Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ “Hear, O My people, and I will speak. Hear, O Israel, and I will testify to you. I am God. Your God.

⁸ “I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings continually before me.

⁹ “I will take no bullock out of your house, nor goats out of your folds.

¹⁰ “For all the beasts of the forest are Mine, the beasts on a thousand mountains.

¹¹ “I know all the birds on the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are Mine.

¹² “If I am hungry, I will not tell you. For the world is Mine and all that therein is.

¹³ “Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴ “Offer praise to God; and pay your vows to the Most High.

¹⁵ “And call upon Me on the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify Me.”

⁷ Jerusalem remembered the days of her affliction, and of her rebellion, all her pleasant things that she had in times past, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and no one helped her. The adversary saw her and mocked her Sabbaths.

⁸ Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore, she is filthy. All who honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness. Indeed, she sighs and turns away.

⁹ Her uncleanness is in her skirts. She did not remember her future, therefore she fell spectacularly. She had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction. For the enemy is proud.

¹⁰ The enemy has stretched out his hand upon all her pleasant things. For she has seen the heathen enter into her Sanctuary, whom You Commanded not to enter into Your congregation.

¹¹ All her people sigh and seek bread. They have given their pleasant things for food to refresh the soul. See, O LORD, and consider. For I have become vile.

¹⁷ These are wells without water - clouds carried about by the wind - to whom the black darkness is reserved forever.

¹⁸ For in speaking boastful words of frivolity, they allure (with lewdness and lusts of the flesh) those who had barely escaped from those walking in error;

¹⁹ promising them freedom, but themselves the servants of corruption. For by whomever one is overcome, to him also is he in bondage.

²⁰ For if they - after they have escaped from the filthiness of the world through the acknowledging of the Lord and the Savior Jesus Christ - are once again entangled in it and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

²¹ For it had been better for them not to have acknowledged the way of righteousness than to turn from the Holy Commandment given to them after they have acknowledged it.

²² But it has come to them according to the true proverb, “The dog has returned to his own vomit,” and “a sow, being washed, to wallowing in the mire.”