Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

84 How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

² My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

³ Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young” even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they will be ever praising Thee. Selah

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are Thy ways,

⁶ who passing through the Valley of Baca makes it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

⁷ They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

9 Oh, that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

² Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place for wayfaring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.

³ “And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me,” saith the Lord.

⁴ “Take ye heed every one of his neighbor, and trust ye not in any brother; for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanders.

⁵ And they will deceive every one his neighbor, and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.

⁶ Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me,” saith the Lord.

⁷ Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: “Behold, I will melt them and try them; for how else shall I do for the daughter of My people?

⁸ Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in heart he lieth in wait.

⁹ Shall I not visit them for these things?” saith the Lord. “Shall not My soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”

¹⁰ For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast have fled; they are gone.

¹¹ “And I will make Jerusalem heaps and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.”

¹² Who is the wise man that may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it? For why has the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through?

¹³ And the Lord saith, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, neither walked therein,

¹⁴ but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them.”

¹⁵ Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood and give them water of gall to drink.

¹⁶ I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send a sword after them till I have consumed them.”

3 This know also: that in the last days perilous times shall come.

² For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

³ without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, without selfcontrol, fierce, despisers of those who are good,

⁴ traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,

⁵ having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. From such turn away.

⁶ For of this sort are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,

⁷ ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

⁸ Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth — men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

⁹ But they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.