Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Thanksgiving for return from captivity.

A Song of Ascents.

⁹ Concerning the prophets. My heart within me is broken, all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of Jehovah, and because of his holy words. ¹⁰ For the land is full of adulterers; for because of ^[a]swearing the land mourneth; the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. And their course is evil, and their might is not right; ¹¹ for both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith Jehovah. ¹² Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery places in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein; for I will bring evil upon them, ^[b]even the year of their visitation, saith Jehovah.

¹³ And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied by Baal, and caused my people Israel to err. ¹⁴ In the prophets of Jerusalem also I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies; and they strengthen the hands of evil-doers, so that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them become unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. ¹⁵ Therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts concerning the prophets: Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of ^[c]gall; for from the prophets of Jerusalem is ungodliness gone forth into all the land.

7 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, ² to whom also Abraham divided a tenth part of all (being first, by interpretation, King of righteousness, and then also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; ³ without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God), abideth a priest continually.

⁴ Now consider how great this man was, unto whom Abraham, the patriarch, gave a tenth out of the chief spoils. ⁵ And they indeed of the sons of Levi that receive the priest’s office have commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though these have come out of the loins of Abraham: ⁶ but he whose genealogy is not counted from them hath taken tithes of Abraham, and hath blessed him that hath the promises. ⁷ But without any dispute the less is blessed of the better. ⁸ And here men that die receive tithes; but there one, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth. ⁹ And, so to say, through Abraham even Levi, who receiveth tithes, hath paid tithes; ¹⁰ for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him.