Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

84 ⁽⁰⁾ For the leader. On the gittit. A psalm of the sons of Korach:

^2 (1) How deeply loved are your dwelling-places,
Adonai-Tzva’ot!
^3 (2) My soul yearns, yes, faints with longing
for the courtyards of Adonai;
my heart and body cry for joy
to the living God.

^4 (3) As the sparrow finds herself a home
and the swallow her nest, where she lays her young,
[so my resting-place is] by your altars,
Adonai-Tzva’ot, my king and my God.

^5 (4) How happy are those who live in your house;
they never cease to praise you! (Selah)
^6 (5) How happy the man whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are [pilgrim] highways.

^7 (6) Passing through the [dry] Baka Valley,
they make it a place of springs,
and the early rain clothes it with blessings.

9 ⁽²⁾ I wish I were out in the desert,
in some travelers’ lodge —
then I could get away from my people
and distance myself from them!

“Indeed they are all adulterers,
a band of traitors is what they are.
^2 (3) They bend their tongues, their ‘bow’ of falsehood,
and hold sway in the land, but not for truth.
For they go from evil to evil,
and me they do not know,”

says Adonai.

^3 (4) Everyone, be on guard against your neighbor,
don’t trust even a brother;
for every brother is out to trick you,
and every neighbor goes around gossiping.
^4 (5) Everyone deceives his neighbor,
no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to lie,
they wear themselves out with sinning.

^5 (6) “You inhabit a world of deceit;
deceitfully they refuse to know me,”

says Adonai.

^6 (7) “Therefore,” says Adonai-Tzva’ot,
“I will refine them and test them.
What else can I do with the daughter of my people?
^7 (8) Their tongues are sharpened arrows;
with their mouths they speak deceit —
they say nice words to their neighbors,
while inwardly plotting against them.
^8 (9) Should I not punish them for these things?” asks Adonai.
“Should I not take vengeance on such a nation?”

^9 (10) I weep and wail for the mountains
and lament over the desert pastures,
because they have been burned up;
no one passes through;
they no longer hear the sound of cattle;
the birds and wild animals have fled, are gone.

^10 (11) “I will make Yerushalayim a heap of ruins,
turn it into a lair for jackals,
and make the cities of Y’hudah desolate,
with no one living there.”

^11 (12) Who is wise enough to understand this?
To whom has the mouth of Adonai spoken,
so that he can proclaim it?
Why has the land perished
and been laid waste like a desert,
so that no one passes through?

^12 (13) Adonai answers:

“Because they abandoned my Torah,
which I set before them,
and neither listened to what I said
nor lived accordingly,
^13 (14) but have lived by their own hearts’ stubbornness
and by the ba‘alim, as their ancestors taught them —
^14 (15) therefore,” says Adonai-Tzva’ot,
the God of Isra’el:
“I will feed this people bitter wormwood
and give them poisonous water to drink.
^15 (16) I will scatter them among nations
that neither they nor their ancestors have known.
I will send the sword after them
until I have wiped them out.”

^16 (17) Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot:

“Mark this, then summon the mourning women,
so that they will come;
send for those who are best [at mourning],
so that they will come: