Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

101 I will sing about your loving-kindness and your justice, Lord. I will sing your praises!

² I will try to walk a blameless path, but how I need your help, especially in my own home, where I long to act as I should.

³ Help me to refuse the low and vulgar things; help me to abhor all crooked deals of every kind, to have no part in them. ⁴ I will reject all selfishness and stay away from every evil. ⁵ I will not tolerate anyone who secretly slanders his neighbors; I will not permit conceit and pride. ⁶ I will make the godly of the land my heroes and invite them to my home. Only those who are truly good shall be my servants. ⁷ But I will not allow those who deceive and lie to stay in my house. ⁸ My daily task will be to ferret out criminals and free the city of God from their grip.

7 Then Solomon built his own palace, which took thirteen years to construct.

² One of the rooms in the palace was called the Hall of the Forest of Lebanon. It was huge—measuring 150 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. The great cedar ceiling beams rested upon four rows of cedar pillars. ^3-4 There were forty-five windows in the hall, set in three tiers, one tier above the other, five to a tier, facing each other from three walls. ⁵ Each of the doorways and windows had a square frame.

⁶ Another room was called the Hall of Pillars. It was seventy-five feet long and forty-five feet wide, with a porch in front covered by a canopy that was supported by pillars.

⁷ There was also the Throne Room or Judgment Hall, where Solomon sat to hear legal matters; it was paneled with cedar from the floor to the rafters.

⁸ His cedar-paneled living quarters surrounded a courtyard behind this hall. (He designed similar living quarters, the same size, in the palace that he built for Pharaoh’s daughter—one of his wives.) ⁹ These buildings were constructed entirely from huge, expensive stones, cut to measure. ¹⁰ The foundation stones were twelve to fifteen feet across. ¹¹ The huge stones in the walls were also cut to measure and were topped with cedar beams. ¹² The Great Court had three courses of hewn stone in its walls, topped with cedar beams, just like the inner court of the Temple and the porch of the palace.

⁹ These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.

¹¹ “But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan, and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, ¹² Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons^[a] to buy some. ¹³ The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. ¹⁵ So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. ¹⁶ All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.