Friday in Season after Pentecost

1Verse 1. Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah. He came to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my iniquity? How have I sinned against your father, that he wants to take my life?” 2Verse 2. “Far from it!” Jonathan replied. “You will not die. Indeed, my father does nothing, great or small, without telling me. So why would he hide this matter from me? This cannot be true!” 3Verse 3. But David again vowed, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, ‘Jonathan must not know of this, or he will be grieved.’ As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.” 4Verse 4. Then Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you desire, I will do for you.” 5Verse 5. So David told him, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon, and I am supposed to dine with the king. Instead, let me go and hide in the field until the third evening from now. 6Verse 6. If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David urgently requested my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because there is an annual sacrifice for his whole clan.’ 7Verse 7. If he says, ‘Good,’ then your servant is safe, but if he is enraged, you will know he has evil intentions. 8Verse 8. Therefore show kindness to your servant, for you have brought me into a covenant with you before the LORD. If there is iniquity in me, then kill me yourself; why should you bring me to your father?” 9Verse 9. “Never!” Jonathan replied. “If I ever found out that my father had evil intentions against you, would I not tell you?” 10Verse 10. Then David asked Jonathan, “Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?” 11Verse 11. “Come,” he replied, “let us go out to the field.” So the two of them went out into the field, 12Verse 12. and Jonathan said, “By the LORD, the God of Israel, I will sound out my father by this time tomorrow or the next day. If he is favorable toward you, will I not send for you and tell you? 13Verse 13. But if my father intends to bring evil on you, then may the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if I do not tell you and send you on your way in safety. May the LORD be with you, just as He has been with my father. 14Verse 14. And as long as I live, treat me with the LORD’s loving devotion, that I may not die, 15Verse 15. and do not ever cut off your loving devotion from my household— not even when the LORD cuts off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.” 16Verse 16. So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD hold David’s enemies accountable.” 17Verse 17. And Jonathan had David reaffirm his vow out of love for him, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself. 18Verse 18. Then Jonathan said to David, “Tomorrow is the New Moon, and you will be missed, because your seat will be empty. 19Verse 19. When you have stayed three days, hurry down to the place you hid on the day this trouble began, and remain beside the stone Ezel. 20Verse 20. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it, as if I were aiming at a target. 21Verse 21. Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows!’ Now, if I expressly say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them,’ then come, because as surely as the LORD lives, it is safe for you, and there is no danger. 22Verse 22. But if I say to the young man, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you,’ then you must go, for the LORD has sent you away. 23Verse 23. And as for the matter you and I have discussed, the LORD is a witness between you and me forever.” 24Verse 24. So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon had come, the king sat down to eat. 25Verse 25. He sat in his usual place by the wall, opposite Jonathan and beside Abner, but David’s place was empty.

1Verse 1. How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger. 2Verse 2. Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes. 3Verse 3. In fierce anger He has cut off every horn of Israel and withdrawn His right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it. 4Verse 4. He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion. 5Verse 5. The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah. 6Verse 6. He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest. 7Verse 7. The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast. 8Verse 8. The LORD determined to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not withdraw His hand from destroying. He made the ramparts and walls lament; together they waste away. 9Verse 9. Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the LORD. 10Verse 10. The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. 11Verse 11. My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. 12Verse 12. They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.