Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
24 O Lord, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all; the earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures.
25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide, in which are swarms of innumerable creeping things, creatures both small and great.
26 There go the ships of the sea, and Leviathan (the sea monster), which You have formed to sport in it.
27 These all wait and are dependent upon You, that You may give them their food in due season.
28 When You give it to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, and they are filled with good things.
29 When You hide Your face, they are troubled and dismayed; when You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
30 When You send forth Your Spirit and give them breath, they are created, and You replenish the face of the ground.
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works—
32 Who looks on the earth, and it quakes and trembles, Who touches the mountains, and they smoke!
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have any being.
34 May my meditation be sweet to Him; as for me, I will rejoice in the Lord.
35 Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)
18 Then was the Lord jealous for His land and had pity on His people.
19 Yes, the Lord answered and said to His people, Behold, I am sending you grain and juice [of the grape] and oil, and you shall be satisfied with them; and I will no more make you a reproach among the [heathen] nations.
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern [destroyer’s] army and will drive it into a land barren and desolate, with its front toward the eastern [Dead] Sea and with its rear toward the western [Mediterranean] Sea. And its stench shall come up [like that of a decaying mass of locusts, a symbol and forecast of the fate of the northern army in the final day of the Lord], and its foul odor shall come up, because [a]He has done great things [the Lord will have destroyed the invaders]!(A)
21 Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!(B)
22 Be not afraid, you wild beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness have sprung up and are green; the tree bears its fruit, and the fig tree and the vine yield their [full] strength.
23 Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord, your God; for He gives you the former or early rain in just measure and in righteousness, and He causes to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, as before.
24 And the [threshing] floors shall be full of grain and the vats shall overflow with juice [of the grape] and oil.
25 And I will restore or replace for you the years that the locust has eaten—the hopping locust, the stripping locust, and the crawling locust, My great army which I sent among you.
26 And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord, your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you. And My people shall never be put to shame.
27 And you shall know, understand, and realize that I am in the midst of Israel and that I the Lord am your God and there is none else. My people shall never be put to shame.
28 And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
29 Even upon the menservants and upon the maidservants in those days will I pour out My Spirit.
18 [But what of that?] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and [a]for us and [b]conferred on us!
19 For [even the whole] creation (all nature) waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God’s sons to be made known [waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their sonship].
20 For the creation (nature) was subjected to [c]frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration), not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by the will of Him Who so subjected it—[yet] with the hope(A)
21 That nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption [and gain an entrance] into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
22 We know that the whole creation [of irrational creatures] has been moaning together in the pains of labor until now.(B)
23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves too, who have and enjoy the firstfruits of the [Holy] Spirit [a foretaste of the blissful things to come] groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies [from sensuality and the grave, which will reveal] our adoption (our manifestation as God’s sons).
24 For in [this] hope we were saved. But hope [the object of] which is seen is not hope. For how can one hope for what he already sees?
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