Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
70 1-3 God! Please hurry to my rescue!
God, come quickly to my side!
Those who are out to get me—
let them fall all over themselves.
Those who relish my downfall—
send them down a blind alley.
Give them a taste of their own medicine,
those gossips off clucking their tongues.
4 Let those on the hunt for you
sing and celebrate.
Let all who love your saving way
say over and over, “God is mighty!”
5 But I’ve lost it. I’m wasted.
God—quickly, quickly!
Quick to my side, quick to my rescue!
God, don’t lose a minute.
The Lion Has Roared
3 Listen to this, Israel. God is calling you to account—and I mean all of you, everyone connected with the family that he delivered out of Egypt. Listen!
2 “Out of all the families on earth,
I picked you.
Therefore, because of your special calling,
I’m holding you responsible for all your sins.”
3-7 Do two people walk hand in hand
if they aren’t going to the same place?
Does a lion roar in the forest
if there’s no carcass to devour?
Does a young lion growl with pleasure
if he hasn’t caught his supper?
Does a bird fall to the ground
if it hasn’t been hit with a stone?
Does a trap spring shut
if nothing trips it?
When the alarm goes off in the city,
aren’t people alarmed?
And when disaster strikes the city,
doesn’t God stand behind it?
The fact is, God, the Master, does nothing
without first telling his prophets the whole story.
8 The lion has roared—
who isn’t frightened?
God has spoken—
what prophet can keep quiet?
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9-11 Announce to the forts of Assyria,
announce to the forts of Egypt—
Tell them, “Gather on the Samaritan mountains, take a good, hard look:
what a snake pit of brutality and terror!
They can’t—or won’t—do one thing right.” God said so.
“They stockpile violence and blight.
Therefore”—this is God’s Word—“an enemy will surround the country.
He’ll strip you of your power and plunder your forts.”
12 God’s Message:
“In the same way that a shepherd
trying to save a lamb from a lion
Manages to recover
just a pair of legs or the scrap of an ear,
So will little be saved of the Israelites
who live in Samaria—
A couple of old chairs at most,
the broken leg of a table.
13-14 The sixth Angel trumpeted. I heard a voice speaking to the sixth Angel from the horns of the Golden Altar before God: “Let the Four Angels loose, the Angels confined at the great River Euphrates.”
15-19 The Four Angels were untied and let loose, Four Angels all prepared for the exact year, month, day, and even hour when they were to kill a third of the human race. The number of the army of horsemen was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard the count and saw both horses and riders in my vision: fiery breastplates on the riders, lion heads on the horses breathing out fire and smoke and brimstone. With these three weapons—fire and smoke and brimstone—they killed a third of the human race. The horses killed with their mouths and tails; their serpentlike tails also had heads that wreaked havoc.
20-21 The remaining men and women who weren’t killed by these weapons went on their merry way—didn’t change their way of life, didn’t quit worshiping demons, didn’t quit centering their lives around lumps of gold and silver and brass, hunks of stone and wood that couldn’t see or hear or move. There wasn’t a sign of a change of heart. They plunged right on in their murderous, occult, promiscuous, and thieving ways.
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Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson