Daily Lectionary

Job 8:1-22

¹ Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:
² “How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?
³ Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
⁴ If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.
⁵ If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy,
⁶ if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation.
⁷ And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.
⁸ “For inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out.
⁹ For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow.
¹⁰ Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding?
¹¹ “Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water?
¹² While yet in flower and not cut down, they wither before any other plant.
¹³ Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish.
¹⁴ His confidence is severed, and his trust is a spider’s web.
¹⁵ He leans against his house, but it does not stand; he lays hold of it, but it does not endure.
¹⁶ He is a lush plant before the sun, and his shoots spread over his garden.
¹⁷ His roots entwine the stone heap; he looks upon a house of stones.
¹⁸ If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have never seen you.’
¹⁹ Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the soil others will spring.
²⁰ “Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers.
²¹ He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting.
²² Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.” (ESV)

John 4:27-45

²⁷ Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
²⁸ So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,
²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
³⁰ They went out of the town and were coming to him.
³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
³⁵ Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
³⁶ Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
³⁹ Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”
⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word.
⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
⁴³ After the two days he departed for Galilee.
⁴⁴ (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.)
⁴⁵ So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast. (ESV)