Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁸¹ My soul languishes and grows faint for Your salvation, but I hope in Your word.

⁸² My eyes fail, watching for [the fulfillment of] Your promise. I say, When will You comfort me?

⁸³ For I have become like a bottle [a wineskin blackened and shriveled] in the smoke [in which it hangs], yet do I not forget Your statutes.

⁸⁴ How many are the days of Your servant [which he must endure]? When will You judge those who pursue and persecute me?^(A)

⁸⁵ The godless and arrogant have dug pitfalls for me, men who do not conform to Your law.

⁸⁶ All Your commandments are faithful and sure. [The godless] pursue and persecute me with falsehood; help me [Lord]!

⁸⁷ They had almost consumed me upon earth, but I forsook not Your precepts.

⁸⁸ According to Your steadfast love give life to me; then I will keep the testimony of Your mouth [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying it].

16 The word of the Lord came also to me, saying,

² You shall not take a wife or have sons and daughters in this place [Jerusalem].

³ For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place and concerning the mothers who bore them and the fathers who begot them in this land:

⁴ They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like dung upon the face of the ground. They shall perish and be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the fowls of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

⁵ For thus says the Lord: Enter not into the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan [the dead], for I have taken away My peace from this people, says the Lord, even My steadfast love and loving-kindness and tender mercy.

⁶ Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them or cut themselves or make themselves bald for them.

⁷ Neither shall men prepare food for the mourners to comfort them for the dead; nor shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother.

⁸ And you [Jeremiah] shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink.

⁹ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will cause to cease from this place before your very eyes and in your days the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰ And when you tell these people all these words and they inquire of you, Why has the Lord decreed all this enormous evil against us? Or, What is our iniquity? Or, What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?

¹¹ Then you shall say to them, [It is] because your fathers have forsaken Me, says the Lord, and have walked after other gods and have served and worshiped them and have forsaken Me and have not kept My law,

¹² And because you have done worse than your fathers. For behold, every one of you walks after the stubbornness of his own evil heart, so that you do not listen to and obey Me.

¹³ Therefore I will cast you out of this land [of Judah] into the land [of the Babylonians] neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor there.

⁷ So be patient, brethren, [as you wait] till the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits expectantly for the precious harvest from the land. [See how] he keeps up his patient [vigil] over it until it receives the early and late rains.

⁸ So you also must be patient. Establish your hearts [strengthen and confirm them in the final certainty], for the coming of the Lord is very near.

⁹ Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you [yourselves] may not be judged. Look! The Judge is [already] standing at the very door.

¹⁰ [As] an example of suffering and ill-treatment together with patience, brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord [as His messengers].

¹¹ You know how we call those blessed (happy) who were steadfast [who endured]. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the Lord’s [purpose and how He richly blessed him in the] end, inasmuch as the Lord is full of pity and compassion and tenderness and mercy.^(A)

¹² But above all [things], my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath; but let your yes be [a simple] yes, and your no be [a simple] no, so that you may not sin and fall under condemnation.