Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 146

Year of canceled debts

15 Every seventh year you must cancel all debts. ² This is how the cancellation is to be handled: Creditors will forgive the loans of their fellow Israelites. They won’t demand repayment from their neighbors or their relatives because the Lord’s year of debt cancellation has been announced. ³ You are allowed to demand payment from foreigners, but whatever is owed you from your fellow Israelites you must forgive. ⁴ Of course there won’t be any poor persons among you because the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, ⁵ but only if you carefully obey the Lord your God’s voice, by carefully doing every bit of this commandment that I’m giving you right now. ⁶ Once the Lord your God has blessed you, exactly as he said he would, you will end up lending to many different peoples but won’t need to borrow a thing. You will dominate many different peoples, but they won’t dominate you.

⁷ Now if there are some poor persons among you, say one of your fellow Israelites in one of your cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don’t be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your poor fellow Israelites. ⁸ To the contrary! Open your hand wide to them. You must generously lend them whatever they need. ⁹ But watch yourself! Make sure no wicked thought crosses your mind, such as, The seventh year is coming—the year of debt cancellation—so that you resent your poor fellow Israelites and don’t give them anything. If you do that, they will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. ¹⁰ No, give generously to needy persons. Don’t resent giving to them because it is this very thing that will lead to the Lord your God’s blessing you in all you do and work at. ¹¹ Poor persons will never disappear from the earth. That’s why I’m giving you this command: you must open your hand generously to your fellow Israelites, to the needy among you, and to the poor who live with you in your land.

Christ’s death and the new covenant

¹⁵ This is why he’s the mediator of a new covenant (which is a will): so that those who are called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance on the basis of his death. His death occurred to set them free from the offenses committed under the first covenant. ¹⁶ When there is a will, you need to confirm the death of the one who made the will. ¹⁷ This is because a will takes effect only after a death, since it’s not in force while the one who made the will is alive. ¹⁸ So not even the first covenant was put into effect without blood. ¹⁹ Moses took the blood of calves and goats, along with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the Law scroll itself and all the people after he had proclaimed every command of the Law to all the people. ²⁰ While he did it, he said, This is the blood of the covenant that God established for you.^{[a] 21} And in the same way he sprinkled the meeting tent and also all the equipment that would be used in the priests’ service with blood. ²² Almost everything is cleansed by blood, according to the Law’s regulations, and there is no forgiveness without blood being shed.

²³ So it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be cleansed with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things had to be cleansed with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ Christ didn’t enter the holy place (which is a copy of the true holy place) made by human hands, but into heaven itself, so that he now appears in God’s presence for us.