Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Be Gracious to Your Servants

Psalm 123

²⁷ “When you tell them all these things, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. ²⁸ So you will say to them, ‘This nation has not obeyed the voice of Adonai their God or received correction. Truth has perished and is cut off from their mouth. ²⁹ Cut off your hair and throw it away and take up a lamentation on the barren hills. For Adonai has spurned and cast off the generation of His wrath.”

Valley of Slaughter

³⁰ “The children of Judah have done what is evil in My sight”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“They have set their detestable things in the House that bears My Name to defile it. ³¹ They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it even enter My mind. ³² Therefore, the days are soon coming,” declares Adonai, “when it will no longer be called Topheth, nor the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. For they will bury in Topheth until there is no room. ³³ The carcasses of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. ³⁴ Then I will bring an end, from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, to the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land will be desolate.”

Following the Call

¹⁸ Now when Yeshua saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to go to the other side of the sea. ¹⁹ Then a Torah scholar came to Him and said, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”

²⁰ Yeshua tells him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

²¹ Then another of the disciples said, “Master, first let me go and bury my father.”

²² But Yeshua tells him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”