◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous) / Psalm 31:1-5 15-16 (I commend my spirit); Genesis 12:1-3 (The call of Abram); Acts 6:8-15 (Stephen is arrested) (New English Translation)

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May 4, 2023

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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 31:1-5

Psalm 31^[a]

For the music director, a psalm of David.

31 In you, O Lord, I have taken shelter.
Never let me be humiliated.
Vindicate me by rescuing me.^[b]
²Listen to me.^[c]
Quickly deliver me.
Be my protector and refuge,^[d]
a stronghold where I can be safe.^[e]
³For you are my high ridge^[f] and my stronghold;
for the sake of your own reputation^[g] you lead me and guide me.^[h]
⁴You will free me^[i] from the net they hid for me,
for you are my place of refuge.
⁵Into your hand I entrust my life;^[j]
you will rescue^[k] me, O Lord, the faithful God.

Footnotes

Psalm 31:1 sn Psalm 31. The psalmist confidently asks the Lord to protect him. Enemies threaten him and even his friends have abandoned him, but he looks to the Lord for vindication. In vv. 19-24, which were apparently written after the Lord answered the prayer of vv. 1-18, the psalmist thanks the Lord for delivering him.
Psalm 31:1 tn Heb “in your vindication rescue me.”
Psalm 31:2 tn Heb “turn toward me your ear.”
Psalm 31:2 tn Heb “become for me a rocky summit of refuge.”
Psalm 31:2 tn Heb “a house of strongholds to deliver me.”
Psalm 31:3 sn The metaphor of the high ridge pictures God as a rocky, relatively inaccessible summit, where one would be able to find protection from enemies. See 1 Sam 23:25, 28.
Psalm 31:3 tn Heb “name.” The Hebrew term שֵׁם (shem, “name”) refers here to the Lord’s reputation. (The English term “name” is often used the same way.)
Psalm 31:3 tn The present translation assumes that the imperfect verbal forms are generalizing, “you lead me and guide me.” Other options are to take them as an expression of confidence about the future, “you will lead me and guide me” (cf. NASB), or as expressing a prayer, “lead me and guide me” (cf. NEB, NIV, NRSV).
Psalm 31:4 tn Heb “bring me out.” The translation assumes that the imperfect verbal form expresses the psalmist’s confidence about the future. Another option is to take the form as expressing a prayer, “free me.”
Psalm 31:5 tn Heb “my spirit.” The noun רוּחַ (ruakh, “spirit”) here refers to the animating spirit that gives the psalmist life.
Psalm 31:5 tn Or “redeem.” The perfect verbal form is understood here as anticipatory, indicating rhetorically the psalmist’s certitude and confidence that God will intervene. The psalmist is so confident of God’s positive response to his prayer that he can describe his deliverance as if it had already happened. Another option is to take the perfect as precative, expressing a wish or request (“rescue me”; cf. NIV). See IBHS 494-95 §30.5.4c, d. However, not all grammarians are convinced that the perfect is used as a precative in biblical Hebrew.

Psalm 31:15-16

¹⁵You determine my destiny.^[a]
Rescue me from the power of my enemies and those who chase me.
¹⁶Smile^[b] on your servant.
Deliver me because of your faithfulness.

Genesis 12:1-3

The Obedience of Abram

12 Now the Lord said^[a] to Abram,^[b]

“Go out^[c] from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household
to the land that I will show you.^[d]
²Then I will make you^[e] into a great nation, and I will bless you,^[f]
and I will make your name great,^[g]
so that you will exemplify divine blessing.^[h]
³I will bless those who bless you,^[i]
but the one who treats you lightly^[j] I must curse,
so that all the families of the earth may receive blessing^[k] through you.”

