Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A Song or Psalm of David.

¹ ¶ O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise; this is my glory.

² Awake, psaltery and harp; I will awake the dawn.

³ I will praise thee, O LORD, among the peoples, and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.

⁴ For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reaches unto the heavens.

⁵ Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens and thy glory above all the earth;

⁶ ¶ that thy beloved may be delivered: save with thy right hand, and answer me.

⁷ God has spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem and mete out the valley of Succoth.

⁸ Gilead shall be mine; Manasseh shall be mine; Ephraim also shall be the strength of my head; Judah shall be my lawgiver;

⁹ Moab shall be my washpot; over Edom I will cast my shoe; over Philistia I will triumph.

¹⁰ Who will bring me into the strong city? who will lead me into Edom?

¹¹ Surely thou, O God, who had cast us off and did not, O God, go forth with our hosts.

¹² Give us help from trouble; for the salvation of man is deception.

¹³ Through God we shall do valiantly, for he shall tread down our enemies again.

8 ¶ And it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel.

² Now the name of his firstborn was Joel, and the name of his second, Abiah; they were judges in Beersheba.

³ And his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after greed, receiving bribes and perverting that which is right.

⁴ ¶ Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel in Ramah

⁵ and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons do not walk in thy ways; therefore make us a king to judge us like all the Gentiles.

⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.

⁷ And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.

⁸ According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, with which they have forsaken me and served other gods, so they also do unto thee.

⁹ Now, therefore, hearken unto their voice; however first protest solemnly against them by declaring unto them the rights of the king that shall reign over them.

¹⁰ And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked him for a king.

¹¹ And he said, This will be the right of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariot.

¹² And he will appoint captains over thousands and captains over fifties and will set them to plough his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and the munitions of his chariots.

¹³ And he will take your daughters to be confectioneries and to be cooks and to be bakers.

¹⁴ And he will take your fields and your vineyards and your good oliveyards and give them to his slaves.

¹⁵ And he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards to give to his officers and to his slaves.

¹⁶ And he will take your menslaves and your maidslaves and your good young men and your asses and do his work with them.

¹⁷ He will also take the tenth of your sheep, and finally ye shall be his slaves.

¹⁸ And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

¹⁹ Nevertheless, the people refused to hear the voice of Samuel, and they said, No, but we will have a king over us

²⁰ that we also may be like all the Gentiles and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.

²¹ And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD.

²² And the LORD said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and place a king over them. Then Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go each one unto his city.

⁷ And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison

⁸ and shall go out to deceive the Gentiles which are upon the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.

⁹ And they went up on the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints about and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.

¹⁰ And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

¹¹ ¶ And I saw a great white throne and him that was seated upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and their place was not found.

¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened; which is the book of life; and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

¹³ And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and Hades delivered up the dead which were in them; and the judgment of each one was according to their works.

¹⁴ And Hades and death were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

¹⁵ And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.