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Psalm 108

1  My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready; ♦︎
   I will sing and give you praise.
2  Awake, my soul; awake, harp and lyre, ♦︎
   that I may awaken the dawn.
3  I will give you thanks, O Lord, among the peoples; ♦︎
   I will sing praise to you among the nations.
4  For your loving-kindness is as high as the heavens ♦︎
   and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
5  Be exalted, O God, above the heavens ♦︎
   and your glory over all the earth.
6  That your beloved may be delivered, ♦︎
   save us by your right hand and answer me.
7  God has spoken in his holiness: ♦︎
   ‘I will triumph and divide Shechem
      and share out the valley of Succoth.
8  ‘Gilead is mine and Manasseh is mine; ♦︎
   Ephraim is my helmet and Judah my sceptre.
9  ‘Moab shall be my washpot,
      over Edom will I cast my sandal, ♦︎
   across Philistia will I shout in triumph.’
10  Who will lead me into the strong city? ♦︎
   Who will bring me into Edom?
11  Have you not cast us off, O God? ♦︎
   Will you no longer go forth with our troops?
12  O grant us your help against the enemy, ♦︎
   for earthly help is in vain.
13  Through God will we do great acts, ♦︎
   for it is he that shall tread down our enemies.

Psalm 109

1  Keep silent no longer, O God of my praise, ♦︎
   for the mouth of wickedness and treachery
      is opened against me.
2  They have spoken against me with a lying tongue; ♦︎
   they encompassed me with words of hatred
      and fought against me without a cause.
3  In return for my love, they set themselves against me, ♦︎
   even though I had prayed for them.
4  Thus have they repaid me with evil for good, ♦︎
   and hatred for my good will.
5  They say, ‘Appoint a wicked man over him, ♦︎
   and let an accuser stand at his right hand.
6  ‘When he is judged, let him be found guilty, ♦︎
   and let his prayer be counted as sin.
7  ‘Let his days be few ♦︎
   and let another take his office.
8  ‘Let his children be fatherless ♦︎
   and his wife become a widow.
9  ‘Let his children wander to beg their bread; ♦︎
   let them seek it in desolate places.
10  ‘Let the creditor seize all that he has; ♦︎
   let strangers plunder the fruit of his toil.
11  ‘Let there be no one to keep faith with him, ♦︎
   or have compassion on his fatherless children.
12  ‘Let his line soon come to an end ♦︎
   and his name be blotted out in the next generation.
13  ‘Let the wickedness of his fathers
      be remembered before the Lord, ♦︎
   and no sin of his mother be blotted out;
14  ‘Let their sin be always before the Lord, ♦︎
   that he may root out their name from the earth;
15  ‘Because he was not minded to keep faith, ♦︎
   but persecuted the poor and needy
      and sought to kill the brokenhearted.
16  ‘He loved cursing and it came to him; ♦︎
   he took no delight in blessing and it was far from him.
17  ‘He clothed himself with cursing as with a garment: ♦︎
   it seeped into his body like water
      and into his bones like oil;
18  ‘Let it be to him like the cloak
      which he wraps around him ♦︎
   and like the belt that he wears continually.’
19  Thus may the Lord repay my accusers ♦︎
   and those who speak evil against me.
20  But deal with me, O Lord my God, according to your name; ♦︎
   O deliver me, for sweet is your faithfulness.
21  For I am helpless and poor ♦︎
   and my heart is disquieted within me.
22  I fade like a shadow that lengthens; ♦︎
   I am shaken off like a locust.
23  My knees are weak through fasting ♦︎
   and my flesh is dried up and wasted.
24  I have become a reproach to them; ♦︎
   those who see me shake their heads in scorn.
25  Help me, O Lord my God; ♦︎
   save me for your loving mercy’s sake,
26  And they shall know that this is your hand, ♦︎
   that you, O Lord, have done it.
27  Though they curse, may you bless; ♦︎
   let those who rise up against me be confounded,
      but let your servant rejoice.
28  Let my accusers be clothed with disgrace ♦︎
   and wrap themselves in their shame as in a cloak.
29  I will give great thanks to the Lord with my mouth; ♦︎
   in the midst of the multitude will I praise him;
30  Because he has stood at the right hand of the needy, ♦︎
   to save them from those who would condemn them.

Death of Samuel

25Now Samuel died; and all Israel assembled and mourned for him. They buried him at his home in Ramah.

Then David got up and went down to the wilderness of Paran.

David and the Wife of Nabal

2 There was a man in Maon, whose property was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. ³Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was clever and beautiful, but the man was surly and mean; he was a Calebite. ⁴David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep. ⁵So David sent ten young men; and David said to the young men, ‘Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. ⁶Thus you shall salute him: “Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. ⁷I hear that you have shearers; now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing, all the time they were in Carmel. ⁸Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favour in your sight; for we have come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.” ’

9 When David’s young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David; and then they waited. ¹⁰But Nabal answered David’s servants, ‘Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants today who are breaking away from their masters. ¹¹Shall I take my bread and my water and the meat that I have butchered for my shearers, and give it to men who come from I do not know where?’ ¹²So David’s young men turned away, and came back and told him all this. ¹³David said to his men, ‘Every man strap on his sword!’ And every one of them strapped on his sword; David also strapped on his sword; and about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.

14 But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, ‘David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master; and he shouted insults at them. ¹⁵Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we never missed anything when we were in the fields, as long as we were with them; ¹⁶they were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. ¹⁷Now therefore know this and consider what you should do; for evil has been decided against our master and against all his house; he is so ill-natured that no one can speak to him.’

18 Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five measures of parched grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs. She loaded them on donkeys ¹⁹and said to her young men, ‘Go on ahead of me; I am coming after you.’ But she did not tell her husband Nabal. ²⁰As she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, David and his men came down towards her; and she met them. ²¹Now David had said, ‘Surely it was in vain that I protected all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; but he has returned me evil for good. ²²God do so to David^* and more also, if by morning I leave as much as one male of all who belong to him.’

A Lamp under a Bushel Basket

21 He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? ²²For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. ²³Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ ²⁴And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. ²⁵For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’

The Parable of the Growing Seed

26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

The Use of Parables

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; ³⁴he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.