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.

¹⁰ Then Jeremiah said, “What sadness is mine, my mother; oh, that I had died at birth. For I am hated everywhere I go. I am neither a creditor soon to foreclose nor a debtor refusing to pay—yet they all curse me. ¹¹ Well, let them curse! Lord, you know how I have pled with you on their behalf—how I have begged you to spare these enemies of mine.”

^12-13 Can a man break bars of northern iron or bronze? This people’s stubborn will can’t be broken either. So, because of all your sins against me, I will deliver your wealth and treasures as loot to the enemy. ¹⁴ I will have your enemies take you as slaves to a land where you have never been before, for my anger burns like fire, and it shall consume you.

¹⁴ When Jesus arrived at Peter’s house, Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed with a high fever. ¹⁵ But when Jesus touched her hand, the fever left her; and she got up and prepared a meal for them!^[a]

¹⁶ That evening several demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus; and when he spoke a single word, all the demons fled; and all the sick were healed. ¹⁷ This fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, “He took our sicknesses and bore our diseases.”^[b]