Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A song of David written during the time he was running from his son Absalom.

²² Then Solomon stood in front of whole assembly of Israel and faced the Lord’s altar. Solomon spread his hands and looked toward heaven ²³ and said,

“Lord, God of Israel, there is no other god like you in heaven or on the earth. You keep the agreement that you made with your people. You are kind and loyal to those who follow you with all their heart. ²⁴ You made a promise to your servant, my father David, and you kept that promise. You made that promise with your own mouth, and with your own hands you made it come true today. ²⁵ Now, Lord, God of Israel, keep the other promises you made to your servant David, my father. You said, ‘David, if your sons carefully obey me as you did, you will always have someone from your family ruling the people of Israel.’ ²⁶ Again, God of Israel, I ask you to keep the promise you made to your servant, my father David.

²⁷ “But, God, will you really live here with us on the earth? The whole sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you. Certainly this Temple that I built cannot contain you either. ²⁸ But please listen to my prayer and my request. I am your servant, and you are the Lord my God. Hear this prayer that I am praying to you today. ²⁹ In the past you said, ‘I will be honored there.’ So please watch over this Temple, night and day. And please listen to my prayer as I turn toward this Temple and pray to you. ³⁰ And please listen to our prayers in the future when I and your people Israel turn to this place and pray to you. We know that you live in heaven. We ask you to hear our prayer there and forgive us.

⁹ “You must be careful! There are people who will arrest you and take you to be judged for being my followers. They will beat you in their synagogues. You will be forced to stand before kings and governors. You will tell them about me. ¹⁰ Before the end comes, the Good News must be told to all nations. ¹¹ Even when you are arrested and put on trial, don’t worry about what you will say. Say whatever God tells you at the time. It will not really be you speaking. It will be the Holy Spirit.

¹² “Brothers will turn against their own brothers and hand them over to be killed. Fathers will hand over their own children to be killed. Children will fight against their own parents and have them killed. ¹³ All people will hate you because you follow me. But those who remain faithful to the end will be saved.

¹⁴ “You will see ‘the terrible thing that causes destruction.’^[a] You will see this thing standing in the place where it should not be.” (Reader, I trust you understand what this means.) “Everyone in Judea at that time should run away to the mountains. ¹⁵ They should run away without wasting time to stop for anything. If someone is on the roof of their house, they must not go down to take things out of the house. ¹⁶ If someone is in the field, they must not go back to get a coat.

¹⁷ “During that time it will be hard for women who are pregnant or have small babies. ¹⁸ Pray that these things will not happen in winter, ¹⁹ because those days will be full of trouble. There will be more trouble than has ever happened since the beginning, when God made the world. And nothing that bad will ever happen again. ²⁰ But the Lord has decided to make that terrible time short. If it were not made short, no one could survive. But the Lord will make that time short to help the special people he has chosen.

²¹ “Someone might say to you at that time, ‘Look, there is the Messiah!’ Or another person might say, ‘There he is!’ But don’t believe them. ²² False messiahs and false prophets will come and do miracles and wonders,^[b] trying to fool the people God has chosen, if that is possible. ²³ So be careful. Now I have warned you about all this before it happens.