Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

SAMEKH

AYIN

⁶ After David had killed the Philistine, Goliath, he and the soldiers returned to their homes. Women came out from all the towns in Israel to meet King Saul. The women were happy as they sang songs and they danced. They made music with tambourines and lyres. ⁷ They sang this song while they danced:

⁸ Saul did not like this song. He became very angry. He thought, ‘The women say that David has killed tens of thousands of men. But they say that I have only killed thousands of men. They will soon want David to be their king.’

⁹ After that, Saul was jealous of David and he watched David carefully.

¹⁰ The next day God caused an evil spirit to come and control Saul. Saul started to prophesy in his house. David was making music on his harp as he did every day. Saul had a spear in his hand. ¹¹ He threw the spear at David. He thought, ‘I will hit David so that it fixes him to the wall.’ He tried to do this twice, but David moved out of the way.

¹² The Lord was with David. But the Lord had left Saul. So Saul was afraid of David. ¹³ So Saul sent David away from him. He made David the leader of 1,000 soldiers. David led the soldiers into battles, but he always came back again.^{[a] 14} David won all his fights because the Lord was with him. ¹⁵ Saul saw that David was a great soldier. So he became more afraid of David. ¹⁶ All the people in Israel and Judah loved David because he led the army in their battles.

David marries Saul's daughter

¹⁷ Saul said to David, ‘Here is my oldest daughter Merab. I will let you marry her. But you must be a brave soldier and you must fight battles for the Lord.’ Saul thought to himself, ‘I will not have to kill David myself. The Philistines will do that.’

¹⁸ But David said to Saul, ‘I am not an important person. My family and my father's clan are not important either. I do not deserve to marry the king's daughter.’

¹⁹ When the time came for Merab to marry David, Saul told her to marry a different man. He gave her to Adriel from Meholah to be his wife.

²⁰ Saul had another daughter, Michal, and she loved David. When somebody told Saul about this, he was very happy. ²¹ He thought, ‘I will let David marry her. I will use her as a trap that will catch him. I will give the Philistines a chance to kill him.’ So Saul said to David, ‘Now you have another chance to marry one of my daughters.’

²² Saul told his servants to say secretly to David, ‘The king is pleased with you. His servants all like you. You should now marry the king's daughter.’

²³ Saul's servants said this to David. But David replied, ‘It is a great honour for someone to marry the king's daughter. But I am poor. I am not important enough.’^[b]

²⁴ Saul's servants told him what David had said. ²⁵ Saul said, ‘Tell David this: The king does not want David to pay money to marry the king's daughter. He can pay for her with the foreskins of 100 dead Philistines. Saul wants David to punish his enemies.’

In this way, Saul thought that he would use the Philistines to kill David.

²⁶ Saul's servants told David what Saul wanted. It made David happy to think that he could marry the king's daughter. Before the time for the wedding arrived, ²⁷ David and his men left their homes. They went and they killed 200 Philistines. David brought all their foreskins to Saul. David gave them to Saul so that he could marry the king's daughter. So Saul agreed to let David marry his daughter Michal.

²⁸ Saul realized that the Lord was with David. He knew that his daughter Michal loved David. ²⁹ So Saul became even more afraid of David. Saul was David's enemy for the rest of his life.

³⁰ The Philistine army continued to march out and attack the Israelites. Every time that they fought, David won more fights than any of Saul's other officers. So David became very famous.

The ship is in a storm

¹³ The wind began to blow from the south, but it was not strong. So the sailors thought, ‘Now we can do what we wanted to do. We can sail to Phoenix.’ So they pulled up the ship's anchor and left the port. Then we sailed as near as we could to the coast of Crete.

¹⁴ But soon a very strong wind began to blow. This wind blew from the north-east and it blew strongly across the island. ¹⁵ The storm hit the ship very powerfully. It was not possible for the sailors to sail the ship straight into the wind. So they did not try to do that any more. Instead, they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁶ After that, we passed the south end of a small island called Cauda. Here we found a place where the wind did not blow so strongly. The sailors lifted the ship's small boat out of the water to make it safe. ¹⁷ They tied it on the ship with ropes. Then they tied some more ropes under the ship so that it would not break in pieces. The men were afraid of what might happen. There were some places along the coast of Libya where the water was not very deep. The ship might hit one of these places and then it might break. So they took the ship's largest sail down. Then they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁸ The strong storm continued to blow against the ship. The ship was carrying many things. So the next day, the sailors threw some of these things into the sea. ¹⁹ The day after that, they took hold of the sails and ropes and they threw them into the sea. ²⁰ For many days, we did not see the sun or any stars.^[a] The storm continued to blow strongly. So then we thought, ‘It is not possible for us to remain alive.’

²¹ The men on the ship had not eaten any food for a long time. So Paul stood in front of them and he said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me! We should not have sailed away from Crete. If we had not left there, the ship and everything on it would still be safe. ²² Now I ask you, please be brave. The storm will completely destroy the ship, but not one of you will die. ²³ Last night one of God's angels spoke to me. I am a servant of God and I belong to him. He sent his angel to come to me. ²⁴ The angel said, “Paul, do not be afraid. You must go to Rome and Caesar will judge you there. Because of you, God will be kind to all the people on the ship with you. None of them will die.” ²⁵ Because of the angel's message, I say to you, “Be brave, my friends!” I trust God. I know that everything will happen in the way that the angel told me. ²⁶ But the wind will blow the ship so that we hit an island.’

²⁷ The storm had continued for 14 days and nights. The strong wind was blowing the ship across the Mediterranean Sea. About midnight, the sailors thought that we were near to the land. ²⁸ So they used a rope to measure how deep the water was. They saw that the water was nearly 40 metres deep. A short time later they did this again. This time the water was only 30 metres deep. ²⁹ The sailors were afraid that the ship would hit some rocks. So they dropped four anchors on ropes from the back of the ship into the sea.

After that, they prayed that dawn would come soon. ³⁰ Some of the sailors tried to leave the ship. They put the small boat into the sea. They tried to go away secretly. They said, ‘We are going to the front of the ship to put some more anchors down into the sea.’ But that was not true. ³¹ Paul said to the army officer and to the soldiers, ‘These sailors must stay on the ship. If they do not stay, you will not be safe. You will die.’ ³² So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the small boat to the ship. The small boat fell into the water and the wind blew it away.

³³ Now it was almost dawn. Paul said to everyone, ‘Please eat some food. You have now waited for 14 days for the storm to stop. You did not know what would happen. You have not eaten anything during all that time. ³⁴ You must eat some food now. Then you will be strong enough to stay alive. None of you will die. You will not even lose one hair from your head.’

³⁵ After Paul said this, he took some bread in his hands. He stood in front of them all and he thanked God for the bread. Then he broke the bread into pieces and he began to eat it. ³⁶ Everyone became less afraid and we all ate some food. ³⁷ There were 276 people on the ship. ³⁸ After everyone had eaten enough, the sailors threw bags of wheat off the ship into the sea. Then the ship was not so heavy.^[b]