Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 78
A Contemplative Maskil of Asaph.
1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter insightful sayings of old,
3 which we have heard and known,
what our fathers have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their children,
but will tell the coming generation
the praises of the Lord,
and His strength, and the wonderful works that He has done.
52 Then He led out His own people like sheep
and guided them in the wilderness like a flock;
53 He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid,
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
54 He brought them to the border of His holy land,
to the mountain that His right hand had acquired.
55 He cast out the nations also before them,
and divided for them their tribal allotments,
and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.
56 Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God,
and did not keep His commands,
57 but turned back and acted unfaithfully like their fathers;
they turned aside like a deceitful bow.
58 For they provoked Him to anger with their high places
and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images.
59 When God heard this, He was full of wrath
and greatly rejected Israel
60 so that He left the tabernacle at Shiloh,
the tent where He lived among people,
61 and delivered His strength to captivity
and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
62 He gave His people over also to the sword;
He was enraged with His inheritance.
63 The fire consumed their young men,
and their maidens were not given to marriage in song.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
and their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awoke as one out of sleep,
and like a mighty man who shouts because of wine.
66 He routed His enemies back,
and He made them a perpetual reproach.
67 Moreover, He rejected the tent of Joseph,
and He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
68 but chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion which He loves.
69 He built His sanctuary like the high heavens,
like the earth that He has established perpetually.
70 He chose David His servant
and took him from the sheepfolds;
71 from following the nursing ewes He brought him
to shepherd Jacob His people,
and Israel His inheritance.
72 So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart
and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands.
13 So in the evening the quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning a layer of dew was surrounding the camp. 14 When the layer of dew evaporated, on the surface of the wilderness there lay a small flaky thing, as fine as the frost on the ground. 15 When the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them, “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded, ‘Every man is to gather of it according to what he will eat, an omer[a] for every man, according to the number of your people. Every man should take for them for whoever lives in his tent.’ ”
17 The children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some less. 18 When they measured it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing left over, and he that gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according what he could eat.
19 Moses said to them, “Let no man leave any of it until the morning.”
20 However, they did not listen to Moses, and some of them left part of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank, and Moses was angry with them.
21 So they gathered it every morning, every man according to what he could eat. And when the sun got hot, it melted. 22 Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers[b] per man, and then all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses. 23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Tomorrow is the Sabbath, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake that which you will bake today, and boil that you will boil, and all that which remains over lay up for yourselves to be kept until the morning.’ ”
24 So they laid it up until the morning, just as Moses commanded, and it did not stink, nor was there any worm in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.”
Wrath and Mercy of God
19 You will then say to me, “Why does He yet find fault? For who can resist His will?” 20 Rather, O man, who are you to answer back to God? Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does the potter not have power over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
22 What if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He previously prepared for glory, 24 even us, whom He has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? 25 As indeed He says in Hosea:
“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’
and her who was not beloved, ‘Beloved,’ ”[a]
26 and,
“In the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
there they shall be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”[b]
27 Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the children of Israel be like the sand of the sea,
a remnant shall be saved.[c]
28 For He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness,
because the Lord will make a quick work upon the earth.”[d]
29 And as Isaiah previously said:
“Unless the Lord of Hosts
had left us a seed,
we would have become like Sodom,
and been made like Gomorrah.”[e]
The Holy Bible, Modern English Version. Copyright © 2014 by Military Bible Association. Published and distributed by Charisma House.