Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁵⁸ “If you will not observe and obey all the words of this Torah that are written in this book, so that you will fear this glorious and awesome name, Adonai your God; ⁵⁹ then Adonai will strike down you and your descendants with extraordinary plagues and severe sicknesses that go on and on. ⁶⁰ He will bring back upon you all the diseases the Egyptians had, which you were in dread of; and they will cling to you. ⁶¹ Not only that, but Adonai will bring upon you all the sicknesses and plagues that are not written in this book of the Torah — until you are destroyed. ⁶² You will be left few in number, whereas you were once as numerous as the stars in the sky — because you did not pay attention to the voice of Adonai your God.

⁶³ “Thus it will come about that just as once Adonai took joy in seeking to do you good and increase your numbers, so now Adonai will take joy in causing you to perish and be destroyed, and you will be plucked off the land you are entering in order to take possession of it. ⁶⁴ Adonai will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other gods, made of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. ⁶⁵ Among these nations you will not find repose, and there will be no rest for the sole of your foot; rather Adonai will give you there anguish of heart, dimness of eyes and apathy of spirit. ⁶⁶ Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be afraid night and day and have no assurance that you will stay alive. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘Oh, how I wish it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘Oh, how I wish it were morning!’ — because of the fear overwhelming your heart and the sights your eyes will see. ⁶⁸ Finally, Adonai will bring you back in ships to Egypt, the place of which I said to you, ‘You will never ever see it again’; and there you will try to sell yourselves as slaves to your enemies, but no one will buy you.”

^69 (29:1) These are the words of the covenant which Adonai ordered Moshe to make with the people of Isra’el in the land of Mo’av, in addition to the covenant which he made with them in Horev.

29 (vii) ⁽²⁾ Then Moshe summoned all Isra’el and said to them, “You saw everything Adonai did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his servants and to all his land;

¹⁷ “As the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise God had made to Avraham, the number of our people in Egypt increased greatly, ¹⁸ until there arose another king over Egypt who had no knowledge of Yosef.^{[a] 19} With cruel cunning this man forced our fathers to put their newborn babies outside their homes, so that they would not survive.

²⁰ “It was then that Moshe was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. For three months he was reared in his father’s house; ²¹ and when he was put out of his home, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. ²² So Moshe was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became both a powerful speaker and a man of action.

²³ “But when he was forty years old, the thought came to him to visit his brothers, the people of Isra’el. ²⁴ On seeing one of them being mistreated, he went to his defense and took revenge by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they didn’t understand. ²⁶ When he appeared the next day, as they were fighting, and tried to make peace between them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers! Why do you want to hurt each other?’ ²⁷ the one who was mistreating his fellow pushed Moshe away and said, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us? ²⁸ Do you want to kill me, the way you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’^{[b] 29} On hearing this, Moshe fled the country and became an exile in the land of Midyan, where he had two sons.