Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

52 Written by David to protest against his enemy Doeg (1 Samuel 22), who later slaughtered eighty-five priests and their families.

You call yourself a hero, do you? You boast about this evil deed of yours against God’s people. ² You are sharp as a tack in plotting your evil tricks. ³ How you love wickedness—far more than good! And lying more than truth! ⁴ You love to slander—you love to say anything that will do harm, O man with the lying tongue.

⁵ But God will strike you down, pull you from your home, and drag you away from the land of the living. ⁶ The followers of God will see it happen. They will watch in awe. Then they will laugh and say, ⁷ “See what happens to those who despise God and trust in their wealth, and become ever more bold in their wickedness.”^[a]

⁸ But I am like a sheltered olive tree protected by the Lord himself. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. ⁹ O Lord, I will praise you forever and ever for your punishment.^[b] And I will wait for your mercies—for everyone knows what a merciful God you are.

¹⁸ You say, ‘If only the Day of the Lord were here, for then God would deliver us from all our foes.’ But you have no idea what you ask. For that day will not be light and prosperity, but darkness and doom! How terrible the darkness will be for you; not a ray of joy or hope will shine. ¹⁹ In that day you will be as a man who is chased by a lion and is met by a bear, or a man in a dark room who leans against a wall and puts his hand on a snake. ²⁰ Yes, that will be a dark and hopeless day for you.

²¹ “I hate your show and pretense—your hypocrisy of ‘honoring’ me with your religious feasts and solemn assemblies. ²² I will not accept your burnt offerings and thank offerings. I will not look at your offerings of peace. ²³ Away with your hymns of praise—they are mere noise to my ears. I will not listen to your music, no matter how lovely it is.

²⁴ “I want to see a mighty flood of justice—a torrent of doing good.

^25-27 “You sacrificed to me for forty years while you were in the desert, Israel—but always your real interest has been in your heathen gods—in Sakkuth your king, and in Kaiwan, your god of the stars, and in all the images of them you made. So I will send them into captivity with you far to the east of Damascus,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

^14-15 When I think of the wisdom and scope of his plan, I fall down on my knees and pray to the Father of all the great family of God—some of them already in heaven and some down here on earth— ¹⁶ that out of his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you the mighty inner strengthening of his Holy Spirit. ¹⁷ And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; ^18-19 and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.

²⁰ Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes. ²¹ May he be given glory forever and ever through endless ages because of his master plan of salvation for the Church through Jesus Christ.