Book of Common Prayer

¹³ Listen to me! You say, `Today or tomorrow we will go to that town. We will stay there a year. We will buy and sell and get rich.' But you do not know what will happen to you tomorrow.

¹⁴ What is your life like? It is like a cloud. It is here for a little while and then it is gone.

¹⁵ You should say `If the Lord wants to do it, we will live and do this or that.'

¹⁶ But now you talk about the big things you will do. All that kind of talk is wrong!

¹⁷ But if a person knows what he should do and he does not do it, he has done something wrong.

5 Rich people, listen to me! Cry loud and long because of the troubles you will have.

² Your things are spoiled. Bugs have eaten your clothes.

³ Your gold and silver are all spoiled. The wrong in them will prove that you have done wrong. The wrong will burn you up like fire. You have kept all these things and now time is almost ended.

⁴ Listen! Men worked in your fields to cut your grain and you did not pay them! That money shouts against you. The men who cut your harvest have called out to the Lord who has power and he has heard them.

⁵ You have had a good time on earth. You have done anything you wanted to do. Your lives are full of everything. Like a fat animal, you will soon be killed.

⁶ You have punished good people. You have killed them. And they do not stop you.

²² They took Jesus to Golgotha. That means the place of a head bone.

²³ They wanted Jesus to drink wine mixed with something bitter. But Jesus would not drink it.

²⁴ Then they nailed him to a cross. They gambled to see how they should divide Jesus' clothes.

²⁵ It was nine o'clock in the morning when they nailed him on the cross.

²⁶ They put the complaint they had against him above Jesus' head. It was, `The King of the Jews.'

²⁷ They also nailed two bad men on crosses there. One was put on the right side of Jesus and one was put on the left side of Jesus.

²⁸ The holy writings say, `He was counted as one of the bad people.' It came true.

²⁹ The people who passed by said wrong things about him. They shook their heads and said, `Ha, ha! You are the man who said you could break down the temple and build it again in three days.

³⁰ Save yourself and come down from the cross.'

³¹ The chief priests and the scribes also made fun of him. `He saved other people, but he cannot save himself!

³² If he is the Christ, the king of the people of Israel, he should come down from the cross now. We want to see it and believe!' The bad men who were also nailed to crosses said the same things to him.