Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
13 For you fashioned my inmost being,
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I thank you because I am awesomely made,
wonderfully; your works are wonders —
I know this very well.
15 My bones were not hidden from you
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes could see me as an embryo,
but in your book all my days were already written;
my days had been shaped
before any of them existed.
17 God, how I prize your thoughts!
How many of them there are!
18 If I count them, there are more than grains of sand;
if I finish the count, I am still with you.
16 Then they traveled on from Beit-El, and while there was still some distance to go before arriving in Efrat, Rachel went into labor, and she had great difficulty with it. 17 While she was undergoing this hard labor, the midwife said to her, “Don’t worry, this is also a son for you.” 18 But she died in childbirth. As she was dying she named her son Ben-Oni [son of my grief], but his father called him Binyamin [son of the right hand, son of the south]. 19 So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Efrat (that is, Beit-Lechem). 20 Ya‘akov set up a standing-stone on her grave; it is the standing-stone of Rachel’s grave to this day.
21 Isra’el continued his travels and pitched his tent on the other side of Migdal-‘Eder. 22 It was while Isra’el was living in that land that Re’uven went and slept with Bilhah his father’s concubine, and Isra’el heard about it.
Ya‘akov had twelve sons. 23 The sons of Le’ah were Re’uven Ya‘akov’s firstborn, Shim‘on, Levi, Y’hudah, Yissakhar and Z’vulun. 24 The sons of Rachel were Yosef and Binyamin. 25 The sons of Bilhah Rachel’s slave-girl were Dan and Naftali. 26 And the sons of Zilpah Le’ah’s slave-girl were Gad and Asher. These were Ya‘akov’s sons, born to him in Paddan-Aram.
27 Ya‘akov came home to his father Yitz’chak at Mamre, near Kiryat-Arba (also known as Hevron), where Avraham and Yitz’chak had lived as foreigners. 28 Yitz’chak lived to be 180 years old. 29 Then he breathed his last, died and was gathered to his people, an old man full of years; and his sons ‘Esav and Ya‘akov buried him.
15 Aware of this, he left that area.
Many people followed him; and he healed them all 16 but warned them not to make him known. 17 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through Yesha‘yahu the prophet,
18 “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved, with whom I am well pleased;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will announce justice to the Gentiles.
19 He will not fight or shout,
no one will hear his voice in the streets;
20 he will not snap off a broken reed
or snuff out a smoldering wick
until he has brought justice through to victory.
21 In him the Gentiles will put their hope.”[a]
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.