Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

59 Written by David at the time King Saul set guards at his home to capture and kill him. (1 Samuel 19:11)

O my God, save me from my enemies. Protect me from these who have come to destroy me. ² Preserve me from these criminals, these murderers. ³ They lurk in ambush for my life. Strong men are out there waiting. And not, O Lord, because I’ve done them wrong. ⁴ Yet they prepare to kill me. Lord, waken! See what is happening! Help me! ⁵ (And O Jehovah, God of heaven’s armies, God of Israel, arise and punish the heathen nations surrounding us.) Do not spare these evil, treacherous men. ⁶ At evening they come to spy, slinking around like dogs that prowl the city. ⁷ I hear them shouting insults and cursing God, for “No one will hear us,” they think. ⁸ Lord, laugh at them! (And scoff at these surrounding nations too.)

⁹ O God my Strength! I will sing your praises, for you are my place of safety. ¹⁰ My God is changeless in his love for me, and he will come and help me. He will let me see my wish come true upon my enemies. ¹¹ Don’t kill them—for my people soon forget such lessons—but stagger them with your power and bring them to their knees. Bring them to the dust, O Lord our shield. ^12-13 They are proud, cursing liars. Angrily destroy them. Wipe them out. (And let the nations find out, too, that God rules in Israel and will reign throughout the world.) ^14-15 Let these evil men slink back at evening and prowl the city all night before they are satisfied, howling like dogs and searching for food.

¹⁶ But as for me, I will sing each morning about your power and mercy. For you have been my high tower of refuge, a place of safety in the day of my distress. ¹⁷ O my Strength, to you I sing my praises; for you are my high tower of safety, my God of mercy.

9 Meanwhile Elisha had summoned one of the young prophets.

“Get ready to go to Ramoth-gilead,” he told him. “Take this vial of oil with you ² and find Jehu (the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi). Call him into a private room away from his friends, ³ and pour the oil over his head. Tell him that the Lord has anointed him to be the king of Israel; then run for your life!”

⁴ So the young prophet did as he was told. When he arrived in Ramoth-gilead, ⁵ he found Jehu sitting around with the other army officers.

“I have a message for you, sir,” he said.

“For which one of us?” Jehu asked.

“For you,” he replied.

⁶ So Jehu left the others and went into the house, and the young man poured the oil over his head and said, “The Lord God of Israel says, ‘I anoint you king of the Lord’s people, Israel. ⁷ You are to destroy the family of Ahab; you will avenge the murder of my prophets and of all my other people who were killed by Jezebel. ⁸ The entire family of Ahab must be wiped out—every male, no matter who. ⁹ I will destroy the family of Ahab as I destroyed the families of Jeroboam (son of Nebat) and of Baasha (son of Ahijah). ¹⁰ Dogs shall eat Ahab’s wife Jezebel at Jezreel, and no one will bury her.’”

Then he opened the door and ran.

¹¹ Jehu went back to his friends and one of them asked him, “What did that crazy fellow want? Is everything all right?”

“You know very well who he was and what he wanted,” Jehu replied.

¹² “No, we don’t,” they said. “Tell us.”

So he told them what the man had said and that he had been anointed king of Israel!

¹³ They quickly carpeted the bare steps with their coats and blew a trumpet, shouting, “Jehu is king!”

¹⁸ I know very well how foolish it sounds to those who are lost,^[a] when they hear that Jesus died to save them. But we who are saved recognize this message as the very power of God. ¹⁹ For God says, “I will destroy all human plans of salvation no matter how wise they seem to be, and ignore the best ideas of men, even the most brilliant of them.”

²⁰ So what about these wise men, these scholars, these brilliant debaters of this world’s great affairs? God has made them all look foolish and shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. ²¹ For God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never find God through human brilliance, and then he stepped in and saved all those who believed his message, which the world calls foolish and silly. ²² It seems foolish to the Jews because they want a sign from heaven as proof that what is preached is true; and it is foolish to the Gentiles because they believe only what agrees with their philosophy and seems wise to them. ²³ So when we preach about Christ dying to save them, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. ²⁴ But God has opened the eyes of those called to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, to see that Christ is the mighty power of God to save them; Christ himself is the center of God’s wise plan for their salvation. ²⁵ This so-called “foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisest plan of the wisest man, and God in his weakness—Christ dying on the cross—is far stronger than any man.

²⁶ Notice among yourselves, dear brothers, that few of you who follow Christ have big names or power or wealth. ²⁷ Instead, God has deliberately chosen to use ideas the world considers foolish and of little worth in order to shame those people considered by the world as wise and great. ²⁸ He has chosen a plan despised by the world, counted as nothing at all, and used it to bring down to nothing those the world considers great, ²⁹ so that no one anywhere can ever brag in the presence of God.

³⁰ For it is from God alone that you have your life through Christ Jesus. He showed us God’s plan of salvation; he was the one who made us acceptable to God; he made us pure and holy^[b] and gave himself to purchase our salvation. ³¹ As it says in the Scriptures, “If anyone is going to boast, let him boast only of what the Lord has done.”