Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

²⁴ O Lord, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all; the earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures.

²⁵ Yonder is the sea, great and wide, in which are swarms of innumerable creeping things, creatures both small and great.

²⁶ There go the ships of the sea, and Leviathan (the sea monster), which You have formed to sport in it.

²⁷ These all wait and are dependent upon You, that You may give them their food in due season.

²⁸ When You give it to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, and they are filled with good things.

²⁹ When You hide Your face, they are troubled and dismayed; when You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.

³⁰ When You send forth Your Spirit and give them breath, they are created, and You replenish the face of the ground.

³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works—

³² Who looks on the earth, and it quakes and trembles, Who touches the mountains, and they smoke!

³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have any being.

³⁴ May my meditation be sweet to Him; as for me, I will rejoice in the Lord.

³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)

11 And the whole earth was of one language and of one accent and mode of expression.

² And as they journeyed eastward, they found a plain (valley) in the land of Shinar, and they settled and dwelt there.

³ And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. So they had brick for stone, and slime (bitumen) for mortar.

⁴ And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top reaches into the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the whole earth.

⁵ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

⁶ And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and they have ^[a]all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and now nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible for them.

⁷ Come, let Us go down and there confound (mix up, confuse) their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from that place upon the face of the whole earth, and they gave up building the city.

⁹ Therefore the name of it was called Babel—because there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth; and from that place the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

¹² For just as the body is a unity and yet has many parts, and all the parts, though many, form [only] one body, so it is with Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

¹³ For by [^[a]means of the personal agency of] one [Holy] Spirit we were all, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, baptized [and ^[b]by baptism united together] into one body, and all made to drink of one [Holy] Spirit.

¹⁴ For the body does not consist of one limb or organ but of many.

¹⁵ If the foot should say, Because I am not the hand, I do not belong to the body, would it be therefore not [a part] of the body?

¹⁶ If the ear should say, Because I am not the eye, I do not belong to the body, would it be therefore not [a part] of the body?

¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where [would be the sense of] hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where [would be the sense of] smell?

¹⁸ But as it is, God has placed and arranged the limbs and organs in the body, each [particular one] of them, just as He wished and saw fit and with the best adaptation.

¹⁹ But if [the whole] were all a single organ, where would the body be?

²⁰ And now there are [certainly] many limbs and organs, but a single body.

²¹ And the eye is not able to say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

²² But instead, there is [absolute] necessity for the parts of the body that are considered the more weak.

²³ And those [parts] of the body which we consider rather ignoble are [the very parts] which we invest with additional honor, and our unseemly parts and those unsuitable for exposure are treated with seemliness (modesty and decorum),

²⁴ Which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so adjusted (mingled, harmonized, and subtly proportioned the parts of) the whole body, giving the greater honor and richer endowment to the inferior parts which lack [apparent importance],

²⁵ So that there should be no division or discord or lack of adaptation [of the parts of the body to each other], but the members all alike should have a mutual interest in and care for one another.

²⁶ And if one member suffers, all the parts [share] the suffering; if one member is honored, all the members [share in] the enjoyment of it.

²⁷ Now you [collectively] are Christ’s body and [individually] you are members of it, each part severally and distinct [each with his own place and function].