Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
14 (12) I will ravage her vines and fig trees,
of which she says, ‘These are my wages
that my lovers have given me.’
But I will turn them into a forest,
and wild animals will eat them.
15 (13) I will punish her for offering incense
on the feast days of the ba‘alim,
when she decked herself with her earrings and jewels,
pursuing her lovers and forgetting me,” says Adonai.
16 (14) “But now I am going to woo her —
I will bring her out to the desert
and I will speak to her heart.
17 (15) I will give her her vineyards from there
and the Akhor Valley as a gateway to hope.
She will respond there as she did when young,
as she did when she came up from Egypt.
18 (16) “On that day,” says Adonai
“you will call me Ishi [My Husband];
you will no longer call me Ba‘ali [My Master].
19 (17) For I will remove the names
of the ba‘alim from her mouth;
they will never again be mentioned by name.
20 (18) When that day comes, I will make
a covenant for them
with the wild animals, the birds in the air
and the creeping things of the earth.
I will break bow and sword,
sweep battle from the land,
and make them lie down securely.
103 (0) By David:
(1) Bless Adonai, my soul!
Everything in me, bless his holy name!
2 Bless Adonai, my soul,
and forget none of his benefits!
3 He forgives all your offenses,
he heals all your diseases,
4 he redeems your life from the pit,
he surrounds you with grace and compassion,
5 he contents you with good as long as you live,
so that your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.
6 Adonai brings vindication and justice
to all who are oppressed.
7 He made his ways known to Moshe,
his mighty deeds to the people of Isra’el.
8 Adonai is merciful and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in grace.
9 He will not always accuse,
he will not keep his anger forever.
10 He has not treated us as our sins deserve
or paid us back for our offenses,
11 because his mercy toward those who fear him
is as far above earth as heaven.
12 He has removed our sins from us
as far as the east is from the west.
13 Just as a father has compassion on his children,
Adonai has compassion on those who fear him.
22 Bless Adonai, all his works,
in every place where he rules!
Bless Adonai, my soul!
3 Are we starting to recommend ourselves again? Or do we, like some, need letters of recommendation either to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You make it clear that you are a letter from the Messiah placed in our care, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on human hearts.
4 Such is the confidence we have through the Messiah toward God. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to count anything as having come from us; on the contrary, our competence is from God. 6 He has even made us competent to be workers serving a New Covenant, the essence of which is not a written text but the Spirit. For the written text brings death, but the Spirit gives life.
13 Yeshua went out again by the lake. All the crowd came to him, and he began teaching them. 14 As he passed on from there, he saw Levi Ben-Halfai sitting in his tax-collection booth and said to him, “Follow me!” And he got up and followed him.
15 As Yeshua was in Levi’s house eating, many tax-collectors and sinners were sitting with Yeshua and his talmidim, for there were many of them among his followers. 16 When the Torah-teachers and the P’rushim saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his talmidim, “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?” 17 But, hearing the question, Yeshua answered them, “The ones who need a doctor aren’t the healthy but the sick. I didn’t come to call the ‘righteous’ but sinners!”
18 Also Yochanan’s talmidim and the P’rushim were fasting; and they came and asked Yeshua, “Why is it that Yochanan’s talmidim and the talmidim of the P’rushim fast, but your talmidim don’t fast?” 19 Yeshua answered them, “Can wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, fasting is out of the question. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them; and when that day comes, they will fast. 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old coat; if he does, the new patch tears away from the old cloth and leaves a worse hole. 22 And no one puts new wine in old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine is for freshly prepared wineskins.”
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.