Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Prayer for Help against Persecutors.

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance.

All the Families Are Guilty

3 Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt:

⁹ Proclaim on the fortresses in Ashdod (Philistia) and on the citadels in the land of Egypt, and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria, and see the great confusion within her and the oppressions and abuse of authority in her midst. ¹⁰ For they do not know how to do right,” says the Lord, “these who store up violence and devastation [like treasures] in their strongholds.”

¹¹ Therefore, thus says the Lord God,

The Sixth Trumpet—Army from the East

¹³ Then the sixth angel sounded [his trumpet], and I heard a solitary voice from the four horns of the golden altar which stands before God, ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” ¹⁵ So the four angels, who had been prepared for the [appointed] hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. ¹⁶ The number of the troops of cavalry was twice ten thousand times ten thousand (two hundred million); I heard the number of them. ¹⁷ And this is how I saw the horses and their riders in my vision: the riders had breastplates [the color] of fire and of hyacinth (sapphire blue) and of brimstone (yellow); and the heads of the horses looked like the heads of lions; and from out of their mouths came fire and smoke and brimstone (burning sulfur). ¹⁸ A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone that came from the mouths of the horses. ¹⁹ For the power of the horses [to do harm] is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads, and it is with them that they do harm.

²⁰ The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, ^[a]did not repent even then of the works of their hands, so as to cease worshiping and paying homage to the demons and the idols of gold and of silver and of bronze and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk;^{(A) 21} and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries (drugs, intoxications) nor of their [sexual] immorality nor of their thefts.