The People’s Disobedience

¹⁶ As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. ¹⁷ Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink-offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. ¹⁹ Is it I whom they provoke? says the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own hurt? ²⁰ Therefore thus says the Lord God: My anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.

²¹ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt-offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. ²² For on the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices. ²³ But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’ ²⁴ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backwards rather than forwards. ²⁵ From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; ²⁶ yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.

Psalm 123

Supplication for Mercy

A Song of Ascents.

⁷ Look at what is before your eyes. If you are confident that you belong to Christ, remind yourself of this, that just as you belong to Christ, so also do we. ⁸ Now, even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down, I will not be ashamed of it. ⁹ I do not want to seem as though I am trying to frighten you with my letters. ¹⁰ For they say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.’ ¹¹ Let such people understand that what we say by letter when absent, we will also do when present.