Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
21 But as for me, O Lord, deal with me as your child, as one who bears your name! Because you are so kind, O Lord, deliver me.
22-23 I am slipping down the hill to death; I am shaken off from life as easily as a man brushes a grasshopper from his arm. 24 My knees are weak from fasting, and I am skin and bones. 25 I am a symbol of failure to all mankind; when they see me they shake their heads.
26 Help me, O Lord my God! Save me because you are loving and kind. 27 Do it publicly, so all will see that you yourself have done it. 28 Then let them curse me if they like—I won’t mind that if you are blessing me! For then all their efforts to destroy me will fail, and I shall go right on rejoicing!
29 Make them fail in everything they do. Clothe them with disgrace. 30 But I will give repeated thanks to the Lord, praising him to everyone. 31 For he stands beside the poor and hungry to save them from their enemies.
20 Late in July, six years after King Jeconiah was captured,[a] some of the elders of Israel came to ask instructions from the Lord and sat before me awaiting his reply.
2 Then the Lord gave me this message: 3 “Son of dust, say to the elders of Israel, ‘The Lord God says: How dare you come to ask my help? I swear that I will tell you nothing.’ 4 Judge them, son of dust; condemn them; tell them of all the sins of this nation from the times of their fathers until now. 5-6 Tell them, ‘The Lord God says: When I chose Israel and revealed myself to her in Egypt, I swore to her and her descendants that I would bring them out of Egypt to a land I had discovered and explored for them—a good land, flowing as it were with milk and honey, the best of all lands anywhere.’
7 “Then I said to them: ‘Get rid of every idol; do not defile yourselves with the Egyptian gods, for I am the Lord your God.’ 8 But they rebelled against me and would not listen. They didn’t get rid of their idols nor forsake the gods of Egypt. Then I thought, I will pour out my fury upon them and fulfill my anger against them while they are still in Egypt.
9-10 “But I didn’t do it, for I acted to protect the honor of my name, lest the Egyptians laugh at Israel’s God who couldn’t keep them from harm. So I brought my people out of Egypt right before the Egyptians’ eyes and led them into the wilderness. 11 There I gave them my laws so they could live by keeping them. If anyone keeps them, he will live. 12 And I gave them the Sabbath—a day of rest every seventh day—as a symbol between them and me, to remind them that it is I, the Lord, who sanctifies them—that they are truly my people.
13 “But Israel rebelled against me. There in the wilderness they refused my laws. They would not obey my rules even though obeying them means life. And they misused my Sabbaths. Then I thought, I will pour out my fury upon them and utterly consume them in the desert.
14 “But again I refrained in order to protect the honor of my name, lest the nations who saw me bring them out of Egypt would say that it was because I couldn’t care for them that I destroyed them. 15 But I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land I had given them, a land full of milk and honey, the choicest spot on earth, 16 because they laughed at my laws, ignored my wishes, and violated my Sabbaths—their hearts were with their idols! 17 Nevertheless, I spared them. I didn’t finish them off in the wilderness.
7-8 And since Christ is so much superior, the Holy Spirit warns us to listen to him, to be careful to hear his voice today and not let our hearts become set against him, as the people of Israel did. They steeled themselves against his love and complained against him in the desert while he was testing them. 9 But God was patient with them forty years, though they tried his patience sorely; he kept right on doing his mighty miracles for them to see. 10 “But,” God says, “I was very angry with them, for their hearts were always looking somewhere else instead of up to me, and they never found the paths I wanted them to follow.”
11 Then God, full of this anger against them, bound himself with an oath that he would never let them come to his place of rest.
12 Beware then of your own hearts, dear brothers, lest you find that they, too, are evil and unbelieving and are leading you away from the living God. 13 Speak to each other about these things every day while there is still time so that none of you will become hardened against God, being blinded by the glamor[a] of sin. 14 For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as we did when we first became Christians, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.
15 But now is the time. Never forget the warning, “Today if you hear God’s voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.”
16 And who were those people I speak of, who heard God’s voice speaking to them but then rebelled against him? They were the ones who came out of Egypt with Moses their leader. 17 And who was it who made God angry for all those forty years? These same people who sinned and as a result died in the wilderness. 18 And to whom was God speaking when he swore with an oath that they could never go into the land he had promised his people? He was speaking to all those who disobeyed him. 19 And why couldn’t they go in? Because they didn’t trust him.
4 Although God’s promise still stands—his promise that all may enter his place of rest—we ought to tremble with fear because some of you may be on the verge of failing to get there after all. 2 For this wonderful news—the message that God wants to save us—has been given to us just as it was to those who lived in the time of Moses. But it didn’t do them any good because they didn’t believe it. They didn’t mix it with faith. 3 For only we who believe God can enter into his place of rest. He has said, “I have sworn in my anger that those who don’t believe me will never get in,” even though he has been ready and waiting for them since the world began.
4 We know he is ready and waiting because it is written that God rested on the seventh day of creation, having finished all that he had planned to make.
5 Even so they didn’t get in, for God finally said, “They shall never enter my rest.” 6 Yet the promise remains and some get in—but not those who had the first chance, for they disobeyed God and failed to enter.
7 But he has set another time for coming in, and that time is now. He announced this through King David long years after man’s first failure to enter, saying in the words already quoted, “Today when you hear him calling, do not harden your hearts against him.”
8 This new place of rest he is talking about does not mean the land of Israel that Joshua led them into. If that were what God meant, he would not have spoken long afterwards about “today” being the time to get in. 9 So there is a full complete rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 Christ has already entered there. He is resting from his work, just as God did after the creation. 11 Let us do our best to go into that place of rest, too, being careful not to disobey God as the children of Israel did, thus failing to get in.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.