◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous) / Psalm 50:1-8 22-23 (The salvation of God); Isaiah 9:8-17 (Judgment on arrogance); Romans 9:1-9 (True descendants of Abraham) (New English Translation)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with sequential stories told across multiple weeks.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 50:1-8

Psalm 50^[a]

A psalm by Asaph.

50 El, God, the Lord^[b] has spoken,
and summoned the earth to come from the east and west.^[c]
²From Zion, the most beautiful of all places,^[d]
God has come in splendor.^[e]
³“May our God come
and not be silent.”
Consuming fire goes ahead of him,
and all around him a storm rages.^[f]
⁴He summons the heavens above,
as well as the earth, so that he might judge his people.^[g]
⁵He says:^[h]
“Assemble my covenant people before me,^[i]
those who ratified a covenant with me by sacrifice.”^[j]
⁶The heavens declare his fairness,^[k]
for God is judge.^[l] (Selah)
⁷He says:^[m]
“Listen, my people. I am speaking!
Listen, Israel. I am accusing you.^[n]
I am God, your God!
⁸I am not condemning^[o] you because of your sacrifices,
or because of your burnt sacrifices that you continually offer me.^[p]

Footnotes

Psalm 50:1 sn Psalm 50. This psalm takes the form of a covenant lawsuit in which the Lord comes to confront his people in a formal manner (as in Isa 1:2-20). The Lord emphasizes that he places priority on obedience and genuine worship, not empty ritual.
Psalm 50:1 sn Israel’s God is here identified with three names: El (אֵל [ʾel], or “God”), Elohim (אֱלֹהִים [ʾelohim], or “God”), and Yahweh (יְהוָה [y^ehvah] or “the Lord”). There is an obvious allusion here to Josh 22:22, the only other passage where these three names appear in succession. In that passage the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh declare, “El, God, the Lord! El, God, the Lord! He knows the truth! Israel must also know! If we have rebelled or disobeyed the Lord, don’t spare us today!” In that context the other tribes had accused the trans-Jordanian tribes of breaking God’s covenant by worshiping idols. The trans-Jordanian tribes appealed to “El, God, the Lord” as their witness that they were innocent of the charges brought against them. Ironically here in Ps 50 “El, God, the Lord” accuses his sinful covenant people of violating the covenant and warns that he will not spare them if they persist in their rebellion.
Psalm 50:1 tn Heb “and calls [the] earth from the sunrise to its going.”
Psalm 50:2 tn Heb “the perfection of beauty.”
Psalm 50:2 tn Or “shone forth.”sn Has come in splendor. The psalmist may allude ironically to Deut 33:2, where God “shone forth” from Sinai.
Psalm 50:3 tn Heb “fire before him devours, and around him it is very stormy.”
Psalm 50:4 tn Or perhaps “to testify against his people.”sn The personified heavens and earth (see v. 1 as well) are summoned to God’s courtroom as witnesses against God’s covenant people (see Isa 1:2). Long before this Moses warned the people that the heavens and earth would be watching their actions (see Deut 4:26; 30:19; 31:28; 32:1).
Psalm 50:5 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. God’s summons to the defendant follows.
Psalm 50:5 tn Or “Gather to me my covenant people.” The Hebrew term חָסִיד (khasid, “covenant people”) elsewhere in the psalms is used in a positive sense of God’s loyal followers (see the note at Ps 4:3), but here, as the following line makes clear, the term has a neutral sense and simply refers to those who have outwardly sworn allegiance to God, not necessarily to those whose loyalty is genuine.
Psalm 50:5 tn Heb “the cutters of my covenant according to sacrifice.” A sacrifice accompanied the covenant-making ceremony and formally ratified the agreement (see Exod 24:3-8).
Psalm 50:6 tn Or “justice.”
Psalm 50:6 tn Or “for God, he is about to judge.” The participle may be taken as substantival (as in the translation above) or as a predicate (indicating imminent future action in this context).
Psalm 50:7 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. God’s charges against his people follow.
Psalm 50:7 tn Heb “Israel, and I will testify against you.” The imperative “listen” is understood in the second line by ellipsis (note the preceding line).
Psalm 50:8 tn Or “rebuking.”
Psalm 50:8 tn Heb “and your burnt sacrifices before me continually.”

