Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

28 To You, O LORD, do I cry. O my strength, do not be deaf toward me; lest if You do not answer me, I be like those who go down into the pit.

² Hear the voice of my petitions when I cry to You, when I hold up my hands toward Your Holy Oracle.

³ Do not draw me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak friendly to their neighbors when malice is in their hearts.

⁴ Reward them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. Recompense them for the work of their hands. Render them their reward.

⁵ For they do not reward the works of the LORD, nor the operation of His hands. Break them down and do not build them up.

⁶ Praised be the LORD, for He has heard the voice of my petitions.

⁷ The LORD is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in Him, and I was helped. Therefore, my heart shall rejoice; and with my song I will praise Him.

⁸ The LORD is their strength; and He is the strength of the deliverances of His anointed.

⁹ Save Your people and bless Your inheritance. Feed them, also, and exalt them forever. A Psalm of David.

²⁹ Afterward, Reuben returned to the pit; and behold, Joseph was not in the pit. Then he tore his clothes

³⁰ and returned to his brothers, and said, “The child is no more. And I? Where shall I go?”

³¹ And they took Joseph’s coat and killed a kid from the goats and dipped the coat in the blood.

³² So they sent that multi-colored coat; and they brought it to their father, and said, “We have found this. See, now, whether it be your son’s coat or not.”

³³ Then he knew it, and said, “It is my son’s coat. A wicked beast has devoured him. Joseph is surely torn in pieces.”

³⁴ And Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth around his waist and mourned for his son a long time.

³⁵ Then all his sons and his daughters arose up to comfort him. But he would not be comforted, and said, “Surely I will go down into the grave mourning my son.” So, his father wept for him.

³⁶ And the Midianites sold him into Egypt, to Potiphar, a Eunuch of Pharaoh’s, and his chief steward.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels who had sinned, but cast them down into Hell and delivered them into chains of darkness (to be kept for damnation);

⁵ nor spare the old world (save Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness), but brought in the Flood upon the world of the ungodly;

⁶ and turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes (condemning and overthrowing them), and made them an example to those who would live ungodly afterward;

⁷ and delivered Lot only, overwrought with the unclean conduct of the wicked

⁸ (for he - being righteous and dwelling among them - tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their unlawful deeds),

⁹ then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of trials and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the Day of Judgment;

¹⁰ and chiefly those who walk after the flesh (in the lust of uncleanness) and despise government. They are presumptuous, standing in their own conceit, and unafraid to blaspheme God’s glories.