Footnotes

Genesis 12:1 sn The Lord called Abram while he was in Ur (see Gen 15:7; Acts 7:2), but the sequence here makes it look like it was after the family left to migrate to Canaan (11:31-32). Genesis records the call of Abram at this place in the narrative because it is the formal beginning of the account of Abram. The record of Terah was brought to its end before this beginning.
Genesis 12:1 tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh l^ekha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18.sn It would be hard to overestimate the value of this call and this divine plan for the theology of the Bible. Here begins God’s plan to bring redemption to the world. The promises to Abram will be turned into a covenant in Gen 15 and 22 (here it is a call with conditional promises) and will then lead through the Bible to the work of the Messiah.
Genesis 12:1 tn The initial command is the direct imperative (לֶךְ, lekh) from the verb הָלַךְ (halakh). It is followed by the preposition ל (lamed) with a pronominal suffix (לְךָ, l^ekha) emphasizing the subject of the imperative: “you leave.”
Genesis 12:1 sn To the land that I will show you. The call of Abram illustrates the leading of the Lord. The command is to leave. The Lord’s word is very specific about what Abram is to leave (the three prepositional phrases narrow to his father’s household), but is not specific at all about where he is to go. God required faith, a point that Heb 11:8 notes.
Genesis 12:2 tn The three first person verbs in v. 2a should be classified as cohortatives. The first two have pronominal suffixes, so the form itself does not indicate a cohortative. The third verb form is clearly cohortative.
Genesis 12:2 sn I will bless you. The blessing of creation is now carried forward to the patriarch. In the garden God blessed Adam and Eve; in that blessing he (1) gave them a fruitful place, (2) endowed them with fertility to multiply, and (3) made them rulers over creation. That was all ruined at the fall. Now God begins to build his covenant people; in Gen 12-22 he promises to give Abram (1) a land flowing with milk and honey, (2) a great nation without number, and (3) kingship.
Genesis 12:2 tn Or “I will make you famous.”
Genesis 12:2 tn Heb “and be a blessing.” The verb form הְיֵה (h^eyeh) is the Qal imperative of the verb הָיָה (hayah). The vav (ו) with the imperative after the cohortatives indicates purpose or consequence. What does it mean for Abram to “be a blessing”? Will he be a channel or source of blessing for others, or a prime example of divine blessing? With the opposite notions of being a curse, taunt, horror, reproach, or proverb, a person (or the nation) is an example of such and/or referenced in a statement of such. For example, in Zech 8:13 God assures his people, “You will be a blessing,” in contrast to the past when they “were a curse.” Certainly “curse” here does not refer to Israel being a source of a curse, but rather to the fact that they became a curse-word or byword among the nations, who regarded them as the epitome of an accursed people (see 2 Kgs 22:19; Jer 42:18; 44:8, 12, 22). Therefore the statement “be a blessing” seems to refer to Israel being transformed into a prime example of a blessed people, whose name will be used in blessing formulae, rather than in curses. If the statement “be a blessing” is understood in the same way in Gen 12:2, then it means that God would so bless Abram that other nations would hear of his fame and hold him up as a paradigm of divine blessing in their blessing formulae. And yet the gnomic promise that begins v. 3 can be seen to identify the way in which Abraham could be a blessing to others; as they bless him, they are blessed by God.
Genesis 12:3 tn The Piel cohortative has as its object a Piel participle, masculine plural. Since the Lord binds himself to Abram by covenant, those who enrich Abram in any way share in the blessings.
Genesis 12:3 tn In this part of God’s statement there are two significant changes that often go unnoticed. First, the parallel and contrasting participle מְקַלֶּלְךָ (m^eqallel^ekha) is now singular and not plural. All the versions and a few Masoretic mss read the plural. But if it had been plural, there would be no reason to change it to the singular and alter the parallelism. On the other hand, if it was indeed singular, it is easy to see why the versions would change it to match the first participle. The MT preserves the original reading: “the one who treats you lightly.” The point would be a contrast with the lavish way that God desires to bless many. The second change is in the vocabulary. The English usually says, “I will curse those who curse you.” But there are two different words for curse here. The first is קָלַל (qalal), which means “to be light” in the Qal, and in the Piel “to treat lightly, to treat with contempt, to curse.” The second verb is אָרַר (ʾarar), which means “to banish, to remove from the blessing.” The point is simple: Whoever treats Abram and the covenant with contempt as worthless God will banish from the blessing. It is important also to note that the verb is not a cohortative, but a simple imperfect. Since God is binding himself to Abram, this would then be an obligatory imperfect: “but the one who treats you with contempt I must curse.”
Genesis 12:3 tn Or “find blessing.” The Niphal of בָּרַךְ (barakh) occurs only three times, all in formulations of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 12:2; 18:18; 28:14). The Niphal stem is medio-passive and it has traditionally been rendered as passive here. While this captures an assumption in the passage, it does not fully capture the nuance of the verb. The verb is denominative (based on the noun “blessing”) with its active voice in the Piel and its normal passive expression in the Pual (or the Qal passive participle). Some have argued that the Niphal has the same reciprocal notion as its Hitpael (which appears in two other formulations of the Abrahamic covenant: Gen 22:18; 26:4) and means “bless one another by you[r name].” As an example of being blessed, Abram would be mentioned in their pronouncements of blessing. This could be possible, but it is more likely that the Niphal is used instead of the Hitpael to indicate a different middle voice meaning than the Hitpael, just as it would not be expected to have the same passive meaning as the Pual. In the immediate context, the first lines of this verse explain how others may be blessed by God, specifically by blessing Abram. The middle voice nuance may be expressed as “they may consider themselves blessed through you,” or that “they may find/receive blessing through you.” The logical outcome is that those who bless Abraham receive blessing and thus will “be blessed” (passive), and that anyone on the earth may be part of that category. So a passive translation can be a fair rendering of this implication. This translation attempts to reflect the middle voice of the Niphal as well as a modal sense “may receive blessing,” since the blessing only comes to those who bless Abram. Additional iterations of the Abrahamic covenant extend this principle to his descendants.

