Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

37 Never envy the wicked! ² Soon they fade away like grass and disappear. ³ Trust in the Lord instead. Be kind and good to others; then you will live safely here in the land and prosper, feeding in safety.

⁴ Be delighted with the Lord. Then he will give you all your heart’s desires. ⁵ Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will. ⁶ Your innocence will be clear to everyone. He will vindicate you with the blazing light of justice shining down as from the noonday sun.

⁷ Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him to act. Don’t be envious of evil men who prosper.

⁸ Stop your anger! Turn off your wrath. Don’t fret and worry—it only leads to harm. ⁹ For the wicked shall be destroyed, but those who trust the Lord shall be given every blessing.

⁸ Then the Assyrian general returned to his king at Libnah (for he received word that he had left Lachish). ⁹ Soon afterwards news reached the king that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was coming to attack him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent back this message to King Hezekiah:

¹⁰ “Don’t be fooled by that god you trust in. Don’t believe it when he says that I won’t conquer Jerusalem. ¹¹ You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone; they have completely destroyed everything. Why would you be any different? ¹² Have the gods of the other nations delivered them—such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Eden in the land of Telassar? The former kings of Assyria destroyed them all! ¹³ What happened to the king of Hamoth and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

¹⁴ Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, read it, and went over to the Temple and spread it out before the Lord. ¹⁵ Then he prayed this prayer:

“O Lord God of Israel, sitting on your throne high above the angels,^[a] you alone are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You created the heavens and the earth. ¹⁶ Bend low, O Lord, and listen. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to this man’s defiance of the living God. ¹⁷ Lord, it is true that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all those nations ¹⁸ and have burned their idol-gods. But they weren’t gods at all; they were destroyed because they were only things that men had made of wood and stone. ¹⁹ O Lord our God, we plead with you to save us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone are God.”

²⁰ Then Isaiah sent this message to Hezekiah: “The Lord God of Israel says, ‘I have heard you!

³⁵ That very night the Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian troops, and dead bodies were seen all across the landscape in the morning.

³⁶ Then King Sennacherib returned to Nineveh; ³⁷ and as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him. They escaped into eastern Turkey—the land of Ararat—and his son Esarhaddon became the new king.

¹² “Write this letter to the leader of the church in Pergamos:

“This message is from him who wields the sharp and double-bladed sword. ¹³ I am fully aware that you live in the city where Satan’s throne is, at the center of satanic worship; and yet you have remained loyal to me and refused to deny me even when Antipas, my faithful witness, was martyred among you by Satan’s devotees.

¹⁴ “And yet I have a few things against you. You tolerate some among you who do as Balaam did when he taught Balak how to ruin the people of Israel by involving them in sexual sin and encouraging them to go to idol feasts. ¹⁵ Yes, you have some of these very same followers of Balaam^[a] among you!

¹⁶ “Change your mind and attitude, or else I will come to you suddenly and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

¹⁷ “Let everyone who can hear, listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches: Everyone who is victorious shall eat of the hidden manna, the secret nourishment from heaven; and I will give to each a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one else knows except the one receiving it.

¹⁸ “Write this letter to the leader of the church in Thyatira:

“This is a message from the Son of God, whose eyes penetrate like flames of fire, whose feet are like glowing brass.

¹⁹ “I am aware of all your good deeds—your kindness to the poor, your gifts and service to them; also I know your love and faith and patience, and I can see your constant improvement in all these things.

²⁰ “Yet I have this against you: You are permitting that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach my servants that sex sin is not a serious matter; she urges them to practice immorality and to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. ²¹ I gave her time to change her mind and attitude, but she refused. ²² Pay attention now to what I am saying: I will lay her upon a sickbed of intense affliction, along with all her immoral followers,^[b] unless they turn again to me, repenting of their sin with her; ²³ and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches shall know that I am he who searches deep within men’s hearts, and minds; I will give to each of you whatever you deserve.

^24-25 “As for the rest of you in Thyatira who have not followed this false teaching (‘deeper truths,’ as they call them—depths of Satan, really), I will ask nothing further of you; only hold tightly to what you have until I come.

²⁶ “To everyone who overcomes—who to the very end keeps on doing things that please me—I will give power over the nations. ²⁷ You will rule them with a rod of iron just as my Father gave me the authority to rule them; they will be shattered like a pot of clay that is broken into tiny pieces. ²⁸ And I will give you the Morning Star!

²⁹ “Let all who can hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.