Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Psalm of Asaph.

73 Truly God is good to Israel, to such as are of a pure heart.

² But as for me, my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped;

³ For I was envious at the arrogant, seeing the prosperity of the wicked.

⁴ For they have no pangs in their death, and their body is well nourished;

⁵ They have not the hardships of mankind, neither are they plagued like [other] men:

⁶ Therefore pride encompasseth them as a neck-chain, violence covereth them [as] a garment;

⁷ Their eyes stand out from fatness, they exceed the imaginations of their heart:

⁸ They mock and speak wickedly of oppression, they speak loftily:

⁹ They set their mouth in the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth.

¹⁰ Therefore his people turn hither, and waters in fulness are wrung out to them.

¹¹ And they say, How can God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High?

¹² Behold, these are the wicked, and they prosper in the world: they heap up riches.

¹³ Truly have I purified my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency:

¹⁴ For all the day have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.

¹⁵ If I said, I will speak thus, behold, I should be faithless to the generation of thy children.

¹⁶ When I thought to be able to know this, it was a grievous task in mine eyes;

¹⁷ Until I went into the sanctuaries of God; [then] understood I their end.

¹⁸ Truly thou settest them in slippery places, thou castest them down in ruins.

¹⁹ How are they suddenly made desolate! they pass away, consumed with terrors.

²⁰ As a dream, when one awaketh, wilt thou, Lord, on arising despise their image.

²¹ When my heart was in a ferment, and I was pricked in my reins,

²² Then I was brutish and knew nothing; I was [as] a beast with thee.

²³ Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden my right hand;

²⁴ Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and after the glory, thou wilt receive me.

²⁵ Whom have I in the heavens? and there is none upon earth I desire beside thee.

²⁶ My flesh and my heart faileth: God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever.

²⁷ For behold, they that are far from thee shall perish; thou destroyest every one that goeth a whoring from thee.

²⁸ But as for me, it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord Jehovah, that I may declare all thy works.

3 And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

² Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I shall bid thee.

³ And Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

⁴ And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!

⁵ And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

⁶ And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁷ And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water;

⁸ and let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

⁹ Who knoweth but that God will turn and repent, and will turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

¹⁰ And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did [it] not.

⁸ But let not this one thing be hidden from you, beloved, that one day with [the] Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹ [The] Lord does not delay his promise, as some account of delay, but is longsuffering towards you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

¹⁰ But the day of [the] Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, and [the] elements, burning with heat, shall be dissolved, and [the] earth and the works in it shall be burnt up.

¹¹ All these things then being to be dissolved, what ought ye to be in holy conversation and godliness,

¹² waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, by reason of which [the] heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and [the] elements, burning with heat, shall melt?

¹³ But, according to his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.