Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

113 Hallelujah! O servants of Jehovah, praise his name. ² Blessed is his name forever and forever. ³ Praise him from sunrise to sunset! ⁴ For he is high above the nations; his glory is far greater than the heavens.

⁵ Who can be compared with God enthroned on high? ⁶ Far below him are the heavens and the earth; he stoops to look, ⁷ and lifts the poor from the dirt and the hungry from the garbage dump, ⁸ and sets them among princes! ⁹ He gives children to the childless wife, so that she becomes a happy mother.

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.

⁸ You buy up property so others have no place to live. Your homes are built on great estates so you can be alone in the midst of the earth! ⁹ But the Lord Almighty has sworn your awful fate—with my own ears I heard him say, “Many a beautiful home will lie deserted, their owners killed or gone. ¹⁰ An acre of vineyard will not produce a gallon of juice! Ten bushels of seed will yield a one-bushel crop!”

¹¹ Woe to you who get up early in the morning to go on long drinking bouts that last till late at night—woe to you drunken bums. ¹² You furnish lovely music at your grand parties; the orchestras are superb! But for the Lord you have no thought or care. ¹³ Therefore I will send you into exile far away because you neither know nor care that I have done so much for you. Your great and honored men will starve, and the common people will die of thirst.

¹⁴ Hell is licking its chops in anticipation of this delicious morsel, Jerusalem. Her great and small shall be swallowed up, and all her drunken throngs. ¹⁵ In that day the haughty shall be brought down to the dust; the proud shall be humbled; ¹⁶ but the Lord Almighty is exalted above all, for he alone is holy, just, and good. ¹⁷ In those days flocks will feed among the ruins. Lambs and calves and kids will pasture there!

¹⁸ Woe to those who drag their sins behind them like a bullock on a rope.^{[a] 19} They even mock the Holy One of Israel and dare the Lord to punish them.^[b] “Hurry up and punish us, O Lord,” they say. “We want to see what you can do!” ²⁰ They say that what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right; that black is white and white is black; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.

²¹ Woe to those who are wise and shrewd in their own eyes! ²² Woe to those who are “heroes” when it comes to drinking and boast about the liquor they can hold. ²³ They take bribes to pervert justice, letting the wicked go free and putting innocent men in jail.

⁴¹ Then he went over to the collection boxes in the Temple and sat and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Some who were rich put in large amounts. ⁴² Then a poor widow came and dropped in two pennies.

^43-44 He called his disciples to him and remarked, “That poor widow has given more than all those rich men put together! For they gave a little of their extra fat,^[a] while she gave up her last penny.”