Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
6 Sacrifice and offering You do not desire, nor have You delight in them; You have given me the capacity to hear and obey [Your law, a more valuable service than] burnt offerings and sin offerings [which] You do not require.
7 Then said I, Behold, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me;
8 I delight to do Your will, O my God; yes, Your law is within my heart.(A)
9 I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great assembly [tidings of uprightness and right standing with God]. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as You know, O Lord.
10 I have not concealed Your righteousness within my heart; I have proclaimed Your faithfulness and Your salvation. I have not hid away Your steadfast love and Your truth from the great assembly.(B)
11 Withhold not Your tender mercy from me, O Lord; let Your loving-kindness and Your truth continually preserve me!
12 For innumerable evils have compassed me about; my iniquities have taken such hold on me that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart has failed me and forsaken me.
13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me!
14 Let them be put to shame and confounded together who seek and require my life to destroy it; let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor who wish me evil and delight in my hurt!
15 Let them be desolate by reason of their shame who say to me, Aha, aha!
16 Let all those that seek and require You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, The Lord be magnified!
17 [As for me] I am poor and needy, yet the Lord takes thought and plans for me. You are my Help and my Deliverer. O my God, do not tarry!(C)
12 Listen to Me, O Jacob, and Israel, My called [ones]: I am He; I am the First, I also am the Last.(A)
13 Yes, My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand has spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together [to execute My decrees].
14 Assemble yourselves, all of you, and hear! Who among them [the gods and Chaldean astrologers] has foretold these things? The Lord has loved him [Cyrus of Persia]; he will do His pleasure and purpose on Babylon, and his arm will be against the Chaldeans.
15 I, even I, have foretold it; yes, I have called him [Cyrus]; I have brought him, and [the Lord] shall make his way prosperous.
16 Come near to me and listen to this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it happened, I was there. And now the Lord God has sent His Spirit in and with me.
17 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way that you should go.
18 Oh, that you had hearkened to My commandments! Then your peace and prosperity would have been like a flowing river, and your righteousness [the holiness and purity of the nation] like the [abundant] waves of the sea.
19 Your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like the offspring of the sea; their name would not be cut off or destroyed from before Me.(B)
20 Go forth out of Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans! With a voice of singing declare, tell this, cause it to go forth even to the end of the earth; say, The Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob!
21 And they thirsted not when He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them; He split the rock also, and the waters gushed out.
14 Then the disciples of John came to Jesus, inquiring, Why is it that we and the Pharisees fast [a]often, [that is, abstain from food and drink as a religious exercise], but Your disciples do not fast?
15 And Jesus replied to them, Can the wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is still with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
16 And no one puts a piece of cloth that has not been shrunk on an old garment, for such a patch tears away from the garment and a worse rent (tear) is made.
17 Neither is new wine put in old wineskins; for if it is, the skins burst and are [b]torn in pieces, and the wine is spilled and the skins are ruined. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.
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