Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

78 A psalm for Asaph. O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit.

² They have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat for the fowls of the air: the flesh of thy saints for the beasts of the earth.

³ They have poured out their blood as water, round about Jerusalem and there was none to bury them.

⁴ We are become a reproach to our neighbours: a scorn and derision to them that are round about us.

¹³ So it came to pass in the evening, that quails coming up, covered the camp: and in the morning, a dew lay round about the camp.

¹⁴ And when it had covered the face of the earth, it appeared in the wilderness small, and as it were beaten with a pestle, like unto the hoar frost on the ground.

¹⁵ And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another: Manhu! which signifieth: What is this! for they knew not what it was. And Moses said to them: This is the bread, which the Lord hath given you to eat.

¹⁶ This is the word, that the Lord hath commanded: Let every one gather of it as much as is enough to eat: a gomor for every man, according to the number of your souls that dwell in a tent, so shall you take of it.

¹⁷ And the children of Israel did so: and they gathered, one more, another less.

¹⁸ And they measured by the measure of a gomor: neither had he more that had gathered more: nor did he find less that had provided less: but every one had gathered, according to what they were able to eat.

¹⁹ And Moses said to them: Let no man leave thereof till the morning.

²⁰ And they hearkened not to him, but some of them left until the morning, and it began to be full of worms, and it putrified, and Moses was angry with them.

²¹ Now every one of them gathered in the morning, as much as might suffice to eat: and after the sun grew hot, it melted.

²² But on the sixth day they gathered twice as much, that is, two gomors every man: and all the rulers of the multitude came, and told Moses.

²³ And he said to them: This is what the Lord hath spoken: To morrow is the rest of the sabbath sanctified to the Lord. Whatsoever work is to be done, do it: and the meats that are to be dressed, dress them: and whatsoever shall remain, lay it up until the morning.

²⁴ And they did so as Moses had commanded, and it did not putrify, neither was there worm found in it.

²⁵ And Moses said: Eat it to day, because it is the sabbath of the Lord: to day it shall not be found in the field.

²⁶ Gather it six days: but on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord, therefore it shall not be found.

¹⁹ Thou wilt say therefore to me: Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?

²⁰ O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus?

²¹ Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

²² What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction,

²³ That he might shew the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath prepared unto glory?

²⁴ Even us, whom also he hath called, nor only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles.

²⁵ As in Osee he saith: I will call that which was not my people, my people; and her that was not beloved, beloved; and her that had not obtained mercy, one that hath obtained mercy.

²⁶ And it shall be, in the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people; there they shall be called the sons of the living God.

²⁷ And Isaias crieth out concerning Israel: If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.

²⁸ For he shall finish his word, and cut it short in justice; because a short word shall the Lord make upon the earth.

²⁹ And as Isaias foretold: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom, and we had been like unto Gomorrha.