Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 84
For the Music Director. According to The Gittith. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
1 How lovely is Your dwelling place,
O Lord of Hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, even faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my body cry out
for the living God.
3 Yes, the sparrow has found a home
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
even at Your altars,
O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in Your house;
they continually praise You. Selah
5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
in whose heart are the paths to Zion.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they makes it a spring;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
every one of them appears in Zion before God.
Failures of Judah
9 Oh, that my head were waters
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 Oh, that I had in the wilderness
a lodging place of wayfaring men,
that I might leave my people
and go from them!
For they all are adulterers,
an assembly of treacherous men.
3 They bend their tongues like their bow;
lies and not truth prevail upon the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know Me,
says the Lord.
4 Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor,
and do not trust in any brother;
for every brother supplants,
and every neighbor walks about with slanders.
5 Everyone deceives his neighbor
and does not speak the truth.
They have taught their tongue to speak lies;
they weary themselves in committing iniquity.
6 Your habitation is in the midst of deceit;
through deceit they refuse to know Me,
says the Lord.
7 Therefore thus says the Lord of Hosts:
Now, I will refine them and assay them;
for what else shall I do
for the daughter of My people?
8 Their tongue is a deadly arrow;
it speaks deceit.
One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth,
but in his heart he lies in wait.
9 Shall I not punish them for these things?
says the Lord.
Shall not My soul be avenged
on such a nation as this?
10 For the mountains I will take up a weeping and wailing,
and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation,
because they are burned up so that no one can pass through them;
nor can men hear the lowing of the cattle.
Both the fowl of the heavens and the beast have fled;
they are gone.
11 I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins
and a den of jackals;
and I will make the cities of Judah desolate,
without an inhabitant.
12 Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord has spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and burned up like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?
13 And the Lord said: Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, nor walked in it, 14 but have walked after the imagination of their own heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them. 15 Therefore thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood and give them water of gall to drink. 16 I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.
The Last Days
3 Know this: In the last days perilous times will come. 2 Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 without natural affection, trucebreakers, slanderers, unrestrained, fierce, despisers of those who are good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Turn away from such people.
6 Those of this nature creep into houses and captivate silly women who are burdened with sins and led away with various desires, 7 always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds and worthless concerning the faith. 9 But they shall proceed no further, for their folly will be revealed to everyone, as theirs also was.
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.