Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁸ Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. ⁹ He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does.

¹⁴ The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. ¹⁵ The eyes of all mankind look up to you for help; you give them their food as they need it. ¹⁶ You constantly satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.

¹⁷ The Lord is fair in everything he does and full of kindness. ¹⁸ He is close to all who call on him sincerely. ¹⁹ He fulfills the desires of those who reverence and trust him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. ²⁰ He protects all those who love him, but destroys the wicked.

²¹ I will praise the Lord and call on all men everywhere to bless his holy name forever and forever.

¹⁷ Wake up, wake up, Jerusalem! You have drunk enough from the cup of the fury of the Lord. You have drunk to the dregs the cup of terror and squeezed out the last drops. ¹⁸ Not one of her sons is left alive to help or tell her what to do. ¹⁹ These two things have been your lot: desolation and destruction. Yes, famine and the sword. And who is left to sympathize? Who is left to comfort you? ²⁰ For your sons have fainted and lie in the streets, helpless as wild goats caught in a net. The Lord has poured out his fury and rebuke upon them. ²¹ But listen now to this, afflicted ones—full of troubles and in a stupor (but not from being drunk)— ²² this is what the Lord says, the Lord your God who cares for his people: “See, I take from your hands the terrible cup; you shall drink no more of my fury; it is gone at last. ²³ But I will put that terrible cup into the hands of those who tormented you and trampled your souls to the dust and walked upon your backs.”

⁶ Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promises to the Jews? No! For these promises are only to those who are truly Jews.^[a] And not everyone born into a Jewish family is truly a Jew! ⁷ Just the fact that they come from Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say that the promises apply only to Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s descendants, though Abraham had other children too. ⁸ This means that not all of Abraham’s children are children of God, but only those who believe the promise of salvation which he made to Abraham.

⁹ For God had promised, “Next year I will give you and Sarah a son.” ^10-13 And years later, when this son Isaac was grown up and married and Rebecca his wife was about to bear him twin children, God told her that Esau, the child born first, would be a servant to Jacob, his twin brother. In the words of the Scripture, “I chose to bless Jacob but not Esau.” And God said this before the children were even born, before they had done anything either good or bad. This proves that God was doing what he had decided from the beginning; it was not because of what the children did but because of what God wanted and chose.