Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

63 Unto the end, a psalm for David.

² Hear, O God, my prayer, when I make supplication to thee: deliver my soul from the fear of the enemy.

³ Thou hast protected me from the assembly of the malignant; from the multitude of the workers of iniquity.

⁴ For they have whetted their tongues like a sword; they have bent their bow a bitter thing,

⁵ To shoot in secret the undefiled.

⁶ They will shoot at him on a sudden, and will not fear: they are resolute in wickedness. They have talked of hiding snares; they have said: Who shall see them?

⁷ They have searched after iniquities: they have failed in their search. Man shall come to a deep heart:

⁸ And God shall be exalted. The arrows of children are their wounds:

⁹ And their tongues against them are made weak. All that saw them were troubled;

¹⁰ And every man was afraid. And they declared the works of God: and understood his doings.

¹¹ The just shall rejoice in the Lord, and shall hope in him: and all the upright in heart shall be praised.

1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Phatuel.

² Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land: did this ever happen in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

³ Tell ye of this to your children, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

⁴ That which the palmerworm hath left, the locust hath eaten: and that which the locust hath left, the bruchus hath eaten: and that which the bruchus hath left, the mildew hath destroyed.

⁵ Awake, ye that are drunk, and weep, and mourn all ye that take delight in drinking sweet wine: for it is cut off from your mouth.

⁶ For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number: his teeth are like the teeth of a lion: and his cheek teeth as of a lion's whelp.

⁷ He hath laid my vineyard waste, and hath pilled off the bark of my fig tree: he hath stripped it bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

⁸ Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

⁹ Sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of the Lord: the priests, the Lord's ministers, have mourned:

¹⁰ The country is destroyed, the ground hath mourned: for the corn is wasted, the wine is confounded, the oil hath languished.

¹¹ The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers have howled for the wheat, and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished.

¹² The vineyard is confounded, and the fig tree hath languished: the pomegranate tree, and the palm tree, and the apple tree, and all the trees of the field are withered: because joy is withdrawn from the children of men.

¹³ Gird yourselves, and lament, O ye priests, howl, ye ministers of the altars: go in, lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: because sacrifice and libation is cut off from the house of your God.

¹⁴ Sanctify ye a fast, call an assembly; gather together the ancients, all the inhabitants of the land into the house of your God: and cry ye to the Lord:

⁶ But now when Timothy came to us from you, and related to us your faith and charity, and that you have a good remembrance of us always, desiring to see us as we also to see you;

⁷ Therefore we were comforted, brethren, in you, in all our necessity and tribulation, by your faith,

⁸ Because now we live, if you stand in the Lord.

⁹ For what thanks can we return to God for you, in all the joy wherewith we rejoice for you before our God,

¹⁰ Night and day more abundantly praying that we may see your face, and may accomplish those things that are wanting to your faith?

¹¹ Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.

¹² And may the Lord multiply you, and make you abound in charity towards one another, and towards all men: as we do also towards you,

¹³ To confirm your hearts without blame, in holiness, before God and our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints. Amen.