Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 129
A pilgrimage song.
129 From youth, people have constantly attacked me—
let Israel now repeat!—
2 from youth people have constantly attacked me—
but they haven’t beaten me!
3 They plowed my back like farmers;
they made their furrows deep.
4 But the Lord is righteous—
God cut me free from the ropes of the wicked!
5 Let everyone who hates Zion be ashamed, thoroughly frustrated.
6 Let them be like grass on a roof
that dies before it can be pulled up,
7 which won’t fill the reaper’s hand
or fill the harvester’s arms.
8 Let no one who passes by say to them:
“May the Lord’s blessing be on you!
We bless you in the Lord’s name!”
14 King Zedekiah ordered that the prophet Jeremiah be brought to him at the third entrance of the Lord’s temple, where the king said to Jeremiah, “I want to ask you something, and don’t hide anything from me.”
15 Jeremiah replied, “If I do, you’ll kill me! And if I tell you what to do, you won’t listen to me!”
16 So King Zedekiah swore to Jeremiah behind closed doors, “As the Lord lives, who has given us this life, I won’t put you to death and I won’t hand you over to those who seek to kill you.”
17 So Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: “The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, you and your family will live, and this city will not be burned down. 18 If you don’t surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, the city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will burn it down, and you won’t escape from them.”
19 King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I’m afraid that I will fall into the hands of the Judeans who have defected to the Babylonians, and they will torture me.”
20 “That won’t happen,” Jeremiah replied, “if you obey the Lord, whose message I bring. You will survive, and all will go well for you. 21 But if you refuse to surrender, this is what the Lord has shown me: 22 All the women left in the palace of the king of Judah will be led out to the officers of the king of Babylon. And they will say:
‘Your trusted friends have betrayed you;
they have deceived you;
now that your feet are stuck in the mud,
they are nowhere to be found.’
23 “All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you yourself won’t escape from them. The king of Babylon will capture you, and this city will be burned down.”
24 Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “No one is to know about these matters or else you will die. 25 If the officials find out that we met, and they come and say to you, ‘Tell us what you said to the king. Don’t hide anything from us; otherwise, we’ll kill you. So what did the king say to you?’ 26 you should say to them, ‘I was begging the king not to send me back to the house of Jonathan to die there.’”
27 Then all the officials approached Jeremiah to question him. And he responded exactly as the king had instructed him. So they stopped interrogating him because the conversation between the king and Jeremiah[a] hadn’t been overheard. 28 Jeremiah remained in the prison quarters until Jerusalem was captured.
Confronting lawsuits in the church
6 When someone in your assembly has a legal case against another member, do they dare to take it to court to be judged by people who aren’t just, instead of by God’s people? 2 Or don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to judge trivial cases? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary things? 4 So then if you have ordinary lawsuits, do you appoint people as judges who aren’t respected by the church? 5 I’m saying this because you should be ashamed of yourselves! Isn’t there one person among you who is wise enough to pass judgment between believers? 6 But instead, does a brother or sister have a lawsuit against another brother or sister, and do they do this in front of unbelievers? 7 The fact that you have lawsuits against each other means that you’ve already lost your case. Why not be wronged instead? Why not be cheated? 8 But instead you are doing wrong and cheating—and you’re doing it to your own brothers and sisters.
9 Don’t you know that people who are unjust won’t inherit God’s kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Those who are sexually immoral, those who worship false gods, adulterers, both participants in same-sex intercourse,[a] 10 thieves, the greedy, drunks, abusive people, and swindlers won’t inherit God’s kingdom. 11 That is what some of you used to be! But you were washed clean, you were made holy to God, and you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible