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Psalm 39

1  I said, ‘I will keep watch over my ways, ♦︎
   so that I offend not with my tongue.
2  ‘I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, ♦︎
   while the wicked are in my sight.’
3  So I held my tongue and said nothing; ♦︎
   I kept silent but to no avail.
4  My distress increased, my heart grew hot within me; ♦︎
   while I mused, the fire was kindled
      and I spoke out with my tongue:
5  ‘Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days, ♦︎
   that I may know how short my time is.
6  ‘You have made my days but a handsbreadth,
      and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight; ♦︎
   truly, even those who stand upright are but a breath.
7  ‘We walk about like a shadow
      and in vain we are in turmoil; ♦︎
   we heap up riches and cannot tell who will gather them.
8  ‘And now, what is my hope? ♦︎
   Truly my hope is even in you.
9  ‘Deliver me from all my transgressions ♦︎
   and do not make me the taunt of the fool.’
10  I fell silent and did not open my mouth, ♦︎
   for surely it was your doing.
11  Take away your plague from me; ♦︎
   I am consumed by the blows of your hand.
12  With rebukes for sin you punish us;
      like a moth you consume our beauty; ♦︎
   truly, everyone is but a breath.
13  Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; ♦︎
   hold not your peace at my tears.
14  For I am but a stranger with you, ♦︎
   a wayfarer, as all my forebears were.
15  Turn your gaze from me, that I may be glad again, ♦︎
   before I go my way and am no more.

18 You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem^* on your forehead. ¹⁹Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ²⁰Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

22 If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, ²³then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves. ²⁴Every place on which you set foot shall be yours; your territory shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the Western Sea. ²⁵No one will be able to stand against you; the Lord your God will put the fear and dread of you on all the land on which you set foot, as he promised you.

26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; ²⁸and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

4Now when Jesus^* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— ² although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— ³he left Judea and started back to Galilee. ⁴But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^{* 10}Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ ¹¹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ ¹³Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ ¹⁵The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ ¹⁷The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ ¹⁹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you^* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ ²¹Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ ²⁵The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ ²⁶Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,^* the one who is speaking to you.’