Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 58

To the Chief Musician; [set to the tune of] “Do Not Destroy.” A record of memorable thoughts of David.

¹ Do you indeed in silence speak righteousness, O you mighty ones? [Or is the righteousness, rightness, and justice you should speak quite dumb?] Do you judge fairly and uprightly, O you sons of men?

² No, in your heart you devise wickedness; you deal out in the land the violence of your hands.

³ The ungodly are perverse and estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.

⁴ Their poison is like the venom of a serpent; they are like the deaf adder or asp that stops its ear,

⁵ Which listens not to the voice of charmers or of the enchanter never casting spells so cunningly.

⁶ Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; break out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord.

⁷ Let them melt away as water which runs on apace; when he aims his arrows, let them be as if they were headless or split apart.

⁸ Let them be as a snail dissolving slime as it passes on or as a festering sore which wastes away, like [the child to which] a woman gives untimely birth that has not seen the sun.

⁹ Before your pots can feel the thorns [that are placed under them for fuel], He will take them away as with a whirlwind, the green and the burning ones alike.

¹⁰ The [unyieldingly] righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.

¹¹ Men will say, Surely there is a reward for the [uncompromisingly] righteous; surely there is a God Who judges on the earth.

3 That is to say, If a man puts away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, will he return to her again? [Of course not!] Would not that land [where such a thing happened] be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot [against Me] with many lovers—yet would you now return to Me? says the Lord [or do you even think to return to Me?]

² Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see. Where have you not been adulterously lain with? By the wayside you have sat waiting for lovers [eager for idolatry], like an Arabian [desert tribesman who waits to plunder] in the wilderness; and you have polluted the land with your vile harlotry and your wickedness (unfaithfulness and disobedience to God).

³ Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no spring rain. Yet you have the brow of a prostitute; you refuse to be ashamed.

⁴ Have you not just now cried to Me: My Father, You were the guide and companion of my youth?

⁵ Will He retain His anger forever? Will He keep it to the end? Behold, you have so spoken, but you have done all the evil things you could and have had your way and have carried them through.

⁶ Moreover, the Lord said to me [Jeremiah] in the days of Josiah the king [of Judah], Have you seen what that faithless and backsliding Israel has done—how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree and there played the harlot?

⁷ And I said, After she has done all these things, she will return to Me; but she did not return, and her faithless and treacherous sister Judah saw it.

⁸ And I saw, even though [Judah knew] that for this very cause of committing adultery (idolatry) I [the Lord] had put faithless Israel away and given her a bill of divorce; yet her faithless and treacherous sister Judah was not afraid, but she also went and played the harlot [following after idols].

⁹ And through the infamy and unseemly frivolity of Israel’s whoredom [because her immorality mattered little to her], she polluted and defiled the land, [by her idolatry] committing adultery with [idols of] stones and trees.

¹⁰ But in spite of all this, her faithless and treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me in sincerity and with her whole heart, but only in sheer hypocrisy [has she feigned obedience to King Josiah’s reforms], says the Lord.^(A)

¹¹ And the Lord said to me, Backsliding and faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false and treacherous Judah.

¹² Go and proclaim these words toward the north [where the ten tribes have been taken as captives] and say, Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord, and I will not cause My countenance to fall and look in anger upon you, for I am merciful, says the Lord; I will not keep My anger forever.

¹³ Only know, understand, and acknowledge your iniquity and guilt—that you have rebelled and transgressed against the Lord your God and have scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed My voice, says the Lord.

¹⁴ Return, O faithless children [of the whole twelve tribes], says the Lord, for I am Lord and Master and Husband to you, and I will take you [not as a nation, but individually]—one from a city and two from a tribal family—and I will bring you to Zion.^(B)

1 Paul, a bond servant of God and an apostle (a special messenger) of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) to stimulate and promote the faith of God’s chosen ones and to lead them on to accurate discernment and recognition of and acquaintance with the Truth which belongs to and harmonizes with and tends to godliness,

² [Resting] in the hope of eternal life, [life] which the ever truthful God Who cannot deceive promised before the world or the ages of time began.

³ And [now] in His own appointed time He has made manifest (made known) His Word and revealed it as His message through the preaching entrusted to me by command of God our Savior;

⁴ To Titus, my true child according to a common (general) faith: Grace (favor and spiritual blessing) and [heart] peace from God the Father and the Lord Christ Jesus our Savior.

⁵ For this reason I left you [behind] in Crete, that you might set right what was defective and finish what was left undone, and that you might appoint elders and set them over the churches (assemblies) in every city as I directed you.

⁶ [These elders should be] men who are of unquestionable integrity and are irreproachable, the husband of [but] one wife, whose children are [well trained and are] believers, not open to the accusation of being loose in morals and conduct or unruly and disorderly.

⁷ For the bishop (an overseer) as God’s steward must be blameless, not self-willed or arrogant or presumptuous; he must not be quick-tempered or given to drink or pugnacious (brawling, violent); he must not be grasping and greedy for filthy lucre (financial gain);

⁸ But he must be hospitable (loving and a friend to believers, especially to strangers and foreigners); [he must be] a lover of goodness [of good people and good things], sober-minded (sensible, discreet), upright and fair-minded, a devout man and religiously correct, temperate and keeping himself in hand.

⁹ He must hold fast to the sure and trustworthy Word of God as he was taught it, so that he may be able both to give stimulating instruction and encouragement in sound (wholesome) doctrine and to refute and convict those who contradict and oppose it [showing the wayward their error].