try to obey all the rules of God's Law. They think that they will become right with God if they do this very well. But God will speak against people like that and he will punish them. It is written in the Bible: ‘God will punish everyone who does not always obey all the rules in his Law completely.’[a] 11 We know that the Law can not cause anyone to become right with God. That is clear because the Bible says, ‘The person that God has accepted as right will live because they trust him.’[b]
12 But the Law does not tell people to trust God. It tells people about all the things that they must do. The Bible says, ‘The person who obeys all the rules in God's Law completely will live’. 13 So God's Law shows that it is right for God to punish us. But Christ took that punishment away from us, because God punished him instead of us. It says in the Bible: ‘When people hang someone on a tree to kill him, it shows that God has cursed that person.’[c] 14 Christ died in that way so that God would bless the Gentiles in the way that he blessed Abraham. Also, if we believe in Christ, we can then receive God's Spirit that he promised.
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