Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

142 (Mashkil of Dovid; A tefillah when he was in the me’arah) I cried out unto Hashem with my voice; with my voice unto Hashem did I make my techinnah (supplication).

^2 (3) I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed before Him my tzoros.

^3 (4) When my ruach became faint within me, then Thou had da’as of my path. In the way wherein I walked have they laid a pach (snare, hidden trap) for me.

^4 (5) I looked on my right, and behold, there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me; no man cared for my nefesh.

^5 (6) I cried unto Thee, Hashem; I said, Thou art my refuge and my chelek (portion) in the Eretz HaChayyim.

^6 (7) Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low; save me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

^7 (8) Release my nefesh from prison, to praise Shemecha (Thy Name); the tzaddikim shall gather about me; for Thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

5 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a kinah (lamentation), O Bais Yisroel.

² The Betulat Yisroel is fallen; she shall no more rise; she is forsaken in her own land; there is none to raise her up.

³ For thus saith Adonoi Hashem: The city that went out by a thousand will be left a hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred will be left ten, for Bais Yisroel.

⁴ For thus saith Hashem unto Bais Yisroel: Seek ye Me, and live;

⁵ But seek not Beit-El, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer Sheva; for Gilgal shall surely go into golus, and Beit-El shall come to naught.

⁶ Seek Hashem, and live; lest He break out like eish in Bais Yosef, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Beit-El.

⁷ Ye who turn mishpat into wormwood, and cast tzedakah to the ground,

⁸ Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth tzalmavet into boker, and maketh the yom into lailah; that calleth for the waters of the yam, and poureth them out upon the face of ha’aretz; Hashem Shmo;

⁹ Who causeth shod (destruction) to flash upon the strong, and shod upon the fortified city.

²⁷ Now when the shivat yamim were about to be completed, unbelieving Yehudim from the Province of Asia [Ephesus], having seen Rav Sha’ul in the Beis Hamikdash, were stirring up all the multitude, and they laid their hands on him, [YIRMEYAH 26:8]

²⁸ Crying out, "Anashim, Bnei Yisroel, help us! This one is the ish who is giving shiurim to everyone everywhere keneged (against, in opposition to) HaAm [Yisroel] and the Torah of Moshe Rabbenu and this Makom HaKadosh, and in addition also he brought Yevanim into the Beis Hamikdash and has defiled Makom HaKadosh HaZeh [the Beis Hamikdash]."

²⁹ —For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Rav Sha’ul and they had jumped to the conclusion and made the unwarranted assumption that Rav Sha’ul had brought Trophimus past the Soreg [barrier of the holy precinct] in the Beis Hamikdash.

³⁰ —And the whole city was aroused and the people were rushing together, and they seized Rav Sha’ul, and they were dragging him outside the Beit Hamikdash; and immediately the delatot were shut.

³¹ And while they were trying to kill him, a report went up to a tribune of the Roman cohort that all Yerushalayim was in an oifshtand (uprising) uproar.

³² At once he took his chaiyalim and centurions and ran down to them, and when the rioters saw the Roman tribune and the chaiyalim, they stopped beating Rav Sha’ul.

³³ Then the Roman tribune came near and took hold of Rav Sha’ul and ordered him to be bound with two sharsherot (chains), and the tribune was inquiring who he might be and what he had done.

³⁴ Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another, and the tribune was not able to have da’as of anything definite because of the noise, so he ordered him to be brought into the barracks.

³⁵ And when Rav Sha’ul was on the steps, it came about that he was carried by the chaiyalim, because of the violence of the multitude,

³⁶ For the crowd kept following and shouting, "Away with him!"

³⁷ And just when he was about to be brought into the barracks, Rav Sha’ul says to the Roman tribune, "Is it permissible for me to say something to you?" And the tribune said, "Ellinisti Ginoskeis? (Do you know Greek?)

³⁸ "Then you are not the Egyptian who recently stirred up an intifada and led out four thousand assassins into the wilderness?"

³⁹ And Rav Sha’ul said, "I gufa (myself) am an ish Yehudi from Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city. And I ask you to allow me to speak to the people."