Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁸ Your robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. In your palaces of inlaid ivory, lovely music is being played for your enjoyment. ⁹ Kings’ daughters are among your concubines.^[a] Standing beside you is the queen, wearing jewelry of finest gold from Ophir.

^10-11 “I advise you, O daughter, not to fret about your parents in your homeland far away. Your royal husband delights in your beauty. Reverence him, for he is your lord. ¹² The people of Tyre, the richest people of our day, will shower you with gifts and entreat your favors.”

¹³ The bride,^[b] a princess, waits within her chamber, robed in beautiful clothing woven with gold. ¹⁴ Lovely^[c] she is, led beside her maids of honor to the king! ¹⁵ What a joyful, glad procession as they enter in the palace gates! ¹⁶ “Your sons will some day be kings like their father. They shall sit on thrones around the world!

¹⁷ “I will cause your name to be honored in all generations; the nations of the earth will praise you forever.”

3 Then the Lord said to me, “Go, and get your wife again and bring her back to you and love her, even though she loves adultery. For the Lord still loves Israel though she has turned to other gods and offered them choice gifts.”

² So I bought her back from her slavery^[a] for a couple of dollars and eight bushels of barley, ³ and I said to her, “You must live alone for many days; do not go out with other men nor be a prostitute, and I will wait for you.”

⁴ This illustrates the fact that Israel will be a long time without a king or prince, and without an altar, Temple, priests, or even idols!

⁵ Afterward they will return to the Lord their God and to the Messiah, their King,^[b] and they shall come trembling, submissive to the Lord and to his blessings in the end times.

²³ I call upon this God to witness against me if I am not telling the absolute truth: the reason I haven’t come to visit you yet is that I don’t want to sadden you with a severe rebuke. ²⁴ When I come, although I can’t do much to help your faith, for it is strong already, I want to be able to do something about your joy: I want to make you happy, not sad.

2 “No,” I said to myself, “I won’t do it. I’ll not make them unhappy with another painful visit.” ² For if I make you sad, who is going to make me happy? You are the ones to do it, and how can you if I cause you pain? ³ That is why I wrote as I did in my last letter, so that you will get things straightened out before I come.^[a] Then, when I do come, I will not be made sad by the very ones who ought to give me greatest joy. I felt sure that your happiness was so bound up in mine that you would not be happy either unless I came with joy.

⁴ Oh, how I hated to write that letter! It almost broke my heart, and I tell you honestly that I cried over it. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I had to show you how very much I loved you and cared about what was happening to you.

^5-6 Remember that the man I wrote about, who caused all the trouble, has not caused sorrow to me as much as to all the rest of you—though I certainly have my share in it too. I don’t want to be harder on him than I should. He has been punished enough by your united disapproval. ⁷ Now it is time to forgive him and comfort him. Otherwise he may become so bitter and discouraged that he won’t be able to recover. ⁸ Please show him now that you still do love him very much.

⁹ I wrote to you as I did so that I could find out how far you would go in obeying me. ¹⁰ When you forgive anyone, I do too. And whatever I have forgiven (to the extent that this affected me too) has been by Christ’s authority, and for your good. ¹¹ A further reason for forgiveness is to keep from being outsmarted by Satan, for we know what he is trying to do.