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October 22, 2022

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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 65

Psalm 65^[a]

For the music director, a psalm of David, a song.

65 Praise awaits you,^[b] O God, in Zion.
Vows made to you are fulfilled.
²You hear prayers;^[c]
all people approach you.^[d]
³Our record of sins overwhelms me,^[e]
but you forgive^[f] our acts of rebellion.
⁴How blessed^[g] is the one whom you choose,
and allow to live in your palace courts.^[h]
May we be satisfied with the good things of your house—
your holy palace.^[i]
⁵You answer our prayers by performing awesome acts of deliverance,
O God, our savior.^[j]
All the ends of the earth trust in you,^[k]
as well as those living across the wide seas.^[l]
⁶You created the mountains by your power,^[m]
and demonstrated your strength.^[n]
⁷You calmed the raging seas^[o]
and their roaring waves,
as well as the commotion made by the nations.^[p]
⁸Even those living in the remotest areas are awestruck by your acts;^[q]
you cause those living in the east and west to praise you.^[r]
⁹You visit the earth and give it rain;^[s]
you make it rich and fertile.^[t]
God’s streams are full of water;^[u]
you provide grain for the people of the earth,^[v]
for you have prepared the earth in this way.^[w]
¹⁰You saturate^[x] its furrows,
and soak^[y] its plowed ground.^[z]
With rain showers you soften its soil,^[aa]
and make its crops grow.^[ab]
¹¹You crown the year with your good blessings,^[ac]
and you leave abundance in your wake.^[ad]
¹²The pastures in the wilderness glisten with moisture,^[ae]
and the hills are clothed with joy.^[af]
¹³The meadows are clothed with sheep,
and the valleys are covered with grain.
They shout joyfully, yes, they sing.

Footnotes

Psalm 65:1 sn Psalm 65. The psalmist praises God because he forgives sin and blesses his people with an abundant harvest.
Psalm 65:1 tn Heb “for you, silence, praise.” Many prefer to emend the noun דֻּמִיָּה (dumiyyah, “silence”) to a participle דּוֹמִיָּה (domiyyah), from the root דָּמָה (damah, “be silent”), understood here in the sense of “wait.”
Psalm 65:2 tn Heb “O one who hears prayer.”
Psalm 65:2 tn Heb “to you all flesh comes.”
Psalm 65:3 tn Heb “the records of sins are too strong for me.”
Psalm 65:3 tn Or “make atonement for.”
Psalm 65:4 tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1; 2:12; 34:9; 41:1; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).
Psalm 65:4 tn Heb “[whom] you bring near [so that] he might live [in] your courts.”
Psalm 65:4 tn Or “temple.”
Psalm 65:5 tn Heb “[with] awesome acts in deliverance you answer us, O God of our salvation.”
Psalm 65:5 tn Heb “a source of confidence [for] all the ends of the earth.”sn All the ends of the earth trust in you. This idealistic portrayal of universal worship is typical hymnic hyperbole, though it does anticipate eschatological reality.
Psalm 65:5 tc Heb “and [the] distant sea.” The plural adjective is problematic after the singular form “sea.” One could emend יָם (yam, “sea”) to יָמִים (yamim, “seas”), or emend the plural form רְחֹקִים (r^ekhoqim, “far”) to the singular רָחֹק (rakhoq). In this case the final mem (ם) could be treated as dittographic; note the mem on the beginning of the first word in v. 6.
Psalm 65:6 tn Heb “[the] one who establishes [the] mountains by his power.”
Psalm 65:6 tn Heb “one [who] is girded with strength”; or “one [who] girds himself with strength.”
Psalm 65:7 tn Heb “the roar of the seas.”
Psalm 65:7 sn The raging seas…the commotion made by the nations. The raging seas symbolize the turbulent nations of the earth (see Ps 46:2-3, 6; Isa 17:12).
Psalm 65:8 tn Heb “and the inhabitants of the ends fear because of your signs.” God’s “signs” are the “awesome acts” (see v. 5) he performs in the earth.
Psalm 65:8 tn Heb “the goings out of the morning and the evening you cause to shout for joy.” The phrase “goings out of the morning and evening” refers to the sunrise and sunset, that is, the east and the west.
Psalm 65:9 tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”
Psalm 65:9 tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”
Psalm 65:9 tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably may be used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).
Psalm 65:9 tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.
Psalm 65:9 tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.
Psalm 65:10 tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].
Psalm 65:10 tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”
Psalm 65:10 tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”
Psalm 65:10 tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.
Psalm 65:10 tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.
Psalm 65:11 tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.
Psalm 65:11 tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”
Psalm 65:12 tn Heb “drip.”
Psalm 65:12 tn That is, with rich vegetation that brings joy to those who see it.

