Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Because for Your sake I have borne taunt and reproach; confusion and shame have covered my face.

⁸ I have become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to my mother’s children.^(A)

⁹ For zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches and insults of those who reproach and insult You have fallen upon me.^(B)

¹⁰ When I wept and humbled myself with fasting, I was jeered at and humiliated;

¹¹ When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword (an object of scorn) to them.

¹² They who sit in [the city’s] gate talk about me, and I am the song of the drunkards.

¹³ But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord. At an acceptable and opportune time, O God, in the multitude of Your mercy and the abundance of Your loving-kindness hear me, and in the truth and faithfulness of Your salvation answer me.

¹⁴ Rescue me out of the mire, and let me not sink; let me be delivered from those who hate me and from out of the deep waters.

¹⁵ Let not the floodwaters overflow and overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up nor the [dug] pit [with water perhaps in the bottom] close its mouth over me.

¹⁶ Hear and answer me, O Lord, for Your loving-kindness is sweet and comforting; according to Your plenteous tender mercy and steadfast love turn to me.

¹⁷ Hide not Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress; O answer me speedily!

¹⁸ Draw close to me and redeem me; ransom and set me free because of my enemies [lest they glory in my prolonged distress]!

¹² But they will say, That is in vain! For we will walk after our own devices, and we will each do as the stubbornness of his own evil heart dictates.

¹³ Therefore thus says the Lord: Ask now among the nations: Who has heard such things? Virgin Israel has done a very vile and horrible thing.

¹⁴ Will the snow of Mount Lebanon fail and vanish from its rocks [which tower above the land of Israel]? Will the cold, rushing waters of strange lands [that dash down from afar] be dried up?

¹⁵ Yet My people have forgotten Me; they burn incense to false gods, they have been caused to stumble in their ways and in the ancient roads, to walk in bypaths, in a way not graded and built up [not on a highway],

¹⁶ Making their land a desolation and a horror, a thing to be hissed at perpetually; everyone who passes by shall be astounded and horrified and shake his head.

¹⁷ I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their calamity [says the Lord].

⁵ For it was not to angels that God subjected the habitable world of the future, of which we are speaking.

⁶ It has been solemnly and earnestly said in a certain place, What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You graciously and helpfully care for and visit and look after him?

⁷ For some little time You have ranked him lower than and inferior to the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor and set him over the works of Your hands,^(A)

⁸ For You have put everything in subjection under his feet. Now in putting everything in subjection to man, He left nothing outside [of man’s] control. But at present we do not yet see all things subjected to him [man].

⁹ But we are able to see Jesus, Who was ranked lower than the angels for a little while, crowned with glory and honor because of His having suffered death, in order that by the grace (unmerited favor) of God [to us sinners] He might experience death for every individual person.