Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Hear, my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify unto thee: I am God, thy God.

⁸ I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices, or thy burnt-offerings, continually before me;

⁹ I will take no bullock out of thy house, [nor] he-goats out of thy folds:

¹⁰ For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle upon a thousand hills;

¹¹ I know all the fowl of the mountains, and the roaming creatures of the field are mine:

¹² If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

¹³ Should I eat the flesh of bulls, and drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴ Offer unto God thanksgiving, and perform thy vows unto the Most High;

¹⁵ And call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

⁷ In the days of her affliction and of her wanderings, since her people fell into the hand of an adversary, and none did help her, Jerusalem remembereth all her precious things which she had in the days of old: the adversaries have seen her, they mock at her ruin.

⁸ Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore is she removed as an impurity: all that honoured her despise her because they have seen her nakedness; and she sigheth, and turneth backward.

⁹ Her impurity was in her skirts, she remembered not her latter end; and she came down wonderfully: she hath no comforter. Jehovah, behold my affliction; for the enemy hath magnified himself.

¹⁰ The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her precious things; for she hath seen the nations enter into her sanctuary, concerning whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.

¹¹ All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their precious things for food to revive [their] soul. See, Jehovah, and consider, for I am become vile.

¹⁷ These are springs without water, and mists driven by storm, to whom the gloom of darkness is reserved [for ever].

¹⁸ For [while] speaking great highflown words of vanity, they allure with [the] lusts of [the] flesh, by dissoluteness, those who have just fled those who walk in error,

¹⁹ promising them liberty, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a man is subdued, by him is he also brought into slavery.

²⁰ For if after having escaped the pollutions of the world through [the] knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, again entangled, they are subdued by these, their last state is worse than the first.

²¹ For it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known [it] to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

²² But that [word] of the true proverb has happened to them: [The] dog [has] turned back to his own vomit; and, [The] washed sow to [her] rolling in mud.