Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

108 O God, my heart is ready to praise you! I will sing and rejoice before you.

² Wake up, O harp and lyre! We will meet the dawn with song. ³ I will praise you everywhere around the world, in every nation. ⁴ For your loving-kindness is great beyond measure, high as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches the skies. ⁵ His glory is far more vast than the heavens. It towers above the earth. ⁶ Hear the cry of your beloved child—come with mighty power and rescue me.

⁷ God has given sacred promises; no wonder I exult! He has promised to give us all the land of Shechem and also Succoth Valley. ⁸ “Gilead is mine to give to you,” he says, “and Manasseh as well; the land of Ephraim is the helmet on my head. Judah is my scepter. ⁹ But Moab and Edom are despised;^[a] and I will shout in triumph over the Philistines.”

¹⁰ Who but God can give me strength to conquer these fortified cities? Who else can lead me into Edom?

¹¹ Lord, have you thrown us away? Have you deserted our army? ¹² Oh, help us fight against our enemies, for men are useless allies. ¹³ But with the help of God we shall do mighty acts of valor. For he treads down our foes.

³ At that time Samuel said to them, “If you are really serious about wanting to return to the Lord, get rid of your foreign gods and your Ashtaroth idols. Determine to obey only the Lord; then he will rescue you from the Philistines.”

⁴ So they destroyed their idols of Baal and Ashtaroth and worshiped only the Lord.

⁵ Then Samuel told them, “Come to Mizpah, all of you, and I will pray to the Lord for you.”

⁶ So they gathered there and, in a great ceremony, drew water from the well and poured it out before the Lord. They also went without food all day as a sign of sorrow for their sins. So it was at Mizpah that Samuel became Israel’s judge.

⁷ When the Philistine leaders heard about the great crowds at Mizpah, they mobilized their army and advanced. The Israelis were badly frightened when they learned that the Philistines were approaching.

⁸ “Plead with God to save us!” they begged Samuel.

⁹ So Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering and pleaded with him to help Israel. And the Lord responded. ¹⁰ Just as Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines arrived for battle, but the Lord spoke with a mighty voice of thunder from heaven, and they were thrown into confusion, and the Israelis routed them ¹¹ and chased them from Mizpah to Beth-car, killing them all along the way. ¹² Samuel then took a stone and placed it between Mizpah and Jeshanah and named it Ebenezer (meaning, “the Stone of Help”), for he said, “The Lord has certainly helped us!” ¹³ So the Philistines were subdued and didn’t invade Israel again at that time because the Lord was against them throughout the remainder of Samuel’s lifetime. ¹⁴ The Israeli cities between Ekron and Gath, which had been conquered by the Philistines, were now returned to Israel, for the Israeli army rescued them from their Philistine captors. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites in those days.

¹⁵ Samuel continued as Israel’s judge for the remainder of his life.

20 Then I saw an angel come down from heaven with the key to the bottomless pit and a heavy chain in his hand. ² He seized the Dragon—that old Serpent, the devil, Satan—and bound him in chains for a thousand years, ³ and threw him into the bottomless pit, which he then shut and locked so that he could not fool the nations anymore until the thousand years were finished. Afterwards he would be released again for a little while.

⁴ Then I saw thrones, and sitting on them were those who had been given the right to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony about Jesus, for proclaiming the Word of God, and who had not worshiped the Creature or his statue, nor accepted his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They had come to life again and now they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

⁵ This is the First Resurrection. (The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years had ended.) ⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the First Resurrection. For them the Second Death holds no terrors, for they will be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.