Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

³ How long will you all continue to attack me?
I am just one man,
    and you want to kill me!
You want to knock me down,
    like a weak wall or a fence that is falling down.^[a]
4 You only want to push me off my high place.
You love to tell lies to deceive people.
When you say words to bless people,
    you are cursing them in your thoughts.
Selah.
⁵ I must be patient as I wait for God to help me.
    He is the only one that I can trust for help.
⁶ He alone is the strong rock
    where I can hide and be safe.
With him, nothing will make me fall.
⁷ It is God who has kept me safe,
    and he has made me great.
He is the strong place
    where I can hide and be safe.
⁸ Yes, my friends,
    you should always trust in God!
Tell him about all the troubles in your thoughts.
    God is our safe place to hide!
Selah.
⁹ People are only as light as a breath!
    Whoever they are, they are not important.
If you try to weigh them, all together,
    they weigh less than a breath of air.^[b]
10 Do not cheat people,
    or rob them to get money!
That will not give you anything
    that you can trust to help you.
Even if you become very rich,
    do not think it is important.
¹¹ I have heard God speak his truth
    once, no twice!
God has great strength.
¹² And also, my Lord, you have a faithful love.
You pay back to everybody what they should get
    for the things that they have done.

² The Lord is ready to accuse Judah's people in a court of law.
He will punish Jacob's descendants for the bad way that they live.
He will punish them as their sins deserve.
³ Before Jacob was born, he cheated his brother.
He did that when they were both inside their mother's body.^[a]
When Jacob became a man, he fought against God.
⁴ He fought against an angel and he won.
He wept and he asked God to bless him.
There at Bethel, Jacob met with God. God spoke to him there.
⁵ This was the Lord God Almighty!
We know him as the Lord, his special name.

⁶ So now, you must return to your God.
You must show faithful love for each other.
You must judge people in a fair way.
You must be patient. Trust God to come and help you.

⁷ Your traders love to cheat people.
They use false weights and measures.
⁸ Ephraim's people proudly say,
‘We are rich! We have become very rich!
In all the ways that we have found riches,
nobody can accuse us.
We have not really done anything that is a sin!’

‘Remember that I am the Lord your God!
I brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves.
Now I will make you live in tents again,
as you did before, in the wilderness.
¹⁰ I gave my messages to the prophets.
I showed them many visions.^[b]
I used stories for the prophets to teach the people about me.
¹¹ The people in Gilead do wicked things.^[c]
They will become as useless as their idols.
At Gilgal, the people offer bulls as sacrifices on their altars.
Those altars will be like heaps of stones in a farmer's field.’

¹² Jacob ran away to the land of Aram.^[d]
He worked there as a shepherd so that he could get a wife.
¹³ The Lord used a prophet to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.
He used a prophet to keep them safe in the wilderness.
¹⁴ But Ephraim's people have made the Lord very angry.
He will punish them with death for their terrible sins.
Their Lord will pay them back as they deserve,
because they have insulted him.