Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹² So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.

¹³ Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long—? Revoke Your sentence and be compassionate and at ease toward Your servants.

¹⁴ O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

¹⁵ Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us and to the years in which we have suffered evil.

¹⁶ Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children.

¹⁷ And let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands—yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it.

²² These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and He spoke not again [added no more]. He wrote them on two tables of stone and gave them to me [Moses].

²³ And when you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders;

²⁴ And you said, Behold, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire; we have this day seen that God speaks with man and man still lives.

²⁵ Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, we shall die.

²⁶ For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire, as we have, and lived?

²⁷ Go near [Moses] and hear all that the Lord our God will say. And speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you; and we will hear and do it.

²⁸ And the Lord heard your words when you spoke to me and the Lord said to me, I have heard the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have said well all that they have spoken.

²⁹ Oh, that they had such a [mind and] heart in them always [reverently] to fear Me and keep all My commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children forever!

³⁰ Go and say to them, Return to your tents.

³¹ But you [Moses], stand here by Me, and I will tell you all the commandments and the statutes and the precepts which you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess.

³² Therefore you people shall be watchful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

³³ You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land which you shall possess.

4 Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered [today], let us be afraid [^[a]to distrust it], lest any of you should ^[b]think he has come too late and has come short of [reaching] it.

² For indeed we have had the glad tidings [Gospel of God] proclaimed to us just as truly as they [the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them]; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with ^[c]the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; ^[d]neither were they united in faith with the ones [Joshua and Caleb] who heard (did believe).

³ For we who have believed (adhered to and trusted in and relied on God) do enter that rest, ^[e]in accordance with His declaration that those [who did not believe] should not enter when He said, As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest; and this He said although [His] works had been completed and prepared [and waiting for all who would believe] from the foundation of the world.^(A)

⁴ For in a certain place He has said this about the seventh day: And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.^(B)

⁵ And [they forfeited their part in it, for] in this [passage] He said, They shall not enter My rest.^(C)

⁶ Seeing then that the promise remains over [from past times] for some to enter that rest, and that those who formerly were given the good news about it and the opportunity, failed to appropriate it and did not enter because of disobedience,

⁷ Again He sets a definite day, [a new] Today, [and gives another opportunity of securing that rest] saying through David after so long a time in the words already quoted, Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts.^(D)

⁸ [This mention of a rest was not a reference to their entering into Canaan.] For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not speak afterward about another day.

⁹ So then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest reserved for the [true] people of God;

¹⁰ For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors ^[f]peculiarly His own.^(E)

¹¹ Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell].