◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous) / Psalm 33:12-22 (Our help and our shield); Genesis 2:4b-7 (God breathes life into humankind); 1 Corinthians 15:42b-49 (We bear Christ’s image) (New Catholic Bible)

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May 17, 2018

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with sequential stories told across multiple weeks.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 33:12-22

¹²^[a]Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
    the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.^[b]
¹³^[c]The Lord gazes down from heaven
    and beholds the entire human race.
¹⁴From his royal throne
    he watches all who dwell on the earth.
¹⁵He who has fashioned the hearts of them all
    observes everything they do.
¹⁶A king is not saved by a large army,
    nor is a warrior delivered by great strength.
¹⁷A horse offers false hope for victory;
    despite its power it cannot save.
¹⁸^[d]But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
    on those who trust in his kindness,
¹⁹to deliver them from death
    and to preserve their lives in time of famine.
²⁰^[e]Our soul waits in hope for the Lord;
    he is our help and our shield.
²¹Our hearts rejoice in him
    because we trust in his holy name.
²²O Lord, let your kindness rest upon us,
    for we have placed our hope in you.

Genesis 2:4-7

⁴This was the origin of the heavens and the earth when they were first created.

Origin of Human Beings.^[a] When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, ⁵there were not yet any plants of the field nor had any herbs sprouted in the field, for the Lord God had not yet made it rain upon the earth and there was no one to till the soil. ⁶He made a mist rise out of the ground to water the whole surface of the earth. ⁷Then the Lord God formed man^[b] out of the dust of the earth and he breathed his breath of life into his nostrils and man became a living creature.

Footnotes

Genesis 2:4 The preceding section (Gen 1:1—2:4a) is to be interpreted as a rethinking of certain aspects of creation and an integration, into a systematic and much broader vision, of what had already been set down in the following story, which is older. This Yahwist account of origins is a single piece that is subdivided into chapters 2, 3, and 4. In its literary form it follows the structure of Sumerian-Babylonian hymns that sing of the origins of civilization, but in its content it is truly religious and completely independent of those mythologies. It expresses, in popular language, a theology of the greatest richness and depth.
God is here called by his proper name, Yahweh, the name under which he reveals himself to his people, Israel; he alone, and no one else, is the maker of the entire world.
Man has need of a collaborator, and God provides this. Woman will be by her nature far superior to the animals, which however will provide help to her and the man. The man exercises dominion over them, while man and woman are made for each other and will achieve their purpose each through the other. This law that God has written into the nature of human beings is the basis for the unity of the couple in marriage, which establishes a single human entity that is no longer divisible into parts. Jesus will reaffirm this exigency (Mt 19:3-8) and St. Paul will remind Christian spouses that their union contributes to actuating in time an unsuspected spiritual reality, namely, the fruitful union of Christ and the Church, in which children of God are born (Eph 5:31-32).
The story of creation is meant to say what kind of beings men and women are and what their origin is, but it does not go into detail on the way in which they were created; it does not specify whether God formed man and woman by direct action or through the cooperation of natural forces that took very long periods to accomplish their work. At the same time, the story emphasizes the fact that the material being is animated by a higher vital principle that is not a product of nature but is infused by God himself. Finally, in describing the unity of the couple formed by the Creator the story proclaims that the human species is one.
Genesis 2:7 Man, in Hebrew adam, is the common name of the human species; only beginning in Gen 4:25 and 5:1 will it be regarded as the proper name of the first male. Here and in 3:19, 23, the author connects it with Hebrew adama, “earth.” This is not a scientific etymology but a popular one, based on assonance. In fact, it seems that adam derives from Sumerian ada-mu, “my father.” His companion, too, is initially called “woman” and receives the proper name “Eve” only from Gen 3:20 on. It seems that this name, haua in Hebrew, derives from Sumerian ama, “mother.”

1 Corinthians 15:42-49

⁴²So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³What is sown in dishonor is raised as glorious. What is sown in weakness is raised in power. ⁴⁴What is sown is a physical body; what is raised is a spiritual body.

The Natural and the Spiritual Body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵As it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being; the last Adam has become a lifegiving spirit. ⁴⁶But the spiritual body did not come first. Rather the natural body came first, and then the spiritual.

⁴⁷The first man was formed from the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸The man formed from dust is the pattern for earthly people; the heavenly man is the pattern for those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹Just as we have borne the image of the man formed from dust, so shall we also bear the likeness of the heavenly one.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

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