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Psalm 88

1  O Lord, God of my salvation, ♦︎
   I have cried day and night before you.
2  Let my prayer come into your presence; ♦︎
   incline your ear to my cry.
3  For my soul is full of troubles; ♦︎
   my life draws near to the land of death.
4  I am counted as one gone down to the Pit; ♦︎
   I am like one that has no strength,
5  Lost among the dead, ♦︎
   like the slain who lie in the grave,
6  Whom you remember no more, ♦︎
   for they are cut off from your hand.
7  You have laid me in the lowest pit, ♦︎
   in a place of darkness in the abyss.
8  Your anger lies heavy upon me, ♦︎
   and you have afflicted me with all your waves.
9  You have put my friends far from me ♦︎
   and made me to be abhorred by them.
10  I am so fast in prison that I cannot get free; ♦︎
   my eyes fail from all my trouble.
11  Lord, I have called daily upon you; ♦︎
   I have stretched out my hands to you.
12  Do you work wonders for the dead? ♦︎
   Will the shades stand up and praise you?
13  Shall your loving-kindness be declared in the grave, ♦︎
   your faithfulness in the land of destruction?
14  Shall your wonders be known in the dark ♦︎
   or your righteous deeds in the land where all is forgotten?
15  But as for me, O Lord, I will cry to you; ♦︎
   early in the morning my prayer shall come before you.
16  Lord, why have you rejected my soul? ♦︎
   Why have you hidden your face from me?
17  I have been wretched and at the point of death from my youth; ♦︎
   I suffer your terrors and am no more seen.
18  Your wrath sweeps over me; ♦︎
   your horrors are come to destroy me;
19  All day long they come about me like water; ♦︎
   they close me in on every side.
20  Lover and friend have you put far from me ♦︎
   and hid my companions out of my sight.

19 When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. ²⁰Everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. ²¹Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²²Whoever touches anything upon which she sits shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening; ²³whether it is the bed or anything upon which she sits, when he touches it he shall be unclean until the evening. ²⁴If any man lies with her, and her impurity falls on him, he shall be unclean for seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean.

25 If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, for all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. ²⁶Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. ²⁷Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²⁸If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. ²⁹On the eighth day she shall take two turtle-doves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting. ³⁰The priest shall offer one for a sin-offering and the other for a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before the Lord for her unclean discharge.

31 Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.

The Collection for Christians at Jerusalem

9Now it is not necessary for me to write to you about the ministry to the saints, ²for I know your eagerness, which is the subject of my boasting about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year; and your zeal has stirred up most of them. ³But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you may not prove to have been empty in this case, so that you may be ready, as I said you would be; ⁴otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated—to say nothing of you—in this undertaking.^{* 5}So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion.