Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
90 A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! 2 Before the mountains were created, before the earth was formed, you are God without beginning or end.
3 You speak, and man turns back to dust. 4 A thousand years are but as yesterday to you! They are like a single hour![a] 5-6 We glide along the tides of time as swiftly as a racing river and vanish as quickly as a dream. We are like grass that is green in the morning but mowed down and withered before the evening shadows fall. 7 We die beneath your anger; we are overwhelmed by your wrath. 8 You spread out our sins before you—our secret sins—and see them all.
9 No wonder the years are long and heavy here beneath your wrath. All our days are filled with sighing.
10 Seventy years are given us! And some may even live to eighty. But even the best of these years are often empty and filled with pain; soon they disappear, and we are gone. 11 Who can realize the terrors of your anger? Which of us can fear you as he should?
12 Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.
6 Again a message came from the Lord:
2 “Son of dust, look over toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. 3 Say to them, ‘O mountains of Israel, hear the message of the Lord God against you and against the rivers and valleys. I, even I the Lord, will bring war upon you to destroy your idols. 4-7 All your cities will be smashed and burned, and the idol altars abandoned. Your gods will be shattered; the bones of their worshipers will lie scattered among the altars. Then at last you will know I am the Lord.
8 “‘But I will let a few of my people escape—to be scattered among the nations of the world. 9 Then when they are exiled among the nations, they will remember me, for I will take away their adulterous hearts—their love of idols—and I will blind their lecherous eyes that long for other gods. Then at last they will loathe themselves for all this wickedness. 10 They will realize that I alone am God and that I wasn’t fooling when I told them that all this would happen to them.’”
11 The Lord God says: “Raise your hands in horror and shake your head[a] with deep remorse and say, ‘Alas for all the evil we have done!’ For you are going to perish from war and famine and disease. 12 Disease will strike down those in exile; war will destroy those in the land of Israel; and any who remain will die by famine and siege. So at last I will expend my fury on you. 13 When your slain lie scattered among your idols and altars on every hill and mountain and under every green tree and great oak where they offered incense to their gods—you will realize that I alone am God. 14 I will crush you and make your cities desolate from the wilderness in the south to Riblah in the north. Then you will know I am the Lord.”
16 And I heard a mighty voice shouting from the temple to the seven angels, “Now go your ways and empty out the seven flasks of the wrath of God upon the earth.”
2 So the first angel left the temple and poured out his flask over the earth, and horrible, malignant sores broke out on everyone who had the mark of the Creature and was worshiping his statue.
3 The second angel poured out his flask upon the oceans, and they became like the watery blood of a dead man; and everything in all the oceans died.
4 The third angel poured out his flask upon the rivers and springs and they became blood. 5 And I heard this angel of the waters declaring, “You are just in sending this judgment, O Holy One, who is and was, 6 for your saints and prophets have been martyred and their blood poured out upon the earth; and now, in turn, you have poured out the blood of those who murdered them; it is their just reward.”
7 And I heard the angel of the altar say,[a] “Yes, Lord God Almighty, your punishments are just and true.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.