Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
116 I love the Lord because he hears my prayers and answers them. 2 Because he bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I breathe!
12 But now what can I offer Jehovah for all he has done for me? 13 I will bring him an offering of wine[a] and praise his name for saving me. 14 I will publicly bring him the sacrifice I vowed I would. 15 His loved ones are very precious to him, and he does not lightly let them die.[b]
16 O Lord, you have freed me from my bonds, and I will serve you forever. 17 I will worship you and offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving. 18-19 Here in the courts of the Temple in Jerusalem, before all the people, I will pay everything I vowed to the Lord. Praise the Lord.
10 He took with him ten of Abraham’s camels loaded with samples of the best of everything his master owned and journeyed to Iraq, to Nahor’s village. 11 There he made the camels kneel down outside the town, beside a spring. It was evening, and the women of the village were coming to draw water.
12 “O Jehovah, the God of my master,” he prayed, “show kindness to my master Abraham and help me to accomplish the purpose of my journey. 13 See, here I am, standing beside this spring, and the girls of the village are coming out to draw water. 14 This is my request: When I ask one of them for a drink and she says, ‘Yes, certainly, and I will water your camels too!’—let her be the one you have appointed as Isaac’s wife. That is how I will know.”
15-16 As he was still speaking to the Lord about this, a beautiful young girl[a] named Rebekah arrived with a water jug on her shoulder and filled it at the spring. (Her father was Bethuel the son of Nahor and his wife Milcah.) 17 Running over to her, the servant asked her for a drink.
18 “Certainly, sir,” she said, and quickly lowered the jug for him to drink. 19 Then she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels, too, until they have enough!”
20 So she emptied the jug into the watering trough and ran down to the spring again and kept carrying water to the camels until they had enough. 21 The servant said no more, but watched her carefully to see if she would finish the job,[b] so that he would know whether she was the one. 22 Then at last, when the camels had finished drinking, he produced a quarter-ounce gold earring[c] and two five-ounce gold bracelets for her wrists.
23 “Whose daughter are you, miss?” he asked. “Would your father have any room to put us up for the night?”
24 “My father is Bethuel,” she replied. “My grandparents are Milcah and Nahor. 25 Yes, we have plenty of straw and food for the camels, and a guest room.”
26 The man stood there a moment with head bowed, worshiping Jehovah. 27 “Thank you, Lord God of my master Abraham,” he prayed; “thank you for being so kind and true to him, and for leading me straight to the family of my master’s relatives.”
28 The girl ran home to tell her folks,[d] 29-30 and when her brother Laban saw the ring, and the bracelets on his sister’s wrists, and heard her story, he rushed out to the spring where the man was still standing beside his camels, and said to him, 31 “Come and stay with us, friend;[e] why stand here outside the city when we have a room all ready for you, and a place prepared for the camels!”
32 So the man went home with Laban, and Laban gave him straw to bed down the camels, and feed for them, and water for the camel drivers to wash their feet. 33 Then supper was served. But the old man said, “I don’t want to eat until I have told you why I am here.”
“All right,” Laban said, “tell us your errand.”
34 “I am Abraham’s servant,” he explained. 35 “And Jehovah has overwhelmed my master with blessings so that he is a great man among the people of his land. God has given him flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and a fortune in silver and gold, and many slaves and camels and donkeys.
36 “Now when Sarah, my master’s wife, was very old, she gave birth to my master’s son, and my master has given him everything he owns. 37 And my master made me promise not to let Isaac marry one of the local girls,[f] 38 but to come to his relatives here in this far-off land, to his brother’s family,[g] and to bring back a girl from here to marry his son. 39 ‘But suppose I can’t find a girl who will come?’ I asked him. 40 ‘She will,’ he told me—‘for my Lord, in whose presence I have walked, will send his angel with you and make your mission successful. Yes, find a girl from among my relatives, from my brother’s family. 41 You are under oath to go and ask. If they won’t send anyone, then you are freed from your promise.’
42 “Well, this afternoon when I came to the spring I prayed this prayer: ‘O Jehovah, the God of my master Abraham, if you are planning to make my mission a success, please guide me in this way: 43 Here I am, standing beside this spring. I will say to some girl who comes out to draw water, “Please give me a drink of water!” 44 And she will reply, “Certainly! And I’ll water your camels too!” Let that girl be the one you have selected to be the wife of my master’s son.’
45 “Well, while I was still speaking these words, Rebekah was coming along with her water jug upon her shoulder; and she went down to the spring and drew water and filled the jug. I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’ 46 She quickly lifted the jug down from her shoulder so that I could drink, and told me, ‘Certainly, sir, and I will water your camels too!’ So she did! 47 Then I asked her, ‘Whose family are you from?’ And she told me, ‘Nahor’s. My father is Bethuel, the son of Nahor and his wife Milcah.’ So I gave her the ring and the bracelets. 48 Then I bowed my head and worshiped and blessed Jehovah, the God of my master Abraham, because he had led me along just the right path to find a girl from the family of my master’s brother.[h] 49 So tell me, yes or no. Will you or won’t you be kind to my master and do what is right? When you tell me, then I’ll know what my next step should be, whether to move this way or that.”
50 Then Laban and Bethuel replied, “The Lord has obviously brought you here, so what can we say? 51 Take her and go! Yes, let her be the wife of your master’s son, as Jehovah has directed.”
52 At this reply, Abraham’s servant fell to his knees before Jehovah.
7 One day some Jewish religious leaders arrived from Jerusalem to investigate him, 2 and noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the usual Jewish rituals before eating. 3 (For the Jews, especially the Pharisees, will never eat until they have sprinkled their arms to the elbows,[a] as required by their ancient traditions. 4 So when they come home from the market, they must always sprinkle themselves in this way before touching any food. This is but one of many examples of laws and regulations they have clung to for centuries, and still follow, such as their ceremony of cleansing for pots, pans, and dishes.)
5 So the religious leaders asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old customs? For they eat without first performing the washing ceremony.”
6-7 Jesus replied, “You bunch of hypocrites! Isaiah the prophet described you very well when he said, ‘These people speak very prettily about the Lord but they have no love for him at all. Their worship is a farce, for they claim that God commands the people to obey their petty rules.’ How right Isaiah was! 8 For you ignore God’s specific orders and substitute your own traditions. 9 You are simply rejecting God’s laws and trampling them under your feet for the sake of tradition.
10 “For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother.’ And he said that anyone who speaks against his father or mother must die. 11 But you say it is perfectly all right for a man to disregard his needy parents, telling them, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you! For I have given to God what I could have given to you.’ 12-13 And so you break the law of God in order to protect your man-made tradition. And this is only one example. There are many, many others.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.