◀ All Reading Plans / Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary) / Psalm 123 (Our eyes look to you O God); Jeremiah 7:27-34 (Disobeying the voice of the Lord); Matthew 8:18-22 (The cost of discipleship) (New English Translation)

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July 3, 2027

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with thematically matched Old and New Testament readings.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 123

Psalm 123^[a]

A song of ascents.^[b]

123 I look up^[c] toward you,
the one enthroned^[d] in heaven.
²Look, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female servant look to the hand of her mistress,^[e]
so our eyes will look to the Lord, our God, until he shows us favor.
³Show us favor, O Lord, show us favor!
For we have had our fill of humiliation, and then some.^[f]
⁴We have had our fill^[g]
of the taunts of the self-assured,
of the contempt of the proud.

Jeremiah 7:27-34

²⁷Then the Lord said to me,^[a] “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not respond to you. ²⁸So tell them: ‘This is a nation that has not obeyed the Lord their God and has not accepted correction. Faithfulness is nowhere to be found in it. These people do not even profess it anymore.^[b] ²⁹So mourn,^[c] you people of this nation.^[d] Cut off your hair and throw it away. Sing a song of mourning on the hilltops. For the Lord has decided to reject^[e] and forsake this generation that has provoked his wrath!’”^[f]

³⁰The Lord says, “I have rejected them because^[g] the people of Judah have done what I consider evil.^[h] They have set up their disgusting idols in the temple^[i] that I have claimed for my own^[j] and have defiled it. ³¹They have also built places of worship^[k] in a place called Topheth^[l] in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters by fire. That is something I never commanded them to do! Indeed, it never even entered my mind to command such a thing!^[m] ³²So, watch out!”^[n] says the Lord. “The time will soon come when people will no longer call those places Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom. But they will call that valley^[o] the Valley of Slaughter, and they will bury so many people in Topheth they will run out of room.^[p] ³³Then the dead bodies of these people will be left on the ground for the birds and wild animals to eat.^[q] There will not be any survivors to scare them away. ³⁴I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness or the glad celebration of brides and grooms throughout the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. For the whole land will become a desolate wasteland.”

Footnotes

Jeremiah 7:27 tn The words “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift from the second and third person plural pronouns in vv. 21-26 to the second singular in this verse. The words are supplied in the translation for clarity.
Jeremiah 7:28 tn Heb “Faithfulness has vanished. It is cut off from their lips.”sn For the need for faithfulness see 5:1, 3.
Jeremiah 7:29 tn The word “mourn” is not in the text. It is supplied in the translation for clarity to explain the significance of the words “Cut your hair and throw it away.”sn See Mic 1:16 and Job 1:20 for other examples of this practice that was involved in mourning.
Jeremiah 7:29 tn The words, “you people of this nation” are not in the text. Many English versions supply “Jerusalem.” The address shifts from second masculine singular addressing Jeremiah (vv. 27-28a) to second feminine singular. It causes less disruption in the flow of the context to see the nation as a whole addressed here as a feminine singular entity (as, e.g., in 2:19, 23; 3:2, 3; 6:26) than to introduce a new entity, Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 7:29 tn The verbs here are the Hebrew scheduling perfects. For this use of the perfect see GKC 312 §106.m.
Jeremiah 7:29 tn Heb “the generation of his wrath.”
Jeremiah 7:30 tn The words “I have rejected them” are not in the Hebrew text, which merely says “because.” These words are supplied in the translation to show more clearly the connection to the preceding.
Jeremiah 7:30 tn Heb “have done the evil in my eyes.”
Jeremiah 7:30 sn Cf., e.g., 2 Kgs 21:3, 5, 7; 23:4, 6 and Ezek 8:3, 5, 10-12, 16. Manasseh had desecrated the temple by building altars, cult symbols, and idols in it. Josiah had purged the temple of these pagan elements. But it is obvious from both Jeremiah and Ezekiel that they had been replaced shortly after Josiah’s death. They were a primary cause of Judah’s guilt and punishment (see beside this passage, 19:5; 32:34-35).
Jeremiah 7:30 tn Heb “the house that is called by my name.” Cf. 7:10, 11, 14 and see the translator’s note at 7:10 for the explanation for this rendering.
Jeremiah 7:31 tn Heb “high places.”sn These places of worship were essentially open-air shrines often located on hills or wooded heights. They were generally connected with pagan worship and equipped with altars of sacrifice and of incense and cult objects such as wooden poles and stone pillars that were symbols of the god and/or goddess worshiped at the sight. The Israelites were commanded to tear down these Canaanite places of worship (Num 33:52), but they did not do so, often taking over the site for the worship of Yahweh but even then incorporating some of the pagan cult objects and ritual into their worship of Yahweh (1 Kgs 12:31, 32; 14:23). The prophets were especially opposed to these places, both to this kind of syncretism (Hos 10:8; Amos 7:9) and to the pagan worship that was often practiced at them (Jer 7:31; 19:5; 32:35).
Jeremiah 7:31 tn Heb “the high places of [or in] Topheth.”sn The noun Topheth is generally explained as an artificial formation of a word related to the Aramaic word for “cooking stove” combined with the vowels for the word for “shame.” Hence, Jewish piety viewed it as a very shameful act, one that was contrary to the law (see Lev 18:21; 20:2-6). Child sacrifice was practiced during the reigns of the wicked kings Ahaz and Manasseh and apparently during Jeremiah’s day (cf. 2 Kgs 16:3; 21:6; Jer 32:35).
Jeremiah 7:31 tn Heb “It never entered my heart.” The words “to command such a thing” do not appear in the Hebrew but are added for the sake of clarity.
Jeremiah 7:32 tn Heb “Therefore, behold!”
Jeremiah 7:32 tn Heb “it will no longer be said ‘Topheth’ or ‘the Valley of Ben Hinnom’ but ‘the valley of slaughter.’”
Jeremiah 7:32 tn Heb “And they will bury in Topheth so there is not room.”
Jeremiah 7:33 tn Heb “Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.”