Psalm 50:22-23

²²Carefully consider this, you who reject God.^[a]
Otherwise I will rip you to shreds^[b]
and no one will be able to rescue you.
²³Whoever presents a thank offering honors me.^[c]
To whoever obeys my commands, I will reveal my power to deliver.”^[d]

Isaiah 9:8-17

God’s Judgment Intensifies

⁸^[a] The Lord^[b] decreed judgment^[c] on Jacob,
and it fell on Israel.^[d]
⁹All the people were aware^[e] of it,
the people of Ephraim and those living in Samaria.^[f]
Yet with pride and an arrogant attitude, they said,^[g]
¹⁰“The bricks have fallen,
but we will rebuild with chiseled stone;
the sycamore fig trees have been cut down,
but we will replace them with cedars.”^[h]
¹¹Then the Lord provoked^[i] their adversaries to attack them,^[j]
he stirred up^[k] their enemies—
¹²Syria from the east,
and the Philistines from the west;
they gobbled up Israelite territory.^[l]
Despite all this, his anger does not subside,
and his hand is ready to strike again.^[m]
¹³The people did not return to the one who struck them,
they did not seek reconciliation^[n] with the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
¹⁴So the Lord cut off Israel’s head and tail,
both the shoots and stalk^[o] in one day.
¹⁵The leaders and the highly respected people^[p] are the head,
the prophets who teach lies are the tail.
¹⁶The leaders of this nation were misleading people,
and the people being led were destroyed.^[q]
¹⁷So the Lord was not pleased^[r] with their young men,
he took no pity^[s] on their orphans and widows;
for the whole nation was godless^[t] and did wicked things,^[u]
every mouth was speaking disgraceful words.^[v]
Despite all this, his anger does not subside,
and his hand is ready to strike again.^[w]

