Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 129
No Blessing
Heading
A song of the ascents.
They Have Greatly Afflicted Me
1 Greatly they have afflicted me from my youth—
let Israel say—
2 greatly they have afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not been able to defeat me.
3 On my back plowmen have plowed.
They made their furrows long.
They Will Be Suppressed by God
4 The Lord is righteous.
He has cut the ropes of the wicked to pieces.
5 Let all who hate Zion be ashamed and turned back.
6 Let them be like grass on the roof,
which withers even before it is pulled up.
7 The reaper cannot fill his hand with it.
The one who binds sheaves cannot fill his arms.
8 May those who pass by never say,
“The blessing of the Lord be with you.
We bless you in the name of the Lord.”
14 King Zedekiah then sent for Jeremiah and brought him to the third entrance of the temple of the Lord. He said to Jeremiah, “I am going to ask you something. Do not hide anything from me.”
15 Jeremiah replied, “Won’t you put me to death if I tell you the truth? If I give you advice, you won’t listen to me.”
16 So King Zedekiah swore a secret oath to Jeremiah: “As surely as the Lord lives, who gave us our lives, I will not put you to death, and I will not hand you over to the men who seek your life.”
17 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “The Lord, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, says: If you surrender to the Babylonian king’s officials, your life will be spared, and this city will not be burned. You will live, and your family will live. 18 But if you will not surrender to the Babylonian king’s officials, then this city will be handed over to the Chaldeans. They will burn it down, and you will not escape from their hands.”
19 King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Jews who have defected to the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans may turn me over to them, and they will torture me.”
20 But Jeremiah said, “They will not turn you over to them. Please obey the Lord by doing what I tell you. It will go well with you, and your life will be spared. 21 But if you refuse to surrender, this is what the Lord has revealed to me. 22 All the women who are left in the palace of the king of Judah will certainly be brought out to the officials of the Babylonian king. Those women will say to you, ‘Those trusted friends of yours misled you and led you to defeat. Your feet have sunk down into the mud, and they all have deserted you.’ 23 They will bring all your wives and children to the Chaldeans. You yourself will not escape their grasp. You will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned down.”
24 Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “If you do not let anyone know about this conversation, you will not die. 25 But if the officials hear that I have spoken with you, they will come and ask you, ‘Tell us what you said to the king. Do not hide it from us, and we will not put you to death—just tell us what the king said to you.’ 26 Tell them, ‘I was humbly begging the king not to return me to the house of Jonathan to die there.’”
27 All the officials then came to Jeremiah. When they began to question him, he said everything just the way the king had commanded. Then they stopped questioning him, since no one had heard the conversation.
28 So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard until the day Jerusalem was captured. He was still there when Jerusalem fell.
Lawsuits and Unrighteous Behavior
6 If any one of you has a case against another, does he dare to seek judgment before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? 2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you not competent to deal with insignificant lawsuits? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the matters of this life! 4 So if you have lawsuits involving matters of this life, do you appoint those people as your judges whom the church considers of no account? 5 I say this to make you feel ashamed. Is it really the case that there is not one wise man among you who would be able to decide a dispute between his brothers? 6 Instead, brother sues brother, and that in front of unbelievers! 7 The fact that you have lawsuits with one another is already a complete failure on your part. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 Instead, you yourselves do the wronging and defrauding, and you do it to your brothers!
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor males who have sex with males,[a] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor the verbally abusive, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And some of you were those types of people. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ[b] and by the Spirit of our God.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.