Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Human Wickedness[a](A)
14 (B)Fools say to themselves,
“There is no God!”
They are all corrupt,
and they have done terrible things;
there is no one who does what is right.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven at us humans
to see if there are any who are wise,
any who worship him.
3 But they have all gone wrong;
they are all equally bad.
Not one of them does what is right,
not a single one.
4 “Don't they know?” asks the Lord.
“Are all these evildoers ignorant?
They live by robbing my people,
and they never pray to me.”
5 But then they will be terrified,
for God is with those who obey him.
6 Evildoers frustrate the plans of the humble,
but the Lord is their protection.
7 How I pray that victory
will come to Israel from Zion.
How happy the people of Israel will be
when the Lord makes them prosperous again!
13 Joab and his men advanced to attack, and the Syrians fled. 14 When the Ammonites saw the Syrians running away, they fled from Abishai and retreated into the city. Then Joab turned back from fighting the Ammonites and went back to Jerusalem.
15 The Syrians realized that they had been defeated by the Israelites, and so they called all their troops together. 16 King Hadadezer sent for the Syrians who were on the east side of the Euphrates River, and they came to Helam under the command of Shobach, commander of the army of King Hadadezer of Zobah. 17 When David heard of it, he gathered the Israelite troops, crossed the Jordan River, and marched to Helam, where the Syrians took up their position facing him. The fighting began, 18 and the Israelites drove the Syrian army back. David and his men killed seven hundred Syrian chariot drivers and forty thousand cavalry, and they wounded Shobach, the enemy commander, who died on the battlefield. 19 When the kings who were subject to Hadadezer realized that they had been defeated by the Israelites, they made peace with them and became their subjects. And the Syrians were afraid to help the Ammonites any more.
31 In the meantime the disciples were begging Jesus, “Teacher, have something to eat!”
32 But he answered, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 So the disciples started asking among themselves, “Could somebody have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” Jesus said to them, “is to obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to do. 35 You have a saying, ‘Four more months and then the harvest.’ But I tell you, take a good look at the fields; the crops are now ripe and ready to be harvested! 36 The one who reaps the harvest is being paid and gathers the crops for eternal life; so the one who plants and the one who reaps will be glad together. 37 For the saying is true, ‘Someone plants, someone else reaps.’ 38 I have sent you to reap a harvest in a field where you did not work; others worked there, and you profit from their work.”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.