Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

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

⁸ ¶ Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the Gentiles and planted it.

⁹ Thou didst prepare room before it and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the earth.

¹⁰ The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and its boughs were like the cedars of God.

¹¹ She sent out her boughs unto the sea and her branches unto the river.

¹² Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all those who pass by the way pluck her?

¹³ The boar out of the wood wastes it, and the wild beast of the field devours it.

¹⁴ Return, we beseech thee, O God of the hosts: look down from heaven and behold and visit this vine

¹⁵ and the vineyard which thy right hand has planted and the branch that thou didst make strong for thyself.

¹⁴ ¶ Is Israel a slave? Is he a homeborn slave? Why has he been given over as a prey?

¹⁵ The young lions roared upon him and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are deserted without inhabitant.

¹⁶ Even the sons of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head.

¹⁷ Could this not have come upon you peradventure because thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way?

¹⁸ And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt? to drink the waters of the Nile? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria? to drink the waters of the river Eufrates?

¹⁹ Thine own wickedness shall chastise thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know therefore and see how evil and bitter it is, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God and that my fear is lacking in thee, saith the Lord GOD of the hosts.

²⁰ ¶ For of old time I have broken thy yoke and burst thy bands; and thou didst say, I will not serve sin. With all this, upon every high hill and under every green tree thou dost wander, playing the harlot.

²¹ Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, a seed of Truth, all of her; how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?

²² For though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is sealed before me, saith the Lord GOD.

¹⁶ ¶ Let no one therefore judge you in food or in drink or in respect of a feast day or of the new moon or of the sabbath days,

¹⁷ which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of the Christ.

¹⁸ Let no one govern you according to their own will under pretext of humility and religion of angels, intruding into those things which they have not seen, vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind,

¹⁹ and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, fed and united by its joints and bonds, grows in the increase of God.

²⁰ For if ye are dead with the Christ to the elements of the world, why, as though living unto the world, do ye decree rites,

²¹ touch not; taste not; handle not?

²² Which all perish with the using, because they are the commandments and doctrines of men,

²³ which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship and humility and neglecting of the body, but they have absolutely no value against the appetites of the flesh.