Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
8 Adonai is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.
9 Adonai is good to all.
He has compassion on all His creatures.
10 All Your works praise You, Adonai,
and Your kedoshim bless You.
11 They declare the glory of Your kingdom
and speak of Your might,
12 to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts
and the glory of the majesty of His kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages,
and Your dominion endures from generation to generation.
14 Adonai upholds all who fall
and raises up all who are bowed down.
Return to the Lord
1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Adonai came to the prophet Zechariah[a], son of Berechiah son of Iddo, saying:
2 “Adonai has been furious with your fathers. 3 Therefore tell them, thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, ‘Return to Me’[b]—it is a declaration of Adonai-Tzva’ot—‘and I will return to you,’ says Adonai-Tzva’ot. 4 Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets cried out saying, thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, ‘Turn back now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me.’ It is a declaration of Adonai.
5 “Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But My words and My decrees, which I commanded My servants the prophets—did they not overtake your fathers? Then they repented and said ‘As He determined, Adonai-Tzva’ot has dealt with us according to our ways and our deeds.’”
Two Laws at War
7 Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I speak to those who know law), that the law is master over a person as long as he lives? 2 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3 So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law—so she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man.
4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were made dead to the Torah through the body of Messiah, so that you might be joined to another—the One who was raised from the dead—in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions that came through the Torah were working in our body parts to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, having died to what confined us, so that we serve in the new way of the Ruach and not in the old way of the letter.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.