Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 105

¹ O give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name, make known His doings among the peoples!

² Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; meditate on and talk of all His marvelous deeds and devoutly praise them.

³ Glory in His holy name; let the hearts of those rejoice who seek and require the Lord [as their indispensable necessity].

⁴ Seek, inquire of and for the Lord, and crave Him and His strength (His might and inflexibility to temptation); seek and require His face and His presence [continually] evermore.

⁵ [Earnestly] remember the marvelous deeds that He has done, His miracles and wonders, the judgments and sentences which He pronounced [upon His enemies, as in Egypt].^(A)

⁶ O you offspring of Abraham His servant, you children of Jacob, His chosen ones,

⁷ He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth.

⁸ He is [earnestly] mindful of His covenant and forever it is imprinted on His heart, the word which He commanded and established to a thousand generations,

⁹ The covenant which He made with Abraham, and His sworn promise to Isaac,^(B)

¹⁰ Which He confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant,

¹¹ Saying, Unto you will I give the land of Canaan as your measured portion, possession, and inheritance.

³⁷ He brought [Israel] forth also with silver and gold, and there was not one feeble person among their tribes.^(A)

³⁸ Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them had fallen upon the people.^(B)

³⁹ The Lord spread a cloud for a covering [by day], and a fire to give light in the night.^(C)

⁴⁰ [The Israelites] asked, and He brought quails and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.^(D)

⁴¹ He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it ran in the dry places like a river.^(E)

⁴² For He [earnestly] remembered His holy word and promise to Abraham His servant.^(F)

⁴³ And He brought forth His people with joy, and His chosen ones with gladness and singing,

⁴⁴ And gave them the lands of the nations [of Canaan], and they reaped the fruits of those peoples’ labor,^(G)

⁴⁵ That they might observe His statutes and keep His laws [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying them]. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)

22 After these events, God tested and proved Abraham and said to him, Abraham! And he said, Here I am.

² [God] said, Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you.

³ So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and then began the trip to the place of which God had told him.

⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

⁵ And Abraham said to his servants, Settle down and stay here with the donkey, and I and the young man will go yonder and worship and ^[a]come again to you.

⁶ Then Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on [the shoulders of] Isaac his son, and he took the fire (the firepot) in his own hand, and a knife; and the two of them went on together.

⁷ And Isaac said to Abraham, My father! And he said, Here I am, my son. [Isaac] said, See, here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt sacrifice?

⁸ Abraham said, My son, ^[b]God Himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering. So the two went on together.

⁹ When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there; then he laid the wood in order and ^[c]bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on the wood.^(A)

¹⁰ And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took hold of the knife to slay his son.^(B)

¹¹ But the ^[d]Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! He answered, Here I am.

¹² And He said, Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear and revere God, since you have not held back from Me or begrudged giving Me your son, your only son.

¹³ Then Abraham looked up and glanced around, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering and an ascending sacrifice instead of his son!

¹⁴ So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide. And it is said to this day, On the mount of the Lord it will be provided.

¹⁵ The Angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time

¹⁶ And said, I have sworn by Myself, says the Lord, that since you have done this and have not withheld [from Me] or begrudged [giving Me] your son, your only son,

¹⁷ In blessing I will bless you and in multiplying I will multiply your descendants like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore. And your Seed (Heir) will possess the gate of His enemies,^(C)

¹⁸ And in your Seed [^[e]Christ] shall all the nations of the earth be blessed and [by Him] bless themselves, because you have heard and obeyed My voice.^(D)

¹⁹ So Abraham returned to his servants, and they rose up and went with him to Beersheba; there Abraham lived.

11 Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, ^[a]the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

² For by [faith—^[b]trust and holy fervor born of faith] the men of old had divine testimony borne to them and obtained a good report.

³ By faith we understand that the worlds [during the successive ages] were framed (fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose) by the word of God, so that what we see was not made out of things which are visible.

¹³ These people all died controlled and sustained by their faith, but not having received the tangible fulfillment of [God’s] promises, only having seen it and greeted it from a great distance by faith, and all the while acknowledging and confessing that they were strangers and temporary residents and exiles upon the earth.^(A)

¹⁴ Now those people who talk as they did show plainly that they are in search of a fatherland (their own country).

¹⁵ If they had been thinking with [homesick] remembrance of that country from which they were emigrants, they would have found constant opportunity to return to it.

¹⁶ But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them.^(B)

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when he was put to the test [while the testing of his faith was ^[a]still in progress], ^[b]had already brought Isaac for an offering; he who had gladly received and welcomed [God’s] promises was ready to sacrifice his only son,^(C)

¹⁸ Of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your descendants be reckoned.^(D)

¹⁹ For he reasoned that God was able to raise [him] up even from among the dead. Indeed in the sense that Isaac was figuratively dead [potentially sacrificed], he did [actually] receive him back from the dead.