Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

16 Save me, O God, because I have come to you for refuge. ² I said to him, “You are my Lord; I have no other help but yours.” ³ I want the company of the godly men and women in the land; they are the true nobility. ⁴ Those choosing other gods shall all be filled with sorrow; I will not offer the sacrifices they do or even speak the names of their gods.

⁵ The Lord himself is my inheritance, my prize. He is my food and drink, my highest joy! He guards all that is mine. ⁶ He sees that I am given pleasant brooks and meadows as my share!^[a] What a wonderful inheritance! ⁷ I will bless the Lord who counsels me; he gives me wisdom in the night. He tells me what to do.

⁸ I am always thinking of the Lord; and because he is so near, I never need to stumble or fall.

⁹ Heart, body, and soul are filled with joy. ¹⁰ For you will not leave me among the dead; you will not allow your beloved one to rot in the grave. ¹¹ You have let me experience the joys of life and the exquisite pleasures of your own eternal presence.

⁹ “O woman of rare beauty, what is it about your loved one that is better than any other, that you command us this?”

The Girl: ¹⁰ “My beloved one is tanned and handsome, better than ten thousand others! ¹¹ His head is purest gold, and he has wavy, raven hair. ¹² His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks, deep and quiet. ¹³ His cheeks are like sweetly scented beds of spices. His lips are perfumed lilies, his breath like myrrh. ¹⁴ His arms are round bars of gold set with topaz; his body is bright ivory encrusted with jewels. ¹⁵ His legs are as pillars of marble set in sockets of finest gold, like cedars of Lebanon; none can rival him. ¹⁶ His mouth is altogether sweet, lovable in every way. Such, O women of Jerusalem, is my beloved, my friend.”

6 The Young Women of Jerusalem: “O rarest of beautiful women, where has your loved one gone? We will help you find him.”

The Girl: ² “He has gone down to his garden, to his spice beds, to pasture his flock and to gather the lilies. ³ I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. He pastures his flock among the lilies!”

King Solomon:

15 Now let me remind you, brothers, of what the Gospel really is, for it has not changed—it is the same Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is squarely built upon this wonderful message; ² and it is this Good News that saves you if you still firmly believe it, unless of course you never really believed it in the first place.

³ I passed on to you right from the first what had been told to me, that Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures said he would, ⁴ and that he was buried, and that three days afterwards he arose from the grave just as the prophets foretold. ⁵ He was seen by Peter and later by the rest of “the Twelve.”^{[a] 6} After that he was seen by more than five hundred Christian brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. ⁷ Then James saw him, and later all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all I saw him too, long after the others, as though I had been born almost too late for this. ⁹ For I am the least worthy of all the apostles, and I shouldn’t even be called an apostle at all after the way I treated the church of God.

¹⁰ But whatever I am now it is all because God poured out such kindness and grace upon me—and not without results: for I have worked harder than all the other apostles, yet actually I wasn’t doing it, but God working in me, to bless me. ¹¹ It makes no difference who worked the hardest, I or they; the important thing is that we preached the Gospel to you and you believed it.