Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
13 [a]You created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am wonderfully made;
awesome are your works,
as I know very well.
15 My body was not hidden from you
when I was being made in secret.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
you saw me in the womb.[b]
16 [c]The sum total of my days
were all recorded in your book.[d]
My life was fashioned
before it had come into being.
17 How precious to me are your designs, O God!
How vast in number they are!
18 If I were to attempt to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,[e]
I am still with you.
3 When Jacob saw them he said, “This is the encampment of God,” and he called the place Mahanaim. 4 Then Jacob sent some messengers ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. 5 He gave them this command, “Say to my lord Esau, ‘Thus says your servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban and I remained there until now. 6 I have come to own oxen, donkeys, flocks, male and female slaves. I am sending my lord this information to seek his favor.’ ”
7 The messengers returned to Jacob saying, “We went to your brother Esau. Now he is coming to meet you and he has four hundred men with him.” 8 Jacob was terribly afraid and filled with anxiety. He divided the men of his camp into two groups along with the flocks, the herds, and the camels. 9 He thought, “If Esau were to come to one group and destroy it, the other would be safe.”
10 Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Lord, who told me, ‘Return to your land, to your homeland, and I will bless you,’ 11 I am not worthy of the goodness and faithfulness that you have shown your servant. When I passed over the Jordan I had nothing but my staff, and now I have become so rich that I could establish two camps. 12 Save me from the hands of my brother Esau because I am afraid of him. Let him not come and kill all of us, even the mothers and children. 13 Besides, you said, ‘I will make you prosper and I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, so numerous that you cannot count them.’ ”
14 Jacob spent the night there. Then he selected the following gifts from among his possessions for his brother Esau: 15 two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 16 thirty nursing camels and their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. 17 He entrusted them to his servants, in separate groups, and told them, “Go ahead of me and leave some space between the groups.”
18 He gave this order to the first group, “When you meet Esau, my brother, and he asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? Who owns all these animals that you are driving?’ 19 you are to answer, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a gift for my lord Esau. And Jacob himself is behind us.’ ”
20 He gave the same order to the second group and the third and all the other groups: “These are the words that you shall say to Esau when you meet him. 21 Tell him, ‘Your servant Jacob is coming behind us.’ ” He was thinking, “The gifts that I am sending will calm him down, and then I will come before him. Maybe he will greet me kindly.”
12 This demands patient endurance on the part of the saints who keep the commandments of God and remain faithful to Jesus.
13 Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed[a] are those who die in the Lord from now on.”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will find rest from their labors, for their deeds go with them.”
14 One Like a Son of Man.[b] Now in my vision, I saw a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one “like a son of man,”[c] with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Another angel then came out of the temple and called out in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap, for the time to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” 16 So the one who was seated on the cloud swept over the earth with his sickle, and the earth was harvested.
17 Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he, too, had a sharp sickle. 18 Then from the altar came forth still another angel who was in charge of the fire, and he cried out in a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters from the vines of the earth, for her grapes are ripe.”
19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered in its vintage, which he then cast into the great winepress of God’s wrath. 20 The winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress to the height of a horse’s bridle for a distance of two hundred miles.
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