Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ Hear, O My people, and I speak, O Israel, and I testify against thee, God, thy God [am] I.

⁸ Not for thy sacrifices do I reprove thee, Yea, thy burnt-offerings [Are] before Me continually.

⁹ I take not from thy house a bullock, From thy folds he goats.

¹⁰ For Mine [is] every beast of the forest, The cattle on the hills of oxen.

¹¹ I have known every fowl of the mountains, And the wild beast of the field [is] with Me.

¹² If I am hungry I tell not to thee, For Mine [is] the world and its fulness.

¹³ Do I eat the flesh of bulls, And drink the blood of he-goats?

¹⁴ Sacrifice to God confession, And complete to the Most High thy vows.

¹⁵ And call Me in a day of adversity, I deliver thee, and thou honourest Me.

⁷ Remembered hath Jerusalem [In] the days of her affliction and her mournings, all her desirable things that were from the days of old, In the falling of her people into the hand of an adversary, And she hath no helper; Seen her have adversaries, They have laughed at her cessation.

⁸ A sin hath Jerusalem sinned, Therefore impure she hath become, All who honoured her have esteemed her lightly, For they have seen her nakedness, Yea, she herself hath sighed and turneth backward.

⁹ Her uncleanness [is] in her skirts, She hath not remembered her latter end, And she cometh down wonderfully, There is no comforter for her. See, O Jehovah, mine affliction, For exerted himself hath an enemy.

¹⁰ His hand spread out hath an adversary On all her desirable things, For she hath seen -- Nations have entered her sanctuary, Concerning which Thou didst command, `They do not come into the assembly to thee.'

¹¹ All her people are sighing -- seeking bread, They have given their desirable things For food to refresh the body; See, O Jehovah, and behold attentively, For I have been lightly esteemed.

¹⁷ These are wells without water, and clouds by a tempest driven, to whom the thick gloom of the darkness to the age hath been kept;

¹⁸ for overswellings of vanity speaking, they do entice in desires of the flesh -- lasciviousnesses, those who had truly escaped from those conducting themselves in error,

¹⁹ liberty to them promising, themselves being servants of the corruption, for by whom any one hath been overcome, to this one also he hath been brought to servitude,

²⁰ for, if having escaped from the pollutions of the world, in the acknowledging of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and by these again being entangled, they have been overcome, become to them hath the last things worse than the first,

²¹ for it were better to them not to have acknowledged the way of the righteousness, than having acknowledged [it], to turn back from the holy command delivered to them,

²² and happened to them hath that of the true similitude; `A dog did turn back upon his own vomit,' and, `A sow having bathed herself -- to rolling in mire.'