Matthew 8:18-22

Challenging Professed Followers

¹⁸Now when Jesus saw a large crowd^[a] around him, he gave orders to go to the other side of the lake.^[b] ¹⁹Then^[c] an expert in the law^[d] came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”^[e] ²⁰Jesus said to him, “Foxes have dens, and the birds in the sky^[f] have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”^[g] ²¹Another^[h] of the^[i] disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” ²²But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”^[j]

Footnotes

Matthew 8:18 tc ‡ Codex B and some Sahidic mss read simply ὄχλον (ochlon, “crowd”), the reading that NA²⁸ follows; the first hand of א, ƒ¹, and a few other witnesses have ὄχλους (ochlous, “crowds”); other witnesses (1424 sa^ms mae) read πολὺν ὄχλον (polun ochlon, “a large crowd”). But the reading most likely to be authentic seems to be πολλοὺς ὄχλους (pollous ochlous, “large crowds”). It is found in א² C L N Γ Δ Θ 0233 ƒ¹³ 33 565 579 700 M lat; it is judged to be superior on internal grounds (the possibility of accidental omission of πολλούς/πολύν in isolated witnesses) and, to a lesser extent, external grounds (geographically widespread, various textual clusters). For reasons of English style, however, this phrase has been translated as “a large crowd.”
Matthew 8:18 tn The phrase “of the lake” is not in the Greek text but is clearly implied; it has been supplied here for clarity.
Matthew 8:19 tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then.”
Matthew 8:19 tn Or “a scribe.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
Matthew 8:19 sn The statement I will follow you wherever you go is an offer to follow Jesus as a disciple, no matter what the cost. There is nothing wrong with this profession, but it is unlikely that the speaker had fully thought through all the implications of such a sweeping commitment to follow Jesus.
Matthew 8:20 tn Or “the wild birds”; Grk “the birds of the sky” or “the birds of the heaven”; the Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated either “sky” or “heaven,” depending on the context. The idiomatic expression “birds of the sky” refers to wild birds as opposed to domesticated fowl (cf. BDAG 809 s.v. πετεινόν).
Matthew 8:20 sn According to Matt 4:13 Jesus made his home in Capernaum, so in spite of the common interpretation of this statement he was not technically homeless. More likely Jesus’ reply here has to do with the increasing opposition and rejection he and his disciples are encountering, so the question amounts to this: Does the man who wants to follow him understand the rejection he will be facing? The implication is that he does not.
Matthew 8:21 tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.
Matthew 8:21 tc ‡ Most mss (C L N W Γ Δ Θ 0250 ƒ^{1, 13} 565 579 700 1424 M al lat sy mae bo) read αὐτοῦ (autou, “his”) here, but the earliest witnesses, א and B (along with 33 it sa), lack it. The addition may have been a motivated reading to clarify whose disciples were in view. NA²⁸ includes the pronoun in brackets, indicating doubt as to its authenticity.
Matthew 8:22 sn There are several options for the meaning of Jesus’ reply Let the dead bury their own dead: (1) Recent research suggests that burial customs in the vicinity of Jerusalem from about 20 b.c. to a.d. 70 involved a reinterment of the bones a year after the initial burial, once the flesh had rotted away. At that point the son would have placed his father’s bones in a special box known as an ossuary to be set into the wall of the tomb. (See, e.g., C. A. Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries, 26-30.) Thus Jesus could well be rebuking the man for wanting to wait around for as much as a year before making a commitment to follow him. In 1st century Jewish culture, to have followed Jesus rather than burying one’s father would have seriously dishonored one’s father (cf. Tobit 4:3-4). (2) The remark is an idiom (possibly a proverbial saying) that means, “The matter in question is not the real issue,” in which case Jesus was making a wordplay on the wording of the man’s (literal) request (see L&N 33.137). (3) This remark could be a figurative reference to various kinds of people, meaning, “Let the spiritually dead bury the dead.” (4) It could also be literal and designed to shock the hearer by the surprise of the contrast. Whichever option is preferred, it is clear that the most important priority is to follow Jesus.

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 123[a]

A song of ascents.[b]

Footnotes

Footnotes

Challenging Professed Followers

Footnotes

Psalm 123^[a]

A song of ascents.^[b]