Footnotes

Isaiah 9:8 sn The following speech (9:8-10:4) assumes that God has already sent judgment (see v. 9), but it also announces that further judgment is around the corner (10:1-4). The speech seems to describe a series of past judgments on the northern kingdom which is ready to intensify further in the devastation announced in 10:1-4. It may have been written prior to the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in 734-733 b.c., or sometime between that invasion and the downfall of Samaria in 722 b.c. The structure of the speech displays four panels, each of which ends with the refrain, “Through all this, his anger did not subside; his hand remained outstretched” (9:12b; 17b; 21b; 10:4b): Panel I: (A) Description of past judgment (9:8); (B) Description of the people’s attitude toward past judgment (9:9-10); (C) Description of past judgment (9:11-12a); (D) Refrain (9:12b); Panel II: (A) Description of the people’s attitude toward past judgment (9:13); (B) Description of past judgment (9:14-17a); (C) Refrain (9:17b); Panel III: (A) Description of past judgment (9:18-21a); (B) Refrain (9:21b); Panel IV: (A) Woe oracle announcing future judgment (10:1-4a); (B) Refrain (10:4b).
Isaiah 9:8 tn The Hebrew term translated “Lord” here and in v. 17 is אֲדֹנָי (ʾadonay).
Isaiah 9:8 tn Heb “sent a word” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV); NASB “sends a message.”
Isaiah 9:8 tn The present translation assumes that this verse refers to judgment that had already fallen. Both verbs (perfects) are taken as indicating simple past; the vav (ו) on the second verb is understood as a simple vav conjunctive. Another option is to understand the verse as describing a future judgment (see 10:1-4). In this case the first verb is a perfect of certitude; the vav on the second verb is a vav consecutive.
Isaiah 9:9 tn The translation assumes that vv. 9-10 describe the people’s response to a past judgment (v. 8). The perfect is understood as indicating simple past and the vav (ו) is taken as conjunctive. Another option is to take the vav on the perfect as consecutive and translate, “all the people will know.”
Isaiah 9:9 tn Heb “and the people, all of them, knew; Ephraim and the residents of Samaria.”
Isaiah 9:9 tn Heb “with pride and arrogance of heart, saying.”
Isaiah 9:10 sn Though judgment (see v. 8) had taken away the prosperity they did have (symbolized by the bricks and sycamore fig trees), they arrogantly expected the future to bring even greater prosperity (symbolized by the chiseled stone and cedars).
Isaiah 9:11 tn The translation assumes that the prefixed verb with vav (ו) consecutive continues the narrative of past judgment.
Isaiah 9:11 tc The Hebrew text reads literally, “adversaries of Rezin against him [i.e., them].” The next verse describes how the Syrians (over whom Rezin ruled, see 7:1, 8) and the Philistines encroached on Israel’s territory. Since the Syrians and Israelites were allies by 735 b.c. (see 7:1), the hostilities described probably occurred earlier, while Israel was still pro-Assyrian. In this case one might understand the phrase צָרֵי רְצִין (tsare r^etsin, “adversaries of Rezin”) as meaning “adversaries sent from Rezin.” However, another option, the one chosen in the translation above, is to emend the phrase to צָרָיו (tsarayv, “his [i.e., their] adversaries”). This creates tighter parallelism with the next line (note “his [i.e., their] enemies”). The phrase in the Hebrew text may be explained as virtually dittographic.
Isaiah 9:11 tn The prefixed verbal form is understood as a preterite, used, as is often the case in poetry, without vav consecutive. Note that prefixed forms with vav consecutive both precede (וַיְשַׂגֵּב, vay^esaggev, “he provoked”) and follow in v. 12 (וַיֹּאכְלוּ, vayyoʾkh^elu, “and they devoured”) this verb.
Isaiah 9:12 tn Heb “and they devoured Israel with all the mouth”; NIV “with open mouth”; TLB “With bared fangs.”
Isaiah 9:12 tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.” One could translate in the past tense here (and in 9:17b and 21b), but the appearance of the refrain in 10:4b, where it follows a woe oracle prophesying a future judgment, suggests it is a dramatic portrait of the judge which did not change throughout this period of past judgment and will remain unchanged in the future. The English present tense is chosen to best reflect this dramatic mood. (See also 5:25b, where the refrain appears following a dramatic description of coming judgment.)
Isaiah 9:13 tn This verse describes the people’s response to the judgment described in vv. 11-12. The perfects are understood as indicating simple past.
Isaiah 9:14 sn The metaphor in this line is that of a reed being cut down.
Isaiah 9:15 tn Heb “the elder and the one lifted up with respect to the face.” For another example of the Hebrew idiom, see 2 Kgs 5:1.
Isaiah 9:16 tn Heb “and the ones being led were swallowed up.” Instead of taking מְבֻלָּעִים (m^ebullaʿim) from בָּלַע (balaʿ, “to swallow”), HALOT 134 s.v. בלע proposes a rare homonymic root בלע (“confuse”) here.
Isaiah 9:17 tn The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has לא יחמול (“he did not spare”) which is an obvious attempt to tighten the parallelism (note “he took no pity” in the next line). Instead of taking שָׂמַח (samakh) in one of its well attested senses (“rejoice over, be pleased with”), some propose, with support from Arabic, a rare homonymic root meaning “be merciful.”
Isaiah 9:17 tn The translation understands the prefixed verbs יִשְׂמַח (yismakh) and יְרַחֵם (y^erakhem) as preterites without vav (ו) consecutive. (See v. 11 and the note on “he stirred up.”)
Isaiah 9:17 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “profaned”; NIV “ungodly.”
Isaiah 9:17 tn מֵרַע (meraʿ) is a Hiphil participle from רָעַע (raʿaʿ, “be evil”). The intransitive Hiphil has an exhibitive force here, indicating that they exhibited outwardly the evidence of an inward condition by committing evil deeds.
Isaiah 9:17 tn Or “foolishness” (NASB), here in a moral-ethical sense.
Isaiah 9:17 tn Heb “in all this his anger is not turned, and still his hand is outstretched.”sn See the note at 9:12.

Romans 9:1-9

Israel’s Rejection Considered

9 ^[a] I am telling the truth in Christ (I am not lying!), for my conscience assures me^[b] in the Holy Spirit— ²I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.^[c] ³For I could wish^[d] that I myself were accursed—cut off from Christ—for the sake of my people,^[e] my fellow countrymen,^[f] ⁴who are Israelites. To them belong^[g] the adoption as sons,^[h] the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship,^[i] and the promises. ⁵To them belong the patriarchs,^[j] and from them,^[k] by human descent,^[l] came the Christ,^[m] who is God over all, blessed forever!^[n] Amen.

