Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

²⁰ I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him:

²¹ With whom my hand shall be established; and mine arm shall strengthen him.

²² No enemy shall exact upon him, nor the son of wickedness afflict him;

²³ But I will beat down his adversaries before his face, and will smite them that hate him.

²⁴ And my faithfulness and my loving-kindness shall be with him, and by my name shall his horn be exalted.

²⁵ And I will set his hand in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers.

²⁶ *He* shall call unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation;

²⁷ And as to me, I will make him firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

²⁸ My loving-kindness will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him;

²⁹ And I will establish his seed for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.

³⁰ If his sons forsake my law, and walk not in mine ordinances;

³¹ If they profane my statutes, and keep not my commandments:

³² Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.

³³ Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor belie my faithfulness;

³⁴ My covenant will I not profane, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

³⁵ Once have I sworn by my holiness; I will not lie unto David:

³⁶ His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me;

³⁷ It shall be established for ever as the moon, and the witness in the sky is firm. Selah.

¹⁵ And three of the thirty chiefs went down to the rock to David, to the cave of Adullam, when the army of the Philistines was encamped in the valley of Rephaim.

¹⁶ And David was then in the stronghold; and the Philistines' garrison was then at Bethlehem.

¹⁷ And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is in the gate!

¹⁸ And the three broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, which is in the gate, and took it, and brought it to David; David however would not drink of it, but poured it out to Jehovah.

¹⁹ And he said, My God forbid it me, that I should do this thing! should I drink the blood of these men [who went] at the risk of their lives? for at the risk of their lives they brought it. Therefore he would not drink it. These things did the three mighty men.

¹⁵ who is image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation;

¹⁶ because by him were created all things, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or lordships, or principalities, or authorities: all things have been created by him and for him.

¹⁷ And *he* is before all, and all things subsist together by him.

¹⁸ And *he* is the head of the body, the assembly; who is [the] beginning, firstborn from among the dead, that *he* might have the first place in all things:

¹⁹ for in him all the fulness [of the Godhead] was pleased to dwell,

²⁰ and by him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of his cross—by him, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.

²¹ And you, who once were alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, yet now has it reconciled

²² in the body of his flesh through death; to present you holy and unblamable and irreproachable before it,

²³ if indeed ye abide in the faith founded and firm, and not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings, which ye have heard, which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which [is] under heaven, of which *I* Paul became minister.