Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

73 Understanding for Asaph. O God, why hast thou cast us off unto the end: why is thy wrath enkindled against the sheep of thy pasture?

² Remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed from the beginning. The sceptre of thy inheritance which thou hast redeemed: mount Sion in which thou hast dwelt.

³ Lift up thy hands against their pride unto the end; see what things the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary.

⁴ And they that hate thee have made their boasts, in the midst of thy solemnity. They have set up their ensigns for signs,

⁵ And they knew not both in the going out and on the highest top. As with axes in a wood of trees,

⁶ They have cut down at once the gates thereof, with axe and hatchet they have brought it down.

⁷ They have set fire to thy sanctuary: they have defiled the dwelling place of thy name on the earth.

⁸ They said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together: Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land.

⁹ Our signs we have not seen, there is now no prophet: and he will know us no more.

¹⁰ How long, O God, shall the enemy reproach: is the adversary to provoke thy name for ever?

¹¹ Why dost thou turn away thy hand: and thy right hand out of the midst of thy bosom for ever?

¹² But God is our king before ages: he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth.

¹³ Thou by thy strength didst make the sea firm: thou didst crush the heads of the dragons in the waters.

¹⁴ Thou hast broken the heads of the dragon: thou hast given him to be meat for the people of the Ethiopians.

¹⁵ Thou hast broken up the fountains and the torrents: thou hast dried up the Ethan rivers.

¹⁶ Thine is the day, and thine is the night: thou hast made the morning light and the sun.

¹⁷ Thou hast made all the borders of the earth: the summer and the spring were formed by thee.

¹⁸ Remember this, the enemy hath reproached the Lord: and a foolish people hath provoked thy name.

¹⁹ Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee: and forget not to the end the souls of thy poor.

²⁰ Have regard to thy covenant: for they that are the obscure of the earth have been filled with dwellings of iniquity.

²¹ Let not the humble be turned away with confusion: the poor and needy shall praise thy name.

²² Arise, O God, judge thy own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man hath reproached thee all the day.

²³ Forget not the voices of thy enemies: the pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually.

3 And the word of the Lord came to Jonas the second time, saying:

² Arise, and go to Ninive the great city: and preach in it the preaching that I bid thee.

³ And Jonas arose, and went to Ninive, according to the word of the Lord: now Ninive was a great city of three days' journey.

⁴ And Jonas began to enter into the city one day's journey: and he cried, and said: Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed.

⁵ And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least.

⁶ And the word came to the king of Ninive; and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁷ And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen nor sheep, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water.

⁸ And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.

⁹ Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish?

¹⁰ And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.

⁸ But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹ The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.

¹⁰ But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.

¹¹ Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness?

¹² Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord, by which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat?

¹³ But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth.