Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
20 I have found David, my servant.
I have anointed him with my holy oil,
21 with whom my hand shall be established.
My arm will also strengthen him.
22 No enemy will tax him.
No wicked man will oppress him.
23 I will beat down his adversaries before him,
and strike those who hate him.
24 But my faithfulness and my loving kindness will be with him.
In my name, his horn will be exalted.
25 I will set his hand also on the sea,
and his right hand on the rivers.
26 He will call to me, ‘You are my Father,
my God, and the rock of my salvation!’
27 I will also appoint him my firstborn,
the highest of the kings of the earth.
28 I will keep my loving kindness for him forever more.
My covenant will stand firm with him.
29 I will also make his offspring endure forever,
and his throne as the days of heaven.
30 If his children forsake my law,
and don’t walk in my ordinances;
31 if they break my statutes,
and don’t keep my commandments;
32 then I will punish their sin with the rod,
and their iniquity with stripes.
33 But I will not completely take my loving kindness from him,
nor allow my faithfulness to fail.
34 I will not break my covenant,
nor alter what my lips have uttered.
35 Once I have sworn by my holiness,
I will not lie to David.
36 His offspring will endure forever,
his throne like the sun before me.
37 It will be established forever like the moon,
the faithful witness in the sky.” Selah.
14 Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees, masons, and carpenters, to build him a house. 2 David perceived that Yahweh had established him king over Israel, for his kingdom was highly exalted, for his people Israel’s sake.
16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him. 18 Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also[a] were conversing with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?”
Others said, “He seems to be advocating foreign deities,” because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.
19 They took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is, which you are speaking about? 20 For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the strangers living there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.
22 Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you. 24 The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. 25 He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. 26 He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ 29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. 30 The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
by Public Domain. The name "World English Bible" is trademarked.