Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

An instruction. Of Asaph.

78 Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter riddles from of old,

³ Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us:

⁴ We will not hide [them] from their sons, shewing forth to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and his strength, and his marvellous works which he hath done.

⁵ For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;

⁶ That the generation to come might know [them], the children that should be born; that they might rise up and tell [them] to their children,

⁷ And that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but observe his commandments;

⁸ And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that prepared not their heart, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.

¹⁷ Yet they still went on sinning against him, provoking the Most High in the desert;

¹⁸ And they tempted God in their heart, by asking meat for their lust;

¹⁹ And they spoke against God: they said, Is God able to prepare a table in the wilderness?

²⁰ Behold, he smote the rock, and waters gushed out, and streams overflowed; is he able to give bread also, or provide flesh for his people?

²¹ Therefore Jehovah heard, and was wroth; and fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also went up against Israel:

²² Because they believed not in God, and confided not in his salvation;

²³ Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and had opened the doors of the heavens,

²⁴ And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them the corn of the heavens.

²⁵ Man did eat the bread of the mighty; he sent them provision to the full.

²⁶ He caused the east wind to rise in the heavens, and by his strength he brought the south wind;

²⁷ And he rained flesh upon them as dust, and feathered fowl as the sand of the seas,

²⁸ And he let it fall in the midst of their camp, round about their habitations:

²⁹ And they did eat, and were well filled; for that they lusted after, he brought to them.

8 Every commandment which I command thee this day shall ye take heed to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and enter in and possess the land which Jehovah swore unto your fathers.

² And thou shalt remember all the way which Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or not.

³ And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with the manna, which thou hadst not known, and which thy fathers knew not; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by everything that goeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live.

⁴ Thy clothing grew not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.

⁵ And know in thy heart that, as a man chasteneth his son, so Jehovah thy God chasteneth thee;

⁶ and thou shalt keep the commandments of Jehovah thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.

⁷ For Jehovah thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of water-brooks, of springs, and of deep waters, that gush forth in the valleys and hills;

⁸ a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey;

⁹ a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, where thou shalt lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose mountains thou wilt dig copper.

¹⁰ And thou shalt eat and be filled, and shalt bless Jehovah thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

⁸ First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is proclaimed in the whole world.

⁹ For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the glad tidings of his Son, how unceasingly I make mention of you,

¹⁰ always beseeching at my prayers, if any way now at least I may be prospered by the will of God to come to you.

¹¹ For I greatly desire to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to establish you;

¹² that is, to have mutual comfort among you, each by the faith [which is] in the other, both yours and mine.

¹³ But I do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, that I often proposed to come to you, (and have been hindered until the present time,) that I might have some fruit among you too, even as among the other nations also.

¹⁴ I am a debtor both to Greeks and barbarians, both to wise and unintelligent:

¹⁵ so, as far as depends on me, am I ready to announce the glad tidings to you also who [are] in Rome.