Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
102 A prayer when overwhelmed with trouble.
Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!
2 Don’t turn away from me in this time of my distress. Bend down your ear and give me speedy answers, 3-4 for my days disappear like smoke. My health is broken, and my heart is sick; it is trampled like grass and is withered. My food is tasteless, and I have lost my appetite. 5 I am reduced to skin and bones because of all my groaning and despair. 6 I am like a vulture in a far-off wilderness or like an owl alone in the desert. 7 I lie awake, lonely as a solitary sparrow on the roof.
8 My enemies taunt me day after day and curse at me. 9-10 I eat ashes instead of bread. My tears run down into my drink because of your anger against me, because of your wrath. For you have rejected me and thrown me out. 11 My life is passing swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering like grass, 12 while you, Lord, are a famous King forever. Your fame will endure to every generation.
13 I know that you will come and have mercy on Jerusalem—and now is the time to pity her—the time you promised help. 14 For your people love every stone in her walls and feel sympathy for every grain of dust in her streets. 15 Now let the nations and their rulers tremble before the Lord, before his glory. 16 For Jehovah will rebuild Jerusalem! He will appear in his glory!
17 He will listen to the prayers of the destitute, for he is never too busy to heed their requests.
17-18 So at last Pharaoh let the people go.
God did not lead them through the land of the Philistines, although that was the most direct route from Egypt to the Promised Land. The reason was that God felt the people might become discouraged by having to fight their way through, even though they had left Egypt armed; he thought they might return to Egypt. Instead, God led them along a route through the Red Sea wilderness.
19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with them, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel vow before God that they would take his bones with them when God led them out of Egypt—as he was sure God would.
20 Leaving Succoth, they camped in Etham at the edge of the wilderness. 21 The Lord guided them by a pillar of cloud during the daytime and by a pillar of fire at night. So they could travel either by day or night. 22 The cloud and fire were never out of sight.
17-18 “As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham to free his descendants from slavery, the Jewish people greatly multiplied in Egypt; but then a king was crowned who had no respect for Joseph’s memory. 19 This king plotted against our race, forcing parents to abandon their children in the fields.
20 “About that time Moses was born—a child of divine beauty. His parents hid him at home for three months, 21 and when at last they could no longer keep him hidden and had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her own son, 22 and taught him all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he became a mighty prince and orator.
23 “One day as he was nearing his fortieth birthday, it came into his mind to visit his brothers, the people of Israel. 24 During this visit he saw an Egyptian mistreating a man of Israel. So Moses killed the Egyptian. 25 Moses supposed his brothers would realize that God had sent him to help them, but they didn’t.
26 “The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are brothers and shouldn’t be fighting like this! It is wrong!’
27 “But the man in the wrong told Moses to mind his own business. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked. 28 ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’
29 “At this, Moses fled the country and lived in the land of Midian, where his two sons were born.
30 “Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an Angel appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush. 31 Moses saw it and wondered what it was, and as he ran to see, the voice of the Lord called out to him, 32 ‘I am the God of your ancestors—of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and dared not look.
33 “And the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. 34 I have seen the anguish of my people in Egypt and have heard their cries. I have come down to deliver them. Come, I will send you to Egypt.’ 35 And so God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected by demanding, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Moses was sent to be their ruler and savior. 36 And by means of many remarkable miracles he led them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and back and forth through the wilderness for forty years.
37 “Moses himself told the people of Israel, ‘God will raise up a Prophet much like me[a] from among your brothers.’ 38 How true this proved to be, for in the wilderness, Moses was the go-between—the mediator between the people of Israel and the Angel who gave them the Law of God—the Living Word—on Mount Sinai.
39 “But our fathers rejected Moses and wanted to return to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make idols for us, so that we will have gods to lead us back; for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.