Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 37

Do Not Fret Because of Evildoers

Heading
By David.

Do Not Be Frustrated by the Wicked

Trust in God’s Goodness

Consider the Final Destiny of the Wicked

¹⁸ Then Judah approached him and said, “O my lord, please let your servant speak to my lord directly. Do not let your anger burn against your servant, because you are just like Pharaoh. ¹⁹ My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ ²⁰ We said to my lord, ‘We have a father, an old man, and a child from his old age, a young one. His brother is dead, and he alone is left from his mother, and his father loves him.’ ²¹ You said to your servants, ‘Bring him down to me, so that I may see him with my own eyes.’ ²² We said to my lord, ‘The boy cannot leave his father, for if he were to leave his father, his father would die.’ ²³ You said to your servants, ‘Unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you will never see my face again.’ ²⁴ And so it was that when we came to your servant, my father, we told him about the words of my lord. ²⁵ Our father said, ‘Go again. Buy us a little food.’ ²⁶ We said, ‘We cannot go down. If our youngest brother is with us, we will go down, because we cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’ ²⁷ Your servant, my father, said to us, ‘You know that my wife gave birth to two sons for me. ²⁸ The one has departed from me and I said, “I am sure he is torn to pieces,” and I have not seen him since. ²⁹ If you take this one away from me as well, and mishap comes upon him, you will bring my gray hairs down to the grave with sorrow.’ ³⁰ So now when I come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, since my father’s life is bound up in the boy’s life, ³¹ when he sees that the boy is no more, he will die. Your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, to the grave with sorrow. ³² For your servant became a guarantee for the boy to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him to you, then I will bear the blame before my father forever.’ ³³ So please let your servant stay as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go up with his brothers. ³⁴ For how can I go up to my father if the boy is not with me? How could I stand to see the evil that will come on my father?”

⁵⁷ Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? ⁵⁸ Indeed, as you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, make an effort on the way to reach a settlement with him. Otherwise, he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and the officer may throw you into prison. ⁵⁹ I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last cent.”^[a]