Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 50

A Psalm of ^[a]Asaph.

¹ The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and calls the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.

² Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

³ Our God comes and does not keep silence; a fire devours before Him, and round about Him a mighty tempest rages.

⁴ He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that He may judge His people:

⁵ Gather together to Me My saints [those who have found grace in My sight], those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.

⁶ And the heavens declare His righteousness (rightness and justice), for God, He is judge. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

⁷ Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify to you and against you: I am God, your God.

⁸ I do not reprove you for your sacrifices; your burnt offerings are continually before Me.

²² Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

²³ He who brings an offering of praise and thanksgiving honors and glorifies Me; and he who orders his way aright [who prepares the way that I may show him], to him I will demonstrate the salvation of God.

¹⁸ For wickedness burns like a fire; it devours the briers and thorns, and it kindles in the thickets of the forest; they roll upward in a column of smoke.

¹⁹ Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is darkened and burned up, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother.

²⁰ They snatch in discord on the right hand, but are still hungry [their cruelty not diminished]; and they devour and destroy on the left hand, but are not satisfied. Each devours and destroys his own flesh [and blood] or his neighbor’s.

²¹ Manasseh [thirsts for the blood of his brother] Ephraim, and Ephraim [for that of] Manasseh; but together they are against Judah. For all this, [God’s] anger is not turned away, but His hand is still stretched out [in judgment].

10 Woe to those [judges] who issue unrighteous decrees, and to the magistrates who keep causing unjust and oppressive decisions to be recorded,

² To turn aside the needy from justice and to make plunder of the rightful claims of the poor of My people, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!

³ And what will you do in the day of visitation [of God’s wrath], and in the desolation which shall come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you deposit [for safekeeping] your wealth and with whom leave your glory?

⁴ Without Me they shall bow down among the prisoners, and they shall fall [overwhelmed] under the heaps of the slain [on the battlefield]. For all this, [God’s] anger is not turned away, but His hand is still stretched out [in judgment].

7 And the high priest asked [Stephen], Are these charges true?

² And he answered, Brethren and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our forefather Abraham when he was still in Mesopotamia, before he [went to] live in Haran,^(A)

³ And He said to him, Leave your own country and your relatives and come into the land (region) that I will point out to you.^(B)

⁴ So then he went forth from the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. And from there, after his father died, [God] transferred him to this country in which you are now dwelling.^(C)

⁵ Yet He gave him no inheritable property in it, [no] not even enough ground to set his foot on; but He promised that He would give it to Him for a ^[a]permanent possession and to his descendants after him, even though [as yet] he had no child.^(D)

⁶ And this is [in effect] what God told him: That his descendants would be aliens (strangers) in a land belonging to other people, who would bring them into bondage and ill-treat them 400 years.

⁷ But I will judge the nation to whom they will be slaves, said God, and after that they will escape and come forth and worship Me in this [very] place.^(E)

⁸ And [God] made with Abraham a covenant (an agreement to be religiously observed) ^[b]of which circumcision was the seal. And under these circumstances [Abraham] became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac [did so] when he became the father of Jacob, and Jacob [when each of his sons was born], the twelve patriarchs.^(F)