Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A Davidic Song of Ascents

God is for Us

The Covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons and ordered them, “Be productive, multiply, and fill the earth. ² All the living creatures of the earth will be filled with fear and terror of you from now on, including all the creatures that fly in the sky, everything that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the ocean. They’ve been assigned to live under your dominion.^[a]

³ “Every living, moving creature will be food for you. Just as I gave you green plants before, so now you have everything. ⁴ However, you are not to eat meat with its life—that is, its blood—in it! ⁵ Also, I will certainly demand an accounting regarding bloodshed, from every animal and from every human being. I’ll demand an accounting from every human being for the life of another human being.

⁸ Later, God told Noah and his sons, ⁹ “Pay attention! I’m establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you—the flying creatures, the livestock, and all the wildlife of the earth that are with you—all the earth’s animals that came out of the ark. ¹¹ I will establish my covenant with you: No living beings will ever be cut off again by flood waters, and there will never again be a flood that destroys the earth.”

The Sign of God’s Covenant

¹² God also said, “Here’s the symbol that represents the covenant that I’m making between me and you and every living being with you, for all future generations: ¹³ I’ve set my rainbow in the sky^[b] to symbolize the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow becomes visible in the clouds, ¹⁵ I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and every living creature, so that water will never again become a flood to destroy all living beings. ¹⁶ When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will observe it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living beings on the earth.”

¹⁷ God also told Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I’ve established between me and everything^[c] that lives on the earth.”

³² And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell you about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. ³³ Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, received promises, shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴ put out raging fires, escaped death by^[a] the sword, found strength in weakness, became powerful in battle, and routed foreign armies. ³⁵ Women received their dead raised back to life. Other people were brutally tortured, but refused to be ransomed, so that they might gain a better resurrection. ³⁶ Still others endured taunts and floggings, and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷ They were stoned to death, sawed in half, and killed with swords. They went around in sheepskins and goatskins. They were needy, oppressed, and mistreated. ³⁸ The world wasn’t worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and from caves to holes in the ground.

³⁹ All these people won approval for their faith but they did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰ since God had planned something better for us, so that they would not be perfected without us.