Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Answered Prayer for Deliverance from Adversaries
For the music director, with stringed instruments.
A maskil of David,
when the Ziphites went and said to Saul,
“Is not David hiding himself among us?”[a]
54 O God, by your name save me,
and by your power vindicate me.
2 O God, hear my prayer;
heed the words of my mouth.
3 For foreigners have risen against me,
and ruthless men seek my life.
They have not set God before them. Selah
4 See, God is my helper;
The Lord is with those who sustain my life.[b]
5 He will repay[c] my enemies for their[d] evil;
in your faithfulness destroy them.
6 I will freely sacrifice to you;
I will give thanks to your name,
O Yahweh, because it is good.
7 Because he has delivered me from all trouble,
and my eye has looked with satisfaction on my enemies.
5 So the king of Assyria went up in all the land, then he went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years.
Israel Deported to Assyria and the Reasons It Fell
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported Israel to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, in Habor, in the river regions of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 7 Now this happened because the Israelites[a] had sinned against Yahweh their God when he brought them up from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh the king of Egypt and they feared other gods. 8 They walked in the statutes of the nations whom Yahweh had driven out from before the Israelites,[b] which the kings of Israel had introduced. 9 The Israelites[c] secretly did things which were not right, against Yahweh their God; they built high places for themselves in all their towns, from the watchtower up to the fortified city. 10 They set up for themselves stone pillars and poles of Asherah worship on every high hill and under every green tree. 11 They burned incense there on all the high places, like the nations which Yahweh deported before them, and they did evil things to provoke Yahweh. 12 They served idols which Yahweh had said to them, “You shall not do this thing!” 13 Yahweh warned Israel and Judah by the hand of his every prophet, with every seer saying, “Turn from all of your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my ordinances, according to all the law which I commanded your ancestors,[d] which I sent to you by the hand of my servants the prophets.” 14 But they did not listen and they stiffened their necks, like the necks of their ancestors[e] who did not believe in Yahweh their God. 15 They rejected his statutes, his covenant which he made[f] with their ancestors,[g] and his warnings which he gave to them; and they went after the idols, became vain, and went after all the nations which were all around them, which Yahweh had commanded them not to do as they did. 16 They abandoned all the commands of Yahweh their God and made for themselves two molten calf-shaped idols; they made a pole of Asherah worship and bowed down to the army of the heavens and served Baal. 17 They made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, they practiced divination and read omens, and they sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of Yahweh to provoke him. 18 So Yahweh was very angry with Israel and he removed them from his presence; none remained except the tribe of Judah alone.
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees—hypocrites!—because you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets!’ 31 Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets! 32 And you—fill up the measure of your fathers! 33 Serpents! Offspring of vipers! How will you escape from the condemnation to hell? 34 For this reason, behold, I am sending to you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and will pursue from town to town, 35 so that upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel up to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation!
The Lament over Jerusalem
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How many times I wanted to gather your children together the way[a] a hen gathers her young together under her[b] wings, and you were not willing! 38 Behold, your house has been left to you desolate! 39 For I tell you, you will never see me from now on until you say,
‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’”[c]
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