Joel 2:12-22

An Appeal for Repentance

¹²“Yet even now,” the Lord says,
“return to me with all your heart—
with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
¹³Tear your hearts,^[a]
not just your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is merciful and compassionate,
slow to anger and boundless in loyal love^[b]—often relenting from calamitous punishment.^[c]
¹⁴Who knows?
Perhaps he will be compassionate and grant a reprieve,^[d]
and leave blessing in his wake^[e]—
a meal offering and a drink offering for you to offer to the Lord your God!^[f]
¹⁵Blow the trumpet^[g] in Zion.

Announce a holy fast;
proclaim a sacred assembly.
¹⁶Gather the people;
sanctify an assembly!
Gather the elders;
gather the children and the nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom come out from his bedroom
and the bride from her private quarters.^[h]
¹⁷Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep
from the vestibule all the way back to the altar.^[i]
Let them say, “Have pity, O Lord, on your people;
please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked,
to become a proverb^[j] among the nations.
Why should it be said^[k] among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’

The Lord’s Response

¹⁸Then the Lord became zealous^[l] for his land;
he had compassion on his people.
¹⁹The Lord responded^[m] to his people,
“Look! I am about to restore your grain^[n]
as well as fresh wine and olive oil.
You will be fully satisfied.^[o]
I will never again make you an object of mockery among the nations.
²⁰I will remove the one from the north^[p] far from you.
I will drive him out to a dry and desolate place.
Those in front will be driven eastward into the Dead Sea,^[q]
and those in back westward into the Mediterranean Sea.^[r]
His stench will rise up as a foul smell.”^[s]
Indeed, the Lord^[t] has accomplished great things!
²¹Do not fear, my land.

Rejoice and be glad,
because the Lord has accomplished great things!
²²Do not fear, wild animals.^[u]
For the pastures of the wilderness are again green with grass.
Indeed, the trees bear their fruit;
the fig tree and the vine yield to their fullest.^[v]

