Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

37 Never envy the wicked! ² Soon they fade away like grass and disappear. ³ Trust in the Lord instead. Be kind and good to others; then you will live safely here in the land and prosper, feeding in safety.

⁴ Be delighted with the Lord. Then he will give you all your heart’s desires. ⁵ Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will. ⁶ Your innocence will be clear to everyone. He will vindicate you with the blazing light of justice shining down as from the noonday sun.

⁷ Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him to act. Don’t be envious of evil men who prosper.

⁸ Stop your anger! Turn off your wrath. Don’t fret and worry—it only leads to harm. ⁹ For the wicked shall be destroyed, but those who trust the Lord shall be given every blessing. ¹⁰ Only a little while and the wicked shall disappear. You will look for them in vain. ¹¹ But all who humble themselves before the Lord shall be given every blessing and shall have wonderful peace.

³⁹ The Lord saves the godly! He is their salvation and their refuge when trouble comes. ⁴⁰ Because they trust in him, he helps them and delivers them from the plots of evil men.

¹⁸ Then Judah stepped forward and said, “O sir, let me say just this one word to you. Be patient with me for a moment, for I know you can doom me in an instant, as though you were Pharaoh himself.

¹⁹ “Sir, you asked us if we had a father or a brother, ²⁰ and we said, ‘Yes, we have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one. And his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him very much.’ ²¹ And you said to us, ‘Bring him here so that I can see him.’ ²² But we said to you, ‘Sir, the lad cannot leave his father, for his father would die.’ ²³ But you told us, ‘Don’t come back here unless your youngest brother is with you.’ ²⁴ So we returned to our father and told him what you had said. ²⁵ And when he said, ‘Go back again and buy us a little food,’ ²⁶ we replied, ‘We can’t, unless you let our youngest brother go with us. Only then may we come.’

²⁷ “Then my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife had two sons, ²⁸ and that one of them went away and never returned—doubtless torn to pieces by some wild animal; I have never seen him since. ²⁹ And if you take away his brother from me also, and any harm befalls him, I shall die with sorrow.’ ³⁰ And now, sir, if I go back to my father and the lad is not with us—seeing that our father’s life is bound up in the lad’s life— ³¹ when he sees that the boy is not with us, our father will die; and we will be responsible for bringing down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. ³² Sir, I pledged my father that I would take care of the lad. I told him, ‘If I don’t bring him back to you, I shall bear the blame forever.’ ³³ Please sir, let me stay here as a slave instead of the lad, and let the lad return with his brothers. ³⁴ For how shall I return to my father if the lad is not with me? I cannot bear to see what this would do to him.”

⁵⁷ Why do you refuse to see for yourselves what is right?

⁵⁸ “If you meet your accuser on the way to court, try to settle the matter before it reaches the judge, lest he sentence you to jail; ⁵⁹ for if that happens, you won’t be free again until the last penny is paid in full.”