Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

26 Dismiss all the charges against me, Lord, for I have tried to keep your laws and have trusted you without wavering. ² Cross-examine me, O Lord, and see that this is so; test my motives and affections too. ³ For I have taken your loving-kindness and your truth as my ideals. ⁴ I do not have fellowship with tricky, two-faced men; they are false and hypocritical. ⁵ I hate the sinners’ hangouts and refuse to enter them. ⁶ I wash my hands to prove my innocence and come before your altar, ⁷ singing a song of thanksgiving and telling about your miracles.

⁸ Lord, I love your home, this shrine where the brilliant, dazzling splendor of your presence lives.

15 Then the Lord said to me, Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, even then I wouldn’t help them—away with them! Get them out of my sight! ² And if they say to you, But where can we go? Tell them the Lord says: Those who are destined for death, to death; those who must die by the sword, to the sword; those doomed to starvation, to famine; and those for captivity, to captivity. ³ I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the vultures and wild animals to finish up what’s left. ⁴ Because of the wicked things Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem, I will punish you so severely that your fate will horrify the peoples of the world.

⁵ Who will feel sorry for you, Jerusalem? Who will weep for you? Who will even bother to ask how you are? ⁶ You have forsaken me and turned your backs upon me. Therefore, I will clench my fists against you to destroy you. I am tired of always giving you another chance. ⁷ I will sift you at the gates of your cities and take from you all that you hold dear, and I will destroy my own people because they refuse to turn back to me from all their evil ways. ⁸ There shall be countless widows; at noontime I will bring death to the young men and sorrow to their mothers. I will cause anguish and terror to fall upon them suddenly. ⁹ The mother of seven sickens and faints, for all her sons are dead. Her sun is gone down while it is yet day. She sits childless now, disgraced, for all her children have been killed.

⁷ As for the work this man of rebellion and hell will do when he comes, it is already going on,^[a] but he himself will not come until the one who is holding him back steps out of the way. ⁸ Then this wicked one will appear, whom the Lord Jesus will burn up with the breath of his mouth and destroy by his presence when he returns. ⁹ This man of sin will come as Satan’s tool, full of satanic power, and will trick everyone with strange demonstrations, and will do great miracles. ¹⁰ He will completely fool those who are on their way to hell because they have said no to the Truth; they have refused to believe it and love it and let it save them, ¹¹ so God will allow them to believe lies with all their hearts, ¹² and all of them will be justly judged for believing falsehood, refusing the Truth, and enjoying their sins.