Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Turn us again, O God of 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 heathen, and planted it.

⁹ Thou preparedst room for it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.

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

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 they that pass by the way do pluck her?

¹³ The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.

¹⁴ Return, we beseech Thee, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vine,

¹⁵ and the vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that Thou madest strong for Thyself.

¹⁴ “Is Israel a servant? Is he a homeborn slave? Why is he despoiled?

¹⁵ The young lions roared at him and yelled, and they made his land waste; his cities are burned without inhabitant.

¹⁶ Also the children of Noph and Tahpanhes have broken the crown of thy head.

¹⁷ Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that 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 Sihor? Or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?

¹⁹ Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that the fear of Me is not in thee,” saith the Lord God of hosts.

²⁰ “For of olden time I have broken thy yoke and burst thy bonds; and thou saidst, ‘I will not transgress,’ when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.

²¹ Yet I had planted thee, a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me?

²² For though thou wash thee with soda and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before Me,” saith the Lord God.

¹⁶ Let no man therefore judge you in meat or drink, or in respect to a holy day or the new moon or the Sabbath days,

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

¹⁸ Let no man beguile you of your reward by feigned humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, being vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,

¹⁹ and not holding to the Head, from whom all the body, having nourishment ministered and knit together by joints and bands, increaseth with the increase from God.

²⁰ Therefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to its ordinances

²¹ (“Touch not, taste not, handle not,”

²² which all are to perish with the using), according to the commandments and doctrines of men?

²³ These things have indeed a show of wisdom in willworship and humility and neglecting of the body, but are not in any honor against the satisfying of the flesh.