Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

145 ^1-2 I will praise you, my God and King, and bless your name each day and forever.

³ Great is Jehovah! Greatly praise him! His greatness is beyond discovery! ⁴ Let each generation tell its children what glorious things he does. ⁵ I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles. ⁶ Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. ⁷ Everyone will tell about how good you are and sing about your righteousness.

⁸ Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. ⁹ He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does. ¹⁰ All living things shall thank you, Lord, and your people will bless you. ¹¹ They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom and mention examples of your power. ¹² They will tell about your miracles and about the majesty and glory of your reign. ¹³ For your kingdom never ends. You rule generation after generation.

¹⁴ The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. ¹⁵ The eyes of all mankind look up to you for help; you give them their food as they need it. ¹⁶ You constantly satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.

¹⁷ The Lord is fair in everything he does and full of kindness. ¹⁸ He is close to all who call on him sincerely. ¹⁹ He fulfills the desires of those who reverence and trust him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. ²⁰ He protects all those who love him, but destroys the wicked.

²¹ I will praise the Lord and call on all men everywhere to bless his holy name forever and forever.

⁹ You have ravished my heart, my lovely one, my bride; I am overcome by one glance of your eyes, by a single bead of your necklace. ¹⁰ How sweet is your love, my darling, my bride. How much better it is than mere wine. The perfume of your love is more fragrant than all the richest spices. ¹¹ Your lips, my dear, are made of honey. Yes, honey and cream are under your tongue, and the scent of your garments is like the scent of the mountains and cedars of Lebanon.

¹² “My darling bride is like a private garden, a spring that no one else can have, a fountain of my own. ^13-14 You are like a lovely orchard bearing precious fruit,^[a] with the rarest of perfumes; nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, and perfume from every other incense tree, as well as myrrh and aloes, and every other lovely spice. ¹⁵ You are a garden fountain, a well of living water, refreshing as the streams from the Lebanon mountains.”

The Girl: ¹⁶ “Come, north wind, awaken; come, south wind, blow upon my garden and waft its lovely perfume to my beloved. Let him come into his garden and eat its choicest fruits.”

5 King Solomon: “I am here in my garden, my darling, my bride! I gather my myrrh with my spices and eat my honeycomb with my honey. I drink my wine with my milk.”

The Young Women of Jerusalem: “Oh, lover and beloved, eat and drink! Yes, drink deeply!”

The Girl:

³³ Their next complaint was that Jesus’ disciples were feasting instead of fasting. “John the Baptist’s disciples are constantly going without food and praying,” they declared, “and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why are yours wining and dining?”

³⁴ Jesus asked, “Do happy men fast? Do wedding guests go hungry while celebrating with the groom? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be killed;^[a] then they won’t want to eat.”

³⁶ Then Jesus used this illustration: “No one tears off a piece of a new garment to make a patch for an old one. Not only will the new garment be ruined, but the old garment will look worse with a new patch on it! ³⁷ And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the new wine bursts the old skins, ruining the skins and spilling the wine. ³⁸ New wine must be put into new wineskins. ³⁹ But no one after drinking the old wine seems to want the fresh and the new. ‘The old ways are best,’ they say.”