Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

God Is Forever—Man’s Short Life

90 Lord, You have been the place of comfort for all people of all time. ² Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, forever and ever, You are God.

³ You change man into dust again, and say, “Return, O children of men.” ⁴ For a thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday when it passes by, or like the hours of the night. ⁵ You carry men away as with a flood. They fall asleep. In the morning they are like the new grass that grows. ⁶ It grows well in the morning, but dries up and dies by evening.

⁷ For we are burned up by Your anger. By Your anger we are troubled and afraid. ⁸ You have set our wrong-doing before You, our secret sins in the light of Your face.

⁹ For all our days pass away in Your anger. We finish our years with a quiet cry. ¹⁰ The days of our life are seventy years, or eighty if we have the strength. Yet the best of them are only hard work and sorrow. For they are soon gone and we fly away. ¹¹ Who understands the power of Your anger? Your anger is as great as the fear that we should have for You.

¹² Teach us to understand how many days we have. Then we will have a heart of wisdom to give You.

¹⁰ ‘See, the day! See, it is coming! The time for your punishment has come. The power against you has started to grow. Pride has begun to grow. ¹¹ Angry action has grown into a power of sin. None of them will be left. None of their people, none of their riches, or anything of honor, will be left among them. ¹² The time has come. The day has come. Let not the one who buys have joy, or the one who sells have sorrow. For anger is against all their people. ¹³ For the one who sells will not get back what he has sold as long as both of them live. For the punishment of all their people will not be turned back. Because of their sins, not one of them will keep his life.

¹⁴ ‘They have sounded the horn and made everything ready, but no one is going to the battle. For My anger is against all their people. ¹⁵ The sword is outside, and disease and hunger are inside. He who is in the field will die by the sword. And he who is in the city will be destroyed by disease and hunger. ¹⁶ Whoever gets away alive will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys. Each of them will be crying in sorrow because of his sin. ¹⁷ All hands will hang without strength, and all knees will be as weak as water. ¹⁸ They will dress themselves in cloth made from hair. Much fear will cover them. Shame will be upon all faces, and the hair will be cut from all their heads. ¹⁹ They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will become an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to help them in the day of the Lord’s anger. They cannot stop their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For riches have been the cause of their falling into sin. ²⁰ They turned the beauty of gold into objects of pride, and made their hated objects of worship with it. So I will make it an unclean thing to them. ²¹ I will give it to the strangers and to the sinful people of the earth as a prize of war, and they will make it sinful. ²² I will turn My face from them, and they will make My secret place sinful. Robbers will go into it and make it sinful.

²³ ‘Make chains, for the land is guilty of blood and the city is full of angry actions. ²⁴ So I will bring the worst of the nations to take their houses for their own. I will put an end to the pride of the strong ones, and their holy places will become unclean. ²⁵ When suffering comes, they will look for peace, but there will be none. ²⁶ Trouble will come upon trouble, and one story will come after another. They will look for a special dream from a man of God, but the Law will be lost from the religious leader. And wisdom will be lost from the leaders. ²⁷ The king will be full of sorrow. The king’s son will be covered with fear. And the hands of the people of the land will shake in fear. I will punish them for their ways. I will give them the punishment they have earned. And they will know that I am the Lord.’”

A Person Filled with Bad or Good ^(A)

⁴³ “When a demon is gone out of a man, it goes through dry places to find rest. It finds none. ⁴⁴ Then it says, ‘I will go back into my house from which I came.’ When it goes back, it sees that it is empty. But it sees that the house has been cleaned and looks good. ⁴⁵ Then it goes out and comes back bringing with it seven demons more sinful than itself. They go in and live there. In the end that man is worse than at first. It will be like this with the sinful people of this day.”