Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
16 But to the wicked God says,
“What right have you to recite my statutes
or take my covenant on your lips?(A)
17 For you hate discipline,
and you cast my words behind you.(B)
18 You make friends with a thief when you see one,
and you keep company with adulterers.(C)
19 You give your mouth free rein for evil,
and your tongue frames deceit.
20 You sit and speak against your kin;
you slander your own mother’s child.(D)
21 These things you have done, and I have been silent;
you thought that I was one just like yourself.
But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.(E)
15 Then Nathan went to his house.
Bathsheba’s Child Dies
The Lord struck the child whom Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill.(A) 16 David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.(B) 17 The elders of his house stood beside him urging him to rise from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. 18 On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, “While the child was still alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us; how then can we tell him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” 19 But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, he perceived that the child was dead, and David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.”
20 Then David rose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. He went into the house of the Lord and worshiped; he then went to his own house, and when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate.(C) 21 Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive, but when the child died, you rose and ate food.” 22 He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’(D) 23 But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”(E)
Solomon Is Born
24 Then David consoled his wife Bathsheba and went to her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he named him Solomon. The Lord loved him(F) 25 and sent a message by the prophet Nathan, so he named him Jedidiah[a] because of the Lord.
The Old Life and the New
17 Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer walk as the[a] gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds;(A) 18 they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.(B) 19 They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 That is not the way you learned Christ! 21 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, 22 to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,(C) 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.(D)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.