Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

130 O Lord, from the depths of despair I cry for your help: ² “Hear me! Answer! Help me!”

^3-4 Lord, if you keep in mind our sins, then who can ever get an answer to his prayers? But you forgive! What an awesome thing this is! ⁵ That is why I wait expectantly, trusting God to help, for he has promised. ⁶ I long for him more than sentinels long for the dawn.

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord; for he is loving and kind and comes to us with armloads of salvation. ⁸ He himself shall ransom Israel from her slavery to sin.

²⁵ Now no one in Israel was such a handsome specimen of manhood as Absalom, and no one else received such praise. ²⁶ He cut his hair only once a year—and then only because it weighed three pounds and was too much of a load to carry around! ²⁷ He had three sons and one daughter, Tamar, who was a very beautiful girl.

²⁸ After Absalom had been in Jerusalem for two years and had not yet seen the king, ²⁹ he sent for Joab to ask him to intercede for him; but Joab wouldn’t come. Absalom sent for him again, but again he refused to come.

³⁰ So Absalom said to his servants, “Go and set fire to that barley field of Joab’s next to mine,” and they did.

³¹ Then Joab came to Absalom and demanded, “Why did your servants set my field on fire?”

³² And Absalom replied, “Because I wanted you to ask the king why he brought me back from Geshur if he didn’t intend to see me. I might as well have stayed there. Let me have an interview with the king; then if he finds that I am guilty of murder, let him execute me.”

³³ So Joab told the king what Absalom had said. Then at last David summoned Absalom, and he came and bowed low before the king, and David kissed him.

6 Dear brothers, if a Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help him back onto the right path, remembering that next time it might be one of you who is in the wrong. ² Share each other’s troubles and problems, and so obey our Lord’s command. ³ If anyone thinks he is too great to stoop to this, he is fooling himself. He is really a nobody.

⁴ Let everyone be sure that he is doing his very best, for then he will have the personal satisfaction of work well done and won’t need to compare himself with someone else. ⁵ Each of us must bear some faults and burdens of his own. For none of us is perfect!

⁶ Those who are taught the Word of God should help their teachers by paying them.

⁷ Don’t be misled; remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows! ⁸ If he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life that the Holy Spirit gives him. ⁹ And let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t get discouraged and give up. ¹⁰ That’s why whenever we can we should always be kind to everyone, and especially to our Christian brothers.