Footnotes

Joel 2:13 sn The figurative language calls for genuine repentance and not merely external ritual that goes through the motions.
Joel 2:13 tn Heb “and great of loyal love.”
Joel 2:13 tn Heb “and he relents from calamity.”
Joel 2:14 tn Heb “turn” or “turn back.”
Joel 2:14 tn Heb “leave a blessing behind him.”
Joel 2:14 tn The phrase “for you to offer” does not appear in the Hebrew but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.
Joel 2:15 tn See the note on this term in 2:1.
Joel 2:16 sn Mosaic law allowed men recently married, or about to be married, to be exempt for a year from certain duties that were normally mandatory, such as military obligation (cf. Deut 20:7; 24:5). However, Joel pictures a time of such urgency that normal expectations must give way to higher requirements.
Joel 2:17 tn Heb “between the vestibule and the altar.” The vestibule was located at the entrance of the temple, and the altar was located at the other end of the building. So “between the vestibule and the altar” is a merism referring to the entire structure. The priestly lament permeates the entire house of worship.
Joel 2:17 tn For the MT reading לִמְשָׁל (limshol, an infinitive, “to rule”), one should probably instead read לְמָשָׁל (l^emashal, a noun, “to a byword”). While the consonantal Hebrew text permits either, the context suggests that the concern here is more a fear of abandonment by God to ongoing economic depression than a fear of the potential political subjugation of Israel (cf. v. 19). The possibility that the form in the MT is an infinitive construct of the denominative verb II מָשַׁל (mashal, “to utter a proverb”) does not seem likely because of the following preposition (Hebrew בְּ [b^e], rather than עַל [’al]).
Joel 2:17 tn Heb “Why will they say?”
Joel 2:18 tn The time-frame entertained by the verbs of v. 18 constitutes a crux interpretum in this chapter. The Hebrew verb forms used here are preterites with vav consecutive and are most naturally understood as describing a past situation. However, some modern English versions render these verbs as futures (e.g., NIV, NASB), apparently concluding that the context requires a future reference. According to Joüon 2:363 §112.h, n.1 Ibn Ezra explained the verbs of Joel 2:18 as an extension of the so-called prophetic perfect; as such, a future fulfillment was described with a past tense as a rhetorical device lending certainty to the fulfillment. But this lacks adequate precedent and is very unlikely from a syntactical standpoint. It seems better to take the verbs in the normal past sense of the preterite. This would require a vantage point for the prophet at some time after the people had responded favorably to the Lord’s call for repentance and after the Lord had shown compassion and forgiveness toward his people, but before the full realization of God’s promises to restore productivity to the land. In other words, it appears from the verbs of vv. 18-19 that at the time of Joel’s writing this book the events of successive waves of locust invasion and conditions of drought had almost run their course and the people had now begun to turn to the Lord.
Joel 2:19 tn Heb “answered and said.”
Joel 2:19 tn Heb “Look! I am sending grain to you.” The participle used in the Hebrew text seems to suggest imminent action.
Joel 2:19 tc One of the Qumran manuscripts (4QXXII^c) inserts “and you will eat” before “and you will be fully satisfied,” the latter phrase being the reading of the MT and LXX.
Joel 2:20 sn The allusion to the one from the north is best understood as having locusts in view. It is not correct to say that this reference to the enemy who came form the north excludes the possibility of a reference to locusts and must be understood as human armies. Although locust plagues usually approached Palestine from the east or southeast, the severe plague of 1915, for example, came from the northeast.
Joel 2:20 tn Heb “his face to the eastern sea.” In this context the eastern sea is probably the Dead Sea.
Joel 2:20 tn Heb “and his rear to the western sea.” The western sea refers to the Mediterranean Sea.
Joel 2:20 sn Heb “and his foul smell will ascend.” The foul smell probably refers to the unpleasant odor of decayed masses of dead locusts. The Hebrew word for “foul smell” is found only here in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word for “stench” appears only here and in Isa 34:3 and Amos 4:10. In the latter references it refers to the stench of dead corpses on a field of battle.
Joel 2:20 tn The Hebrew text does not have “the Lord.” Two interpretations are possible. This clause may refer to the enemy described in the immediately preceding verses, in which case it would have a negative sense: “he has acted in a high-handed manner.” Or it may refer to the Lord, in which case it would have a positive sense: “the Lord has acted in a marvelous manner.” This is clearly the sense of the same expression in v. 21, where in fact “the Lord” appears as the subject of the verb. It seems best to understand the clause the same way in both verses.
Joel 2:22 tn Heb “beasts of the field.”
Joel 2:22 tn Heb “their strength.” The trees and vines will produce a maximum harvest, in contrast to the failed agricultural conditions previously described.

Luke 1:46-55

Mary’s Hymn of Praise

⁴⁶And Mary^[a] said,^[b]

“My soul exalts^[c] the Lord,^[d]
⁴⁷and my spirit has begun to rejoice^[e] in God my Savior,
⁴⁸because he has looked upon the humble state of his servant.^[f]
For^[g] from now on^[h] all generations will call me blessed,^[i]
⁴⁹because he who is mighty^[j] has done great things for me, and holy is his name;
⁵⁰from^[k] generation to generation he is merciful^[l] to those who fear^[m] him.
⁵¹He has demonstrated power^[n] with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance^[o] of their hearts.
⁵²He has brought down the mighty^[p] from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position;^[q]
⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things,^[r] and has sent the rich away empty.^[s]
⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, remembering^[t] his mercy,^[u]
⁵⁵as he promised^[v] to our ancestors,^[w] to Abraham and to his descendants^[x] forever.”

