Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

77 I cry to the Lord; I call and call to him. Oh, that he would listen. ² I am in deep trouble and I need his help so much. All night long I pray, lifting my hands to heaven, pleading. There can be no joy for me until he acts.

¹¹ I recall the many miracles he did for me so long ago. ¹² Those wonderful deeds are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about them.

¹³ O God, your ways are holy. Where is there any other as mighty as you? ¹⁴ You are the God of miracles and wonders! You still demonstrate your awesome power.

¹⁵ You have redeemed us who are the sons of Jacob and of Joseph by your might. ¹⁶ When the Red Sea saw you, how it feared! It trembled to its depths! ¹⁷ The clouds poured down their rain, the thunder rolled and crackled in the sky. Your lightning flashed. ¹⁸ There was thunder in the whirlwind; the lightning lighted up the world! The earth trembled and shook.

¹⁹ Your road led by a pathway through the sea—a pathway no one knew was there! ²⁰ You led your people along that road like a flock of sheep, with Moses and Aaron as their shepherds.

²⁹ So King Ahab of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah led their armies to Ramoth-gilead.

³⁰ Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, “You wear your royal robes, but I’ll not wear mine!”

So Ahab went into the battle disguised in an ordinary soldier’s uniform. ³¹ For the king of Syria had commanded his thirty-two chariot captains to fight no one except King Ahab himself. ^32-33 When they saw King Jehoshaphat in his royal robes, they thought, “That’s the man we’re after.” So they wheeled around to attack him. But when Jehoshaphat shouted out to identify himself,^[a] they turned back! ³⁴ However, someone shot an arrow at random and it struck King Ahab between the joints of his armor.

“Take me out of the battle, for I am badly wounded,” he groaned to his chariot driver.

³⁵ The battle became more and more intense as the day wore on, and King Ahab went back in, propped up in his chariot with the blood from his wound running down onto the floorboards. Finally, toward evening, he died. ^36-37 Just as the sun was going down the cry ran through his troops. “It’s all over—return home! The king is dead!”

And his body was taken to Samaria and buried there. ³⁸ When his chariot and armor were washed beside the pool of Samaria, where the prostitutes bathed, dogs came and licked the king’s blood just as the Lord had said would happen.

³⁹ The rest of Ahab’s history—including the story of the ivory palace and the cities he built—is written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. ⁴⁰ So Ahab was buried among his ancestors, and Ahaziah, his son, became the new king of Israel.

⁵¹ It was during the seventeenth year of the reign of King Jehoshaphat of Judah that Ahaziah, Ahab’s son, began to reign over Israel in Samaria; and he reigned two years. ^52-53 But he was not a good king, for he followed in the footsteps of his father and mother and of Jeroboam, who had led Israel into the sin of worshiping idols. So Ahaziah made the Lord God of Israel very angry.

⁵ Check up on yourselves. Are you really Christians? Do you pass the test? Do you feel Christ’s presence and power more and more within you? Or are you just pretending to be Christians when actually you aren’t at all? ⁶ I hope you can agree that I have stood that test and truly belong to the Lord.

⁷ I pray that you will live good lives, not because that will be a feather in our caps,^[a] proving that what we teach is right; no, for we want you to do right even if we ourselves are despised. ⁸ Our responsibility is to encourage the right at all times, not to hope for evil.^{[b] 9} We are glad to be weak and despised if you are really strong. Our greatest wish and prayer is that you will become mature Christians.

¹⁰ I am writing this to you now in the hope that I won’t need to scold and punish when I come; for I want to use the Lord’s authority that he has given me, not to punish you but to make you strong.