Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁵ Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, extend to the skies, and Your faithfulness to the clouds.

⁶ Your righteousness is like the mountains of God, Your judgments are like the great deep. O Lord, You preserve man and beast.

⁷ How precious is Your steadfast love, O God! The children of men take refuge and put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.

⁸ They relish and feast on the abundance of Your house; and You cause them to drink of the stream of Your pleasures.

⁹ For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light do we see light.^(A)

¹⁰ O continue Your loving-kindness to those who know You, Your righteousness (salvation) to the upright in heart.

3 That is to say, If a man puts away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, will he return to her again? [Of course not!] Would not that land [where such a thing happened] be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot [against Me] with many lovers—yet would you now return to Me? says the Lord [or do you even think to return to Me?]

² Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see. Where have you not been adulterously lain with? By the wayside you have sat waiting for lovers [eager for idolatry], like an Arabian [desert tribesman who waits to plunder] in the wilderness; and you have polluted the land with your vile harlotry and your wickedness (unfaithfulness and disobedience to God).

³ Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no spring rain. Yet you have the brow of a prostitute; you refuse to be ashamed.

⁴ Have you not just now cried to Me: My Father, You were the guide and companion of my youth?

⁵ Will He retain His anger forever? Will He keep it to the end? Behold, you have so spoken, but you have done all the evil things you could and have had your way and have carried them through.

¹⁸ However, when Simon saw that the [Holy] Spirit was imparted through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he brought money and offered it to them,

¹⁹ Saying, Grant me also this power and authority, in order that anyone on whom I place my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.

²⁰ But Peter said to him, Destruction overtake your money and you, because you imagined you could obtain the [free] gift of God with money!

²¹ You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is all wrong in God’s sight [it is not straightforward or right or true before God].^(A)

²² So repent of this depravity and wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that, if possible, this ^[a]contriving thought and purpose of your heart may be removed and disregarded and forgiven you.

²³ For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in ^[b]a bond forged by iniquity [to fetter souls].^(B)

²⁴ And Simon answered, Pray for me [beseech the Lord, both of you], that nothing of what you have said may befall me!