Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 78
God’s Goodness and Israel’s Ingratitude
A Maskil of Asaph.
1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.(A)
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,(B)
3 things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.(C)
4 We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
and the wonders that he has done.(D)
12 In the sight of their ancestors he worked marvels
in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.(A)
13 He divided the sea and let them pass through it
and made the waters stand like a heap.(B)
14 In the daytime he led them with a cloud
and all night long with a fiery light.(C)
15 He split rocks open in the wilderness
and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.(D)
16 He made streams come out of the rock
and caused waters to flow down like rivers.
17 Thus says the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I am the Lord your God,
who teaches you how to succeed,
who leads you in the way you should go.(A)
18 O that you had paid attention to my commandments!
Then your prosperity would have been like a river
and your success like the waves of the sea;(B)
19 your offspring would have been like the sand
and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
or destroyed from before me.(C)
20 Go out from Babylon; flee from Chaldea;
declare this with a shout of joy; proclaim it;
send it forth to the end of the earth;
say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”(D)
21 They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split open the rock, and the water gushed out.(E)
Warning against Judging Another
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another speaks evil against the law and judges the law, but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.(A) 12 There is one lawgiver and judge[a] who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?(B)
Boasting about Tomorrow
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.”(C) 14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.(D) 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.”(E) 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.