Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

28 To You, O LORD, do I cry. O my strength, do not be deaf toward me; lest if You do not answer me, I be like those who go down into the pit.

² Hear the voice of my petitions when I cry to You, when I hold up my hands toward Your Holy Oracle.

³ Do not draw me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak friendly to their neighbors when malice is in their hearts.

⁴ Reward them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their inventions. Recompense them for the work of their hands. Render them their reward.

⁵ For they do not reward the works of the LORD, nor the operation of His hands. Break them down and do not build them up.

⁶ Praised be the LORD, for He has heard the voice of my petitions.

⁷ The LORD is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in Him, and I was helped. Therefore, my heart shall rejoice; and with my song I will praise Him.

⁸ The LORD is their strength; and He is the strength of the deliverances of His anointed.

⁹ Save Your people and bless Your inheritance. Feed them, also, and exalt them forever. A Psalm of David.

⁹ Therefore judgment is far from us. Nor does justice come near to us. We wait for light, but lo, it is darkness, for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

¹⁰ We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as one without eyes. We stumble at the noon day as in the twilight, in solitary places, as dead men.

¹¹ We roar all like bears and mourn like doves. We look for judgment, but there is none, for health, but it is far from us.

¹² For our trespasses are many before You. And our sins testify against us. For our trespasses are with us. And we know our iniquities

¹³ in trespassing and lying against the LORD. And we have departed away from our God, have spoken of cruelty and rebellion, conceiving and uttering false matters out of the heart.

¹⁴ Therefore, judgment has turned backward. And justice stands far off. For truth has fallen in the street, and truth cannot enter.

¹⁵ Yea, truth fails. And he who refrains from evil makes himself a prey. And when the LORD saw it, it displeased Him that there was no judgment.

¹⁶ And when He saw that there was no man, He wondered that none would offer himself. Therefore, His Arm saved it, and His righteousness itself sustained it.

¹⁷ For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon His Head. And He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak.

¹⁸ As a recompense, to requite the fury of the adversaries (a recompense to His enemies), He will fully repay the islands.

¹⁹ So shall they fear the Name of the LORD from the West, and His Glory from the rising of the Sun. For the enemy shall come like a flood. But the Spirit of the LORD shall chase him away.

2 Therefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all blasphemy,

² desire the sincere milk of the Word, as newborn babies; so that by it you may grow

³ (if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is bountiful),

⁴ coming to Him as to a living stone, indeed rejected by man but chosen by God and precious.

⁵ You also, as living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood; to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

⁶ Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture, “Behold, I put a Chief Cornerstone in Zion, elect and precious. And the one who believes in Him shall not be put to shame.”

⁷ Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious. But to those who are disobedient, “the Stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the Chief Cornerstone,”

⁸ and, “a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offense,” to those who stumble at the Word, being disobedient. To this they were also appointed.

⁹ But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are a Possession; so that you would show forth the virtues of the One Who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

¹⁰ In the past, you were not a people, yet are now the people of God, who in the past were not under mercy, but now have obtained mercy.