Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Restore us, O God of hosts; and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.

⁸ Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt; thou didst cast out the nations, and plant it:

⁹ Thou preparedst space before it, and it took deep root, and filled the land;

¹⁰ The mountains were covered with its shadow, and the branches thereof were [like] cedars of God;

¹¹ It sent out its boughs unto the sea, and its shoots unto the river.

¹² Why hast thou broken down its fences, so that all who pass by the way do pluck it?

¹³ The boar out of the forest doth waste it, and the beast of the field doth feed off it.

¹⁴ O God of hosts, return, we beseech thee; look down from the heavens, and behold, and visit this vine;

¹⁵ Even the stock which thy right hand hath planted, and the young plant thou madest strong for thyself.

¹⁴ Is Israel a bondman? Is he a home-born [slave]? Why is he become a spoil?

¹⁵ The young lions roared against him, they gave forth their voice, and they made his land desolate: his cities are burned, without inhabitant.

¹⁶ Even the children of Noph and Tahapanes have fed on the crown of thy head.

¹⁷ Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken Jehovah thy God, at the time he was leading thee in the way?

¹⁸ And now, what hast thou to do with the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Shihor? And what hast thou to do with the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the River?

¹⁹ Thine own wickedness chastiseth thee, and thy backslidings reprove thee: know then and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken Jehovah thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts.

²⁰ For of old thou hast broken thy yoke, [and] burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not serve. For upon every high hill, and under every green tree, thou bowest down, playing the harlot.

²¹ And I,—I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed; how then art thou turned into the degenerate shoots of a strange vine unto me?

²² For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much potash, thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord Jehovah.

¹⁶ Let none therefore judge you in meat or in drink, or in matter of feast, or new moon, or sabbaths,

¹⁷ which are a shadow of things to come; but the body [is] of Christ.

¹⁸ Let no one fraudulently deprive you of your prize, doing his own will in humility and worship of angels, entering into things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by the mind of his flesh,

¹⁹ and not holding fast the head, from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God.

²⁰ If ye have died with Christ from the elements of the world, why as [if] alive in [the] world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?

²¹ Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,

²² (things which are all for destruction in the using [of them]:) according to the injunctions and teachings of men,

²³ (which have indeed an appearance of wisdom in voluntary worship, and humility, and harsh treatment of the body, not in a certain honour,) to [the] satisfaction of the flesh.