Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

JOD

⁷³ Your Hands have made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding, therefore, that I may learn Your Commandments.

⁷⁴ So those who fear You, seeing me, shall rejoice, because I have trusted in Your Word.

⁷⁵ I know, O LORD, that Your Judgments are right, and that You have afflicted me justly.

⁷⁶ I pray that Your mercy may comfort me, according to Your Promise to Your servant.

⁷⁷ Let Your tender mercies come to me, that I may live. For Your Law is my delight.

⁷⁸ Let the proud be ashamed, for they have dealt wickedly and falsely with me. But I meditate on Your Precepts.

⁷⁹ Let those who fear You turn to me, and those who know Your Testimonies.

⁸⁰ Let my heart be upright in Your Statutes, that I be not ashamed.

¹⁰ To whom shall I speak, and admonish, so that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, and they cannot listen. Behold, the Word of the LORD is as a reproach to them. They have no delight in it.

¹¹ Therefore, I am full of the wrath of the LORD. I am weary with holding it. “I will pour it out upon the children in the street, and likewise upon the assembly of the young men. For the husband shall be taken with the wife, the aged with him who is full of days,

¹² “and their houses with their lands. And wives, also, shall be turned to strangers. For I will stretch out My Hand upon the inhabitants of the land,” says the LORD.

¹³ “For from the least of them to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness, and from the Prophet to the Priest, they all deal falsely.

¹⁴ “They have also slightly healed the hurt of My people, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

¹⁵ “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not ashamed. Nor could they have any shame. Therefore, they shall fall among the slain when I shall visit them. They shall be cast down,” says the LORD.

¹⁶ Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and behold. And ask for the old way, which is the good way. And walk in it. And you shall find rest for your souls.’ But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

¹⁷ “Also, I set watchmen over you, who said, ‘Listen for the sound of the trumpet.’ But they said, ‘We will not listen for it.’

¹⁸ “Hear, therefore, you Gentiles. And know, you Congregation, what is among them.

¹⁹ “Hear, O Earth! Behold, I will cause a plague to come upon this people, the fruit of their own imaginations. Because they have not listened to My Words, nor to My Law, but cast it off.

²¹ Now when these things were completed, Paul purposed by the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia, and to go to Jerusalem, saying, “After I have been there, I must also see Rome.”

²² So he sent two of his assistants, Timothy and Erastus, into Macedonia. But he remained in Asia for a while.

²³ And about that time there arose no small trouble about the Way.

²⁴ For a certain man named Demetrius (a silversmith who made silver shrines of Diana) brought great gains to the craftsmen.

²⁵ He called them together, along with workmen of similar things, and said, “Sirs, you know that by this trade we have wealth.

²⁶ “Moreover, you see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that things which are made with hands are not Gods.

²⁷ “So that not only is our trade in danger of disrepute, but also the shrine of the great goddess Diana may be despised, causing her magnificence (which all Asia and the world worships) to be destroyed!”