Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷³ Your hands have made me, cunningly fashioned and established me; give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.

⁷⁴ Those who reverently and worshipfully fear You will see me and be glad, because I have hoped in Your word and tarried for it.

⁷⁵ I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are right and righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.^(A)

⁷⁶ Let, I pray You, Your merciful kindness and steadfast love be for my comfort, according to Your promise to Your servant.

⁷⁷ Let Your tender mercy and loving-kindness come to me that I may live, for Your law is my delight!

⁷⁸ Let the proud be put to shame, for they dealt perversely with me without a cause; but I will meditate on Your precepts.

⁷⁹ Let those who reverently and worshipfully fear You turn to me, and those who have known Your testimonies.

⁸⁰ Let my heart be sound (sincere and wholehearted and blameless) in Your statutes, that I may not be put to shame.

¹⁰ To whom shall I [Jeremiah] speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised [never brought into covenant with God or consecrated to His service], and they cannot hear or obey. Behold, the word of the Lord has become to them a reproach and the object of their scorn; they have no delight in it.

¹¹ Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of restraining it. I will pour it out on the children in the street and on the gathering of young men together; for even the husband with the wife will be taken, the aged with the very old.

¹² And their houses will be turned over to others, their fields and their wives together; for I will stretch out My hand against the inhabitants of the land, says the Lord.

¹³ For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness (to greed for unjust gain); and from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.

¹⁴ They have healed also the wound of the daughter of My people lightly and neglectfully, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

¹⁵ Were they brought to shame because they had committed abominations (extremely disgusting and vile things)? No, they were not at all ashamed, nor could they blush [at their idolatry]. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads and look; and ask for the eternal paths, where the good, old way is; then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk in it!^(A)

¹⁷ Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hear and obey the sound of the trumpet! But they said, We will not listen or obey.

¹⁸ Therefore hear, O [Gentile] nations, and know, O congregation [of believing ones], what [great things I will do] to them.

¹⁹ Hear, O earth: behold, I am bringing evil upon this people, the fruit of their thoughts (their schemes and devices) because they have not listened and obeyed My words, and as for My law, they have rejected it.

²¹ Now after these events Paul determined in the [Holy] Spirit that he would travel through Macedonia and Achaia (most of Greece) and go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must visit Rome also.

²² And having sent two of his assistants, Timothy and Erastus, into Macedonia, he himself stayed on in [the province of] Asia for a while.

²³ But as time went on, there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way [of the Lord].

²⁴ For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of [the goddess] Artemis ^[a][Diana], brought no small income to his craftsmen.

²⁵ These he called together, along with the workmen of similar trades, and said, Men, you are acquainted with the facts and understand that from this business we derive our wealth and livelihood.

²⁶ Now you notice and hear that not only at Ephesus but almost all over [the province of] Asia this Paul has persuaded and induced people to believe his teaching and has alienated a considerable company of them, saying that gods that are made with human hands are not really gods at all.

²⁷ Now there is danger not merely that this trade of ours may be discredited, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may come into disrepute and count for nothing, and that her glorious magnificence may be degraded and fall into contempt—she whom all [the province of] Asia and the wide world worship.