Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

90 LORD, You have been our habitation from generation to generation.

² Before the mountains were made (and You had formed the Earth and the world), even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

³ You turn man to contrition. Again, You say, “Return, you sons of Adam.”

⁴ For a thousand years in Your sight are as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

⁵ You have overflowed them. They are asleep. In the morning, they grow like the grass.

⁶ In the morning it flourishes and grows. In the evening, it is cut down and withers.

⁷ For we are consumed by Your anger; and by Your wrath are we troubled.

⁸ You have set our iniquities before You, and our secret sins in the light of Your countenance.

⁹ For all our days have passed away in Your anger. We have spent our years as a thought.

¹⁰ The time of our life is threescore years and ten (and if they be of strength, fourscore years). Yet, their strength is but labor and sorrow; for it is cut off quickly and we flee away.

¹¹ Who knows the power of Your wrath? For according to Your fear is Your anger.

¹² Teach us to number our days, so that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

¹⁰ ‘Behold the day. Behold, it has come. Doom has gone forth. The rod flourishes. Pride has budded.

¹¹ ‘Cruelty has risen up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor their riches, nor any of them, nor shall there be lamentation for them.

¹² ‘The time has come. The day draws near. Do not let the buyer rejoice or let him who sells mourn. For the wrath is upon their whole multitude.

¹³ ‘For he who sells shall not return to that which is sold, although they were still alive. For the vision was for their whole multitude, and they did not return. Nor does anyone encourage himself in the iniquity of his life.

¹⁴ ‘They have blown the trumpet and prepared everyone. But no one goes to the battle. For My wrath is upon their whole multitude.

¹⁵ ‘The sword is outside, and the pestilence and the famine within. He who is in the field shall die with the sword. And he who is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.

¹⁶ ‘But those who flee away from them shall escape, and shall be in the mountains, like the doves of the valleys. All of them shall mourn, every one, for his iniquity.

¹⁷ ‘All hands shall be weak, and all knees shall fall away as water.

¹⁸ ‘They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth. And fear shall cover them, and shame upon all faces, and baldness upon their heads.

¹⁹ ‘They shall fling their silver into the streets, and their gold shall be far away. Their silver and their gold cannot deliver them on the day of the wrath of the LORD. They shall neither satisfy their souls nor fill their stomachs. For this ruin is for their iniquity.

²⁰ ‘He had also set the beauty of His ornaments in majesty. But they made images of their abominations and of their idols in them. Therefore, I have set it far away from them.

²¹ ‘And I will give it into the hands of the strangers, to be plundered, and to the wicked of the Earth, to be robbed. And they shall pollute it.

²² ‘I will also turn My Face from them, and they shall pollute My secret place. For the destroyers shall enter it and defile it.

²³ ‘Make a chain, for the land is full of the judgment of blood. And the city is full of cruelty.

²⁴ ‘Therefore, I will bring the most wicked of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses. I will also make the pomp of the mighty cease. And their holy places shall be defiled.

²⁵ ‘When destruction comes, they shall seek peace, and shall not have it.

²⁶ ‘Calamity shall come upon calamity, and rumor shall be upon rumor. Then they shall seek a vision from the Prophet. But the Law shall perish from the Priest, and counsel from the Ancient.

²⁷ ‘The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people in the land shall be troubled. I will do to them according to their ways. And I will judge them according to their judgments. And they shall know that I am the LORD.’”

⁴³ “Now when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it walks throughout dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.

⁴⁴ “Then it says, ‘I will return to my house, from where I came.’ And when he has come, he finds it empty, swept and garnished.

⁴⁵ “Then it goes, and takes with it seven other spirits, worse than itself. And they enter in, and dwell there. And the end of that man is worse than the beginning. Even so shall it be with this wicked generation.”