Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 22^[a]

To the Chief Musician; set to [the tune of] Aijeleth Hashshahar [the hind of the morning dawn]. A Psalm of David.

¹ My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?^(A)

² O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You answer not; and by night I am not silent or find no rest.

³ But You are holy, O You Who dwell in [the holy place where] the praises of Israel [are offered].

⁴ Our fathers trusted in You; they trusted (leaned on, relied on You, and were confident) and You delivered them.

⁵ They cried to You and were delivered; they trusted in, leaned on, and confidently relied on You, and were not ashamed or confounded or disappointed.

⁶ But I am a worm, and no man; I am the scorn of men, and despised by the people.^(B)

⁷ All who see me laugh at me and mock me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,^(C)

⁸ He trusted and rolled himself on the Lord, that He would deliver him. Let Him deliver him, seeing that He delights in him!^(D)

⁹ Yet You are He Who took me out of the womb; You made me hope and trust when I was on my mother’s breasts.

¹⁰ I was cast upon You from my very birth; from my mother’s womb You have been my God.

¹¹ Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.

¹² Many [foes like] bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have hedged me in.^(E)

¹³ Against me they opened their mouths wide, like a ravening and roaring lion.

¹⁴ I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax; it is softened [with anguish] and melted down within me.

¹⁵ My strength is dried up like a fragment of clay pottery; [with thirst] my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and You have brought me into the dust of death.^(F)

17 My spirit is broken, my days are spent (snuffed out); the grave is ready for me.

² Surely there are mockers and mockery around me, and my eye dwells on their obstinacy, insults, and resistance.

³ Give me a pledge with Yourself [acknowledge my innocence before my death]; who is there that will give security for me?

⁴ But their hearts [Lord] You have closed to understanding; therefore You will not let them triumph [by giving them a verdict against me].

⁵ He who denounces his friends [in order to make them] a prey and get a share, the eyes of his children shall fail [to find food].

⁶ But He has made me a byword among the people, and they spit before my face.

⁷ My eye has grown dim because of grief, and all my members are [wasted away] like a shadow.

⁸ Upright men shall be astonished and appalled at this, and the innocent shall stir himself up against the godless and polluted.

⁹ Yet shall the righteous (those upright and in right standing with God) hold to their ways, and he who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger.^(A)

¹⁰ But as for you, come on again, all of you, though I find not a wise man among you.

¹¹ My days are past, my purposes and plans are frustrated; even the thoughts (desires and possessions) of my heart [are broken off].

¹² These [thoughts] extend from the night into the day, [so that] the light is short because of darkness.

¹³ But if I look to Sheol (the unseen state) as my abode, if I spread my couch in the darkness,

¹⁴ If I say to the grave and corruption, You are my father, and to the worm [that feeds on decay], You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],

¹⁵ Where then is my hope? And if I have hope, who will see [its fulfillment]?

¹⁶ [My hope] shall go down to the bars of Sheol (the unseen state) when once there is rest in the dust.

⁷ Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you will hear His voice,

⁸ Do not harden your hearts, as [happened] in the rebellion [of Israel] and their provocation and ^[a]embitterment [of Me] in the day of testing in the wilderness,

⁹ Where your fathers tried [My patience] and tested [My forbearance] and ^[b]found I stood their test, and they saw My works for forty years.

¹⁰ And so I was provoked (displeased and sorely grieved) with that generation, and said, They always err and are led astray in their hearts, and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them.

¹¹ Accordingly, I swore in My wrath and indignation, They shall not enter into My rest.^(A)

¹² [Therefore beware] brethren, take care, lest there be in any one of you a wicked, unbelieving heart [which refuses to cleave to, trust in, and rely on Him], leading you to turn away and desert or stand aloof from the living God.

¹³ But instead warn (admonish, urge, and encourage) one another every day, as long as it is called Today, that none of you may be hardened [into settled rebellion] by the deceitfulness of sin [by the fraudulence, the stratagem, the trickery which the delusive glamor of his sin may play on him].

¹⁴ For we ^[c]have become fellows with Christ (the Messiah) and share in all He has for us, if only we hold our first newborn confidence and original assured expectation [in virtue of which we are believers] firm and unshaken to the end.

¹⁵ Then while it is [still] called Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion [in the desert, when the people provoked and irritated and embittered God against them].^(B)

¹⁶ For who were they who heard and yet were rebellious and provoked [Him]? Was it not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?

¹⁷ And with whom was He irritated and provoked and grieved for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose ^[d]dismembered bodies were strewn and left in the desert?

¹⁸ And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who disobeyed [who had not listened to His word and who refused to be compliant or be persuaded]?

¹⁹ So we see that they were not able to enter [into His rest], because of their unwillingness to adhere to and trust in and rely on God [unbelief had shut them out].^(C)