Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Psalm 128
A Song of [a]Ascents.
1 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is everyone who fears, reveres, and worships the Lord, who walks in His ways and lives according to His commandments.(A)
2 For you shall eat [the fruit] of the labor of your hands; happy (blessed, fortunate, enviable) shall you be, and it shall be well with you.
3 Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house; your children shall be like olive plants round about your table.
4 Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who reverently and worshipfully fears the Lord.
5 May the Lord bless you out of Zion [His sanctuary], and may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;
6 Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!
9 Two are better than one, because they have a good [more satisfying] reward for their labor;
10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!
11 Again, if two lie down together, then they have warmth; but how can one be warm alone?
12 And though a man might prevail against him who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
13 Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who [a]no longer knows how to receive counsel (friendly reproof and warning)—
14 Even though [the youth] comes out of prison to reign, while the other, born a king, becomes needy.
15 I saw all the living who walk under the sun with the youth who was to stand up in the king’s stead.
16 There was no end to all the people; he was over all of them. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity (emptiness, falsity, vainglory) and a striving after the wind and a feeding on it.
5 Come now, you rich [people], weep aloud and lament over the miseries (the woes) that are surely coming upon you.
2 Your abundant wealth has rotted and is ruined, and your [many] garments have become moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and silver are completely rusted through, and their rust will be testimony against you and it will devour your flesh as if it were fire. You have heaped together treasure for the last days.
4 [But] look! [Here are] the wages that you have withheld by fraud from the laborers who have reaped your fields, crying out [for vengeance]; and the cries of the harvesters have come to the ears of the Lord of hosts.
5 [Here] on earth you have abandoned yourselves to soft (prodigal) living and to [the pleasures of] self-indulgence and self-gratification. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned and have murdered the righteous (innocent man), [while] he offers no resistance to you.
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