Acts 6:8-15

Stephen is Arrested

⁸Now Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and miraculous signs^[a] among the people. ⁹But some men from the Synagogue^[b] of the Freedmen (as it was called),^[c] both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, as well as some from Cilicia and the province of Asia,^[d] stood up and argued with Stephen. ¹⁰Yet^[e] they were not able to resist^[f] the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke. ¹¹Then they secretly instigated^[g] some men to say, “We have heard this man^[h] speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God.” ¹²They incited the people, the^[i] elders, and the experts in the law;^[j] then they approached Stephen,^[k] seized him, and brought him before the council.^[l] ¹³They brought forward false witnesses who said, “This man does not stop saying things against this holy place^[m] and the law.^[n] ¹⁴For we have heard him saying that Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and change the customs^[o] that Moses handed down to us.” ¹⁵All^[p] who were sitting in the council^[q] looked intently at Stephen^[r] and saw his face was like the face of an angel.^[s]

Footnotes

Acts 6:8 tn The miraculous nature of these signs is implied in the context. Here the work of miracles extends beyond the Twelve for the first time.
Acts 6:9 sn A synagogue was a place for Jewish prayer and worship, with recognized leadership (cf. Luke 8:41). Though the origin of the synagogue is not entirely clear, it seems to have arisen in the postexilic community during the intertestamental period. A town could establish a synagogue if there were at least ten men. In normative Judaism of the NT period, the OT scripture was read and discussed in the synagogue by the men who were present (see the Mishnah, m. Megillah 3-4; m. Berakhot 2).
Acts 6:9 tn Grk “the so-called Synagogue of the Freedmen.” The translation of the participle λεγομένης (legomenēs) by the phrase “as it was called” is given by L&N 87.86. “Freedmen” would be slaves who had gained their freedom, or the descendants of such people (BDAG 594-95 s.v. Λιβερτῖνος).
Acts 6:9 tn Grk “Asia”; in the NT this always refers to the Roman province of Asia. The Roman province of Asia made up about one-third of modern Asia Minor and was on the western side of it. Asia lay to the west of the region of Phrygia and Galatia. The words “the province of” are supplied to indicate to the modern reader that this does not refer to the continent of Asia.
Acts 6:10 tn Grk “and.” The context, however, indicates that the conjunction carries an adversative force.
Acts 6:10 sn They were not able to resist. This represents another fulfillment of Luke 12:11-12; 21:15.
Acts 6:11 tn Another translation would be “they suborned” (but this term is not in common usage). “Instigate (secretly), suborn” is given by BDAG 1036 s.v. ὑποβάλλω.
Acts 6:11 tn Grk “heard him,” but since this is direct discourse, it is more natural (and clearer) to specify the referent (Stephen) as “this man.”
Acts 6:12 tn Grk “and the,” but καί (kai) has not been translated since English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.
Acts 6:12 tn Or “and the scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 4:5.
Acts 6:12 tn Grk “approaching, they seized him”; the referent (Stephen) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
Acts 6:12 tn Or “the Sanhedrin” (the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews). Stephen suffers just as Peter and John did.
Acts 6:13 sn This holy place is a reference to the temple.
Acts 6:13 sn The law refers to the law of Moses. It elaborates the nature of the blasphemy in v. 11. To speak against God’s law in Torah was to blaspheme God (Deut 28:15-19). On the Jewish view of false witnesses, see Exod 19:16-18; 20:16; m. Sanhedrin 3.6; 5.1-5. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 may indicate why the temple was mentioned.
Acts 6:14 tn Or “practices.”sn Will destroy this place and change the customs. Stephen appears to view the temple as a less central place in light of Christ’s work, an important challenge to Jewish religion, since it was at this time a temple-centered state and religion. Unlike Acts 3-4, the issue here is more than Jesus and his resurrection. Now the impact of his resurrection and the temple’s centrality has also become an issue. The “falseness” of the charge may not be that the witnesses were lying, but that they falsely read the truth of Stephen’s remarks.
Acts 6:15 tn Grk “And all.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.
Acts 6:15 tn Or “Sanhedrin” (the highest legal, legislative, and judicial body among the Jews).
Acts 6:15 tn Grk “at him”; the referent (Stephen) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
Acts 6:15 sn His face was like the face of an angel. This narrative description of Stephen’s face adds to the mood of the passage. He had the appearance of a supernatural, heavenly messenger.

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 31[a]

For the music director, a psalm of David.

Footnotes

Footnotes

The Obedience of Abram

Footnotes

Stephen is Arrested

Footnotes

Psalm 31^[a]