⁶It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel,^[o] ⁷nor are all the children Abraham’s true descendants; rather “through Isaac will your descendants be counted.”^[p] ⁸This means^[q] it is not the children of the flesh^[r] who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are counted as descendants. ⁹For this is what the promise declared:^[s] “About a year from now^[t] I will return and Sarah will have a son.”^[u]

Footnotes

Romans 9:1 sn Rom 9:1-11:36. These three chapters are among the most difficult and disputed in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. One area of difficulty is the relationship between Israel and the church, especially concerning the nature and extent of Israel’s election. Many different models have been constructed to express this relationship. For a representative survey, see M. Barth, The People of God (JSNTSup), 22-27. The literary genre of these three chapters has been frequently identified as a diatribe, a philosophical discussion or conversation evolved by the Cynic and Stoic schools of philosophy as a means of popularizing their ideas (E. Käsemann, Romans, 261 and 267). But other recent scholars have challenged the idea that Rom 9-11 is characterized by diatribe. Scholars like R. Scroggs and E. E. Ellis have instead identified the material in question as midrash. For a summary and discussion of the rabbinic connections, see W. R. Stegner, “Romans 9.6-29—A Midrash,” JSNT 22 (1984): 37-52.
Romans 9:1 tn Or “my conscience bears witness to me.”
Romans 9:2 tn Grk “my sorrow is great and the anguish in my heart is unceasing.”
Romans 9:3 tn Or “For I would pray.” The implied condition is “if this could save my fellow Jews.”
Romans 9:3 tn Grk “brothers.” See BDAG 18-19 s.v. ἀδελφός 2.b.
Romans 9:3 tn Grk “my kinsmen according to the flesh.”
Romans 9:4 tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
Romans 9:4 tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (huiothesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e., in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as sons.”
Romans 9:4 tn Or “cultic service.”
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “of whom are the fathers.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.
Romans 9:5 tn Grk “according to the flesh.”
Romans 9:5 tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)
Romans 9:5 tn Or “the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever,” or “the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever!” or “the Messiah who is over all. God be blessed forever!” The translational difficulty here is not text-critical in nature, but is a problem of punctuation. Since the genre of these opening verses of Romans 9 is a lament, it is probably best to take this as an affirmation of Christ’s deity (as the text renders it). Although the other renderings are possible, to see a note of praise to God at the end of this section seems strangely out of place. But for Paul to bring his lament to a crescendo (that is to say, his kinsmen had rejected God come in the flesh), thereby deepening his anguish, is wholly appropriate. This is also supported grammatically and stylistically: The phrase ὁ ὢν (ho ōn, “the one who is”) is most naturally taken as a phrase which modifies something in the preceding context, and Paul’s doxologies are always closely tied to the preceding context. For a detailed examination of this verse, see B. M. Metzger, “The Punctuation of Rom. 9:5, ” Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, 95-112; and M. J. Harris, Jesus as God, 144-72.
Romans 9:6 tn Grk “For not all those who are from Israel are Israel.”
Romans 9:7 tn Grk “be called.” The emphasis here is upon God’s divine sovereignty in choosing Isaac as the child through whom Abraham’s lineage would be counted as opposed to Ishmael.sn A quotation from Gen 21:12.
Romans 9:8 tn Grk “That is,” or “That is to say.”
Romans 9:8 tn Because it forms the counterpoint to “the children of promise” the expression “children of the flesh” has been retained in the translation.sn The expression the children of the flesh refers to the natural offspring.
Romans 9:9 tn Grk “For this is the word of promise.”
Romans 9:9 tn Grk “About this time I will return.” Since this refers to the time when the promised child would be born, it would be approximately a year later.
Romans 9:9 sn A quotation from Gen 18:10, 14.

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 50[a]

A psalm by Asaph.

Footnotes

Footnotes

God’s Judgment Intensifies

Footnotes

Israel’s Rejection Considered

Footnotes

Psalm 50^[a]