Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David.

3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb. ² Yahweh’s^[a] angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. ³ Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

⁴ When Yahweh saw that he came over to see, God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!”

He said, “Here I am.”

⁵ He said, “Don’t come close. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.” ⁶ Moreover he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.

⁷ Yahweh said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. ⁸ I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. ⁹ Now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. Moreover I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

¹¹ Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

¹² He said, “Certainly I will be with you. This will be the token to you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

7 The high priest said, “Are these things so?”

² He said, “Brothers and fathers, listen. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, ³ and said to him, ‘Get out of your land and away from your relatives, and come into a land which I will show you.’^{(A) 4} Then he came out of the land of the Chaldaeans and lived in Haran. From there, when his father was dead, God moved him into this land where you are now living. ⁵ He gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on. He promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his offspring after him, when he still had no child. ⁶ God spoke in this way: that his offspring would live as aliens in a strange land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. ⁷ ‘I will judge the nation to which they will be in bondage,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and serve me in this place.’^{(B) 8} He gave him the covenant of circumcision. So Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.

⁹ “The patriarchs, moved with jealousy against Joseph, sold him into Egypt. God was with him ¹⁰ and delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He made him governor over Egypt and all his house. ¹¹ Now a famine came over all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction. Our fathers found no food. ¹² But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent out our fathers the first time. ¹³ On the second time Joseph was made known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family was revealed to Pharaoh. ¹⁴ Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his relatives, seventy-five souls. ¹⁵ Jacob went down into Egypt and he died, himself and our fathers; ¹⁶ and they were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.