Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
11 (0) For the leader. By David:
(1) In Adonai I find refuge.
So how can you say to me,
“Flee like a bird to the mountains!
2 See how the wicked are drawing their bows
and setting their arrows on the string,
to shoot from the shadows at honest men.
3 If the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”
4 Adonai is in his holy temple.
Adonai, his throne is in heaven.
His eyes see and test humankind.
5 Adonai tests the righteous;
but he hates the wicked and the lover of violence.
6 He will rain hot coals down on the wicked,
fire, sulfur and scorching wind
will be what they get to drink.
7 For Adonai is righteous;
he loves righteousness;
the upright will see his face.
15 The insides of the walls of the house he built with boards of cedar: from the floor of the house to the joists of the ceiling he covered them on the inside with wood, and he covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress. 16 The thirty-five-foot back portion of the house he built with boards of cedar from the floor to the joists and reserved this part of the house to be a sanctuary, the Especially Holy Place; 17 while the rest of the house, that is, the temple in front, was seventy feet long. 18 The cedar covering the house was carved with gourds and open flowers; all was cedar; no stone was visible. 19 In the inner part of the house he set up the sanctuary, so that the ark for the covenant of Adonai could be placed there. 20 This sanctuary was thirty-five feet long, wide and high; and it was overlaid with pure gold. In front of it he set an altar, which he covered with cedar. 21 Shlomo overlaid the interior of the house with pure gold and had chains of gold placed before the sanctuary, which itself he overlaid with gold. 22 The entire house he overlaid with gold until it was completely covered with it. He also overlaid with gold the entire altar that belonged to the sanctuary.
23 Inside the sanctuary he made two k’ruvim of olive-wood, each seventeen-and-a-half feet high. 24 Each of the two wings of one of the k’ruvim was eight-and-three quarters feet long, so that the distance from the end of one wing to the end of the other was seventeen-and-a-half feet. 25 Likewise the [wingspread of the] other keruv was seventeen-and-a-half feet; both k’ruvim were identical in shape and size. 26 The height of the one keruv was seventeen-and-a-half feet, likewise that of the other. 27 He set the k’ruvim in the inner house; the wings of the k’ruvim were stretched out, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall, and the wing of the other keruv touched the other wall; their wings touched each other in the middle of the house. 28 He overlaid the k’ruvim with gold. 29 All around the walls of the house, both inside the sanctuary and outside it, he carved figures of k’ruvim, palm trees and open flowers. 30 He overlaid the floor of the house with gold, both inside the sanctuary and outside it.
31 For the entrance to the sanctuary he made doors of olive-wood, set within a five-sided door-frame. 32 On the two olive-wood doors he carved figures of k’ruvim, palm trees and open flowers. He overlaid the doors with gold, forcing the gold into the shapes of the k’ruvim and palm trees as well. 33 For the entrance to the temple he also made doorposts of olive-wood, set within a rectangular door-frame, 34 and two doors of cypress-wood; the two leaves of the one door were folding, as were the two leaves of the other. 35 On them he carved k’ruvim, palm trees and open flowers, overlaying them with gold fitted to the carved work. 36 He built the inner courtyard with three rows of cut stone and a row of cedar beams.
37 The foundation of the house of Adonai was laid in the fourth year, in the month of Ziv. 38 In the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, all parts of the house were completed exactly as designed. Thus he was seven years building it.
16 You did not choose me, I chose you; and I have commissioned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that whatever you ask from the Father in my name he may give you. 17 This is what I command you: keep loving each other!
18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you do not belong to the world — on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world — therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. 21 But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don’t know the One who sent me.
22 “If I had not come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin; but now, they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done in their presence works which no one else ever did, they would not be guilty of sin; but now, they have seen them and have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this has happened in order to fulfill the words in their Torah which read, ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’[a]
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.