Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Praise to the Lord for His Fidelity to Israel.

¹⁵ “So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten ^[a]calf (idol). You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.^{(A) 17} So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and smashed them before your very eyes! ¹⁸ Then, as before, I fell down before the Lord for [another] forty days and forty nights; I did not eat food or drink water, because of all the sin you had committed by doing ^[b]what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger. ¹⁹ For I was afraid of the anger and ^[c]absolute fury which the Lord held against you, [enough divine fury] to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also. ²⁰ The Lord was very angry with Aaron, angry [enough] to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ²¹ I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it in the fire and thoroughly crushed it, grinding the metal thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

²² “At Taberah also and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath. ²³ And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land which I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you did not believe and rely on Him, nor did you obey His voice. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the Lord from the [first] day that I knew you.

²¹ In that very hour He was overjoyed and rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and He said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things [relating to salvation] from the ^[a]wise and intelligent, and have revealed them to infants [the childlike and untaught]. Yes, Father, for this way was [Your gracious will and choice, and was] well-pleasing in Your sight. ²² All things have been transferred and turned over to Me by My Father and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.”

²³ Then turning to His disciples, Jesus said privately, “Blessed [joyful, spiritually enlightened, and favored by God] are the eyes which see what you see,^{(A) 24} for I say to you that many prophets and kings longed to see what you see, and they did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”