Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 3

A Psalm of David. When he fled from Absalom his son.

¹ Lord, how they are increased who trouble me! Many are they who rise up against me.

² Many are saying of me, There is no help for him in God. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

³ But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

⁴ With my voice I cry to the Lord, and He hears and answers me out of His holy hill. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

⁵ I lay down and slept; I wakened again, for the Lord sustains me.

⁶ I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about.

⁷ Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God! For You have struck all my enemies on the cheek; You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.

⁸ Salvation belongs to the Lord; May Your blessing be upon Your people. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

⁵ And you shall say before the Lord your God, A wandering and lost Aramean ready to perish was my father [Jacob], and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and numerous.

⁶ And the Egyptians treated us very badly and afflicted us and laid upon us hard bondage.

⁷ And when we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our [cruel] oppression;

⁸ And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, and with great (awesome) power and with signs and with wonders;

⁹ And He brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

¹⁰ And now, behold, I bring the firstfruits of the ground which You, O Lord, have given me. And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God;

³² But be ever mindful of the days gone by in which, after you were first spiritually enlightened, you endured a great and painful struggle,

³³ Sometimes being yourselves a gazingstock, publicly exposed to insults and abuse and distress, and sometimes claiming fellowship and making common cause with others who were so treated.

³⁴ For you did sympathize and suffer along with those who were imprisoned, and you bore cheerfully the plundering of your belongings and the confiscation of your property, in the knowledge and consciousness that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession.

³⁵ Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward.

³⁶ For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and ^[a]carry away [and enjoy to the full] what is promised.

³⁷ For still a little while (a very little while), and the Coming One will come and He will not delay.

³⁸ But the just shall live by faith [My righteous servant shall live ^[b]by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it]; and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him.^(A)

³⁹ But our way is not that of those who draw back to eternal misery (perdition) and are utterly destroyed, but we are of those who believe [who cleave to and trust in and rely on God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah] and by faith preserve the soul.