Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
66 Sing to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Sing of his glorious name! Tell the world how wonderful he is.
3 How awe-inspiring are your deeds, O God! How great your power! No wonder your enemies surrender! 4 All the earth shall worship you and sing of your glories. 5 Come, see the glorious things God has done. What marvelous miracles happen to his people! 6 He made a dry road through the sea for them. They went across on foot. What excitement and joy there was that day!
7 Because of his great power he rules forever. He watches every movement of the nations. O rebel lands, he will deflate your pride.
8 Let everyone bless God and sing his praises; 9 for he holds our lives in his hands, and he holds our feet to the path.
21 1-2 New king of Judah: Manasseh
His age at the beginning of his reign: 12 years old
Length of reign: 55 years, in Jerusalem
Mother’s name: Hephzibah
Character of his reign: evil; he did the same things the nations had done that were thrown out of the land to make room for the people of Israel
3-5 He rebuilt the hilltop shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He built altars for Baal and made a shameful Asherah idol, just as Ahab the king of Israel had done. Heathen altars to the sun god, moon god, and the gods of the stars were placed even in the Temple of the Lord—in the very city and building that the Lord had selected to honor his own name. 6 And he sacrificed one of his sons as a burnt offering on a heathen altar. He practiced black magic and used fortune-telling, and patronized mediums and wizards. So the Lord was very angry, for Manasseh was an evil man, in God’s sight. 7 Manasseh even set up a shameful Asherah idol in the Temple—the very place that the Lord had spoken to David and Solomon about when he said, “I will place my name forever in this Temple, and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen from among all the cities of the tribes of Israel. 8 If the people of Israel will only follow the instructions I gave them through Moses, I will never again expel them from this land of their fathers.”
9 But the people did not listen to the Lord, and Manasseh enticed them to do even more evil than the surrounding nations had done, even though Jehovah had destroyed those nations for their evil ways when the people of Israel entered the land.
10 Then the Lord declared through the prophets, 11 “Because King Manasseh has done these evil things and is even more wicked than the Amorites who were in this land long ago, and because he has led the people of Judah into idolatry: 12 I will bring such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror. 13 I will punish Jerusalem as I did Samaria, and as I did King Ahab of Israel and his descendants. I will wipe away the people of Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish and turns it upside down to dry. 14 Then I will reject even those few of my people who are left, and I will hand them over to their enemies. 15 For they have done great evil and have angered me ever since I brought their ancestors from Egypt.”
14 The law is good, then, and the trouble is not there but with me because I am sold into slavery with Sin as my owner.
15 I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—what I hate. 16 I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. 17 But I can’t help myself because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.
18 I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. 19 When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. 20 Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.
21 It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; 23-25 but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.
So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done[a] by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.