Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

8 O Lord our God, the majesty and glory of your name fills all the earth and overflows the heavens. ² You have taught the little children to praise you perfectly. May their example shame and silence your enemies!

³ When I look up into the night skies and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you have made— ⁴ I cannot understand how you can bother with mere puny man, to pay any attention to him!

⁵ And yet you have made him only a little lower than the angels^[a] and placed a crown of glory and honor upon his head.

⁶ You have put him in charge of everything you made; everything is put under his authority: ⁷ all sheep and oxen, and wild animals too, ⁸ the birds and fish, and all the life in the sea. ⁹ O Jehovah, our Lord, the majesty and glory of your name fills the earth.

¹⁵ And sure enough, when Pharaoh heard about it he ordered Moses arrested and executed. But Moses ran away into the land of Midian. As he was sitting there beside a well, ¹⁶ seven girls who were daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water and fill the water troughs for their father’s flocks. ¹⁷ But the shepherds chased the girls away. Moses then came to their aid and rescued them from the shepherds and watered their flocks.

¹⁸ When they returned to their father, Reuel, he asked, “How did you get the flocks watered so quickly today?”

¹⁹ “An Egyptian defended us against the shepherds,” they told him; “he drew water for us and watered the flocks.”

²⁰ “Well, where is he?” their father demanded. “Did you just leave him there? Invite him home for supper.”

²¹ Moses eventually decided to accept Reuel’s invitation to live with them, and Reuel gave him one of the girls, Zipporah, as his wife. ²² They had a baby named Gershom (meaning “foreigner”), for he said, “I am a stranger in a foreign land.”

⁶ Jesus now proceeded to Bethany, to the home of Simon the leper. ⁷ While he was eating, a woman came in with a bottle of very expensive perfume and poured it over his head.

^8-9 The disciples were indignant. “What a waste of good money,” they said. “Why, she could have sold it for a fortune and given it to the poor.”

¹⁰ Jesus knew what they were thinking and said, “Why are you criticizing her? For she has done a good thing to me. ¹¹ You will always have the poor among you, but you won’t always have me. ¹² She has poured this perfume on me to prepare my body for burial. ¹³ And she will always be remembered for this deed. The story of what she has done will be told throughout the whole world, wherever the Good News is preached.”