Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
33-34 Just tell me what to do and I will do it, Lord. As long as I live I’ll wholeheartedly obey. 35 Make me walk along the right paths, for I know how delightful they really are.
36 Help me to prefer obedience to making money! 37 Turn me away from wanting any other plan than yours.[a] Revive my heart toward you. 38 Reassure me that your promises are for me, for I trust and revere you.
39 How I dread being mocked for obeying, for your laws are right and good. 40-42 I long to obey them! Therefore in fairness renew my life, for this was your promise—yes, Lord, to save me! Now spare me by your kindness and your love. Then I will have an answer for those who taunt me, for I trust your promises.
33 Once again a message came to me from the Lord. He said:
2 “Son of dust, tell your people: ‘When I bring an army against a country, and the people of that land choose a watchman, 3 and when he sees the army coming and blows the alarm to warn them, 4 then anyone who hears the alarm but refuses to heed it—well, if he dies, the fault is his own. 5 For he heard the warning and wouldn’t listen; the fault is his. If he had heeded the warning, he would have saved his life. 6 But if the watchman sees the enemy coming and doesn’t sound the alarm and warn the people, he is responsible for their deaths. They will die in their sins, but I will charge the watchman with their deaths.’
29-30 “Yes, woe to you, Pharisees, and you religious leaders—hypocrites! For you build monuments to the prophets killed by your fathers and lay flowers on the graves of the godly men they destroyed, and say, ‘We certainly would never have acted as our fathers did.’
31 “In saying that, you are accusing yourselves of being the sons of wicked men. 32 And you are following in their steps, filling up the full measure of their evil. 33 Snakes! Sons of vipers! How shall you escape the judgment of hell?
34 “I will send you prophets, and wise men, and inspired writers, and you will kill some by crucifixion, and rip open the backs of others with whips in your synagogues, and hound them from city to city, 35 so that you will become guilty of all the blood of murdered godly men from righteous Abel to Zechariah (son of Barachiah), slain by you in the Temple between the altar and the sanctuary. 36 Yes, all the accumulated judgment of the centuries shall break upon the heads of this very generation.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.