Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

126 Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.

² It is vain for you to rise before light, rise ye after you have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow. When he shall give sleep to his beloved,

³ Behold the inheritance of the Lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb.

⁴ As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken.

⁵ Blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them; he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate.

⁹ To the prophets: My heart is broken within me, all my bones tremble: I am become as a drunken man, and as a man full of wine, at the presence of the Lord, and at the presence of his holy words.

¹⁰ Because the land is full of adulterers, because the land hath mourned by reason of cursing, the fields of the desert are dried up: and their course is become evil, and their strength unlike.

¹¹ For the prophet and the priest are defiled: and in my house I have found their wickedness, saith the Lord.

¹² Therefore their way shall be as a slippery way in the dark: for they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evils upon them, the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

¹³ And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: they prophesied in Baal, and deceived my people Israel.

¹⁴ And I have seen the likeness of adulterers, and the way of lying in the prophets of Jerusalem: and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that no man should return from his evil doings: they are all become unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrha.

¹⁵ Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts to the prophets: Behold I will feed them with wormwood, and will give them gall to drink: for from the prophets of Jerusalem corruption has gone forth into all the land.

7 For this Melchisedech was king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him:

² To whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all: who first indeed by interpretation, is king of justice: and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace:

³ Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest for ever.

⁴ Now consider how great this man is, to whom also Abraham the patriarch gave tithes out of the principal things.

⁵ And indeed they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is to say, of their brethren: though they themselves also came out of the loins of Abraham.

⁶ But he, whose pedigree is not numbered among them, received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises.

⁷ And without all contradiction, that which is less, is blessed by the better.

⁸ And here indeed, men that die, receive thithes: but there he hath witness, that he liveth.

⁹ And (as it may be said) even Levi who received tithes, paid tithes in Abraham:

¹⁰ For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedech met him.