Footnotes

Luke 1:46 tc A few witnesses, especially Latin mss, (a b l* Ir^arm Or^lat mss Nic) read “Elizabeth” here, since she was just speaking, but the ms evidence overwhelmingly supports “Mary” as the speaker.
Luke 1:46 sn The following passage has been typeset as poetry because many scholars regard this passage as poetic or hymnic. These terms are used broadly to refer to the genre of writing, not to the content. There are two broad criteria for determining if a passage is poetic or hymnic: “(a) stylistic: a certain rhythmical lilt when the passages are read aloud, the presence of parallelismus membrorum (i.e., an arrangement into couplets), the semblance of some metre, and the presence of rhetorical devices such as alliteration, chiasmus, and antithesis; and (b) linguistic: an unusual vocabulary, particularly the presence of theological terms, which is different from the surrounding context” (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians [NIGTC], 188-89). Classifying a passage as hymnic or poetic is important because understanding this genre can provide keys to interpretation. However, not all scholars agree that the above criteria are present in this passage, so the decision to typeset it as poetry should be viewed as a tentative decision about its genre.
Luke 1:46 tn Or “lifts up the Lord in praise.”
Luke 1:46 sn This psalm (vv. 46-55) is one of the few praise psalms in the NT. Mary praises God and then tells why both in terms of his care for her (vv. 46-49) and for others, including Israel (vv. 50-55). Its traditional name, the “Magnificat,” comes from the Latin for the phrase My soul magnifies the Lord at the hymn’s start.
Luke 1:47 tn Or “rejoices.” The translation renders this aorist, which stands in contrast to the previous line’s present tense, as ingressive, which highlights Mary’s joyous reaction to the announcement. A comprehensive aorist is also possible here.
Luke 1:48 tn See the note on the word “servant” in v. 38.
Luke 1:48 tn Grk “for behold.”
Luke 1:48 sn From now on is a favorite phrase of Luke’s, showing how God’s acts change things from this point on (5:10; 12:52; 22:18, 69; Acts 18:6).
Luke 1:48 sn Mary is seen here as an example of an object of God’s grace (blessed) for all generations.
Luke 1:49 tn Traditionally, “the Mighty One.”
Luke 1:50 tn Grk “and from.” Here καί (kai) has been translated by a semicolon to improve the English style.
Luke 1:50 sn God’s mercy refers to his “loyal love” or “steadfast love,” expressed in faithful actions, as the rest of the psalm illustrates.
Luke 1:50 tn That is, “who revere.” This refers to those who show God a reverential respect for his sovereignty.
Luke 1:51 tn Or “shown strength,” “performed powerful deeds.” The verbs here switch to aorist tense through 1:55. This is how God will act in general for his people as they look to his ultimate deliverance.
Luke 1:51 tn Grk “in the imaginations of their hearts.” The psalm rebukes the arrogance of the proud, who think that power is their sovereign right. Here διανοίᾳ (dianoia) can be understood as a dative of sphere or reference/respect.
Luke 1:52 tn Or “rulers.”
Luke 1:52 tn Or “those of humble position”sn The contrast between the mighty and those of lowly position is fundamental for Luke. God cares for those that the powerful ignore (Luke 4:18-19).
Luke 1:53 sn Good things refers not merely to material blessings, but blessings that come from knowing God.
Luke 1:53 sn Another fundamental contrast of Luke’s is between the hungry and the rich (Luke 6:20-26).
Luke 1:54 tn Or “because he remembered mercy,” understanding the infinitive as causal.
Luke 1:54 tn Or “his [God’s] loyal love.”
Luke 1:55 tn Grk “as he spoke.” Since this is a reference to the covenant to Abraham, ἐλάλησεν (elalēsen) can be translated in context “as he promised.” God keeps his word.
Luke 1:55 tn Grk “fathers.”
Luke 1:55 tn Grk “his seed” (an idiom for offspring or descendants).

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 65[a]

For the music director, a psalm of David, a song.

Footnotes

An Appeal for Repentance

The Lord’s Response

Footnotes

Mary’s Hymn of Praise

Footnotes

Psalm 65^[a]