Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A Song of Ascents.

2 I will stand at my watch and set myself on the ramparts, and will look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

² Yahweh answered me, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he who runs may read it. ³ For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It won’t delay. ⁴ Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith. ⁵ Yes, moreover, wine is treacherous: an arrogant man who doesn’t stay at home, who enlarges his desire as Sheol;^[a] he is like death and can’t be satisfied, but gathers to himself all nations and heaps to himself all peoples.

⁷ However, I consider those things that were gain to me as a loss for Christ. ⁸ Yes most certainly, and I count all things to be a loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, ¹⁰ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death, ¹¹ if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.