Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Hallelujah, God helps weak people^[a]

Bad trouble will come

⁸ It will be very bad for you people who buy many houses for yourselves. You also buy land to join to the land that you already have. Then there is no more land left for anyone else. You are the only people who remain on the land.

⁹ I have heard the Lord Almighty promise this: ‘All these great, beautiful houses will certainly become empty. There will be nobody to live in them.

¹⁰ Large vineyards will give only a few bottles of wine. If you plant ten bags of seed, you will only get one bag of grain as your harvest.’

¹¹ It will be bad for you people who like to get up early to start drinking. You continue to drink late into the night, until you are very drunk.

¹² You have wild parties with plenty of music and wine. You make music with your lyres, harps, tambourines and flutes. But you do not understand the things that the Lord is doing. You do not see the things that he has made.

¹³ Because of that, my people will go into exile in countries far away. They do not know God. Their leaders will die because they have nothing to eat. All the other people will have nothing to drink.

¹⁴ So the deep hole of death will be hungry! It will open wide to eat the people of Jerusalem. The leaders and the people will go down into it. It will eat up those who are happy at their wild parties in Jerusalem.

¹⁵ So the Lord will bring its people down low. Its proud people will become ashamed.

¹⁶ But the Lord Almighty will be lifted up high by his justice. People will know that he is holy when he comes as judge.

¹⁷ Then lambs will find good grass to eat, as they do in their own fields. Fat sheep will find food to eat among the stones of the old houses.

¹⁸ It will be very bad for you people who are always deceiving others. You cannot leave your sins behind, like someone who pulls a cart with a rope.

¹⁹ People like that laugh at God. They say, ‘The Lord should do something quickly! We want to see what he can do. The holy God of Israel should do what he has decided to do. Then we will really know what that is!’

²⁰ It will be very bad for people who call evil things good. And they call good things evil. They say, ‘It is light’, when it is dark. And they say, ‘It is dark’, when it is light. They say that bitter things are sweet. And they say that sweet things are bitter.

²¹ It will be very bad for people who think that they are wise. They think that they are very clever.

²² It will be very bad for people who think that they are famous because they can drink a lot of wine. They think that they are very brave to mix strong drinks together.

²³ If people like that receive a bribe, they will not say that wicked people are guilty. They also refuse to say that righteous people are not guilty.

Jesus talks about people who give to God

⁴¹ Many people were giving their gifts for the temple. There was a box for money there. People threw their coins into it. Jesus sat near the box and he watched them. Many rich people put a lot of money into the box. ⁴² But then a woman came there. Her husband had died and she was very poor. She put two small coins that had only a little value into the box.

⁴³ Jesus asked his disciples to come to him. He said to them, ‘I tell you this: This poor woman has put a better gift into the box than all the other people have put in there. ⁴⁴ All those rich people have plenty of money. They only put a small part of that into the box. But this woman has almost nothing. She put in all the money that she had. That was all the money that she needed to live.’