Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁹ Lord, our ruler,
your name is famous all over the world.

²² Have you visited the place where I keep all the snow?
    Or the place where I keep the hail?
²³ I keep the snow and the hail ready to use.
    I use them in times of trouble and wars.
²⁴ You do not know where lightning comes from.
    Or where the east wind starts
    when it blows across the earth.
²⁵ I make a path for the storms to travel along.
    I tell the thunder and the strong rain which way to go.
²⁶ I cause rain to fall in places where no person lives.
    It makes even a desert become a wet place.
²⁷ The rain falls on dry ground where nothing grows.
    It causes grass to grow there again.
²⁸ Do you know if the rain has a father?
    Who is a father to the dew?
²⁹ Who is a mother to the ice?
    Who gives birth to the frost that makes the air so cold?
³⁰ It causes the water to become as hard as stone.
    The water of the sea also becomes ice.
³¹ You cannot make the stars of the Pleiades stay in their places.
    You cannot change the shape of Orion.
³² You bring out the groups of stars
    for people to see at different times of the year.
You cannot put the stars of the Great Bear and the Little Bear
    in their right places in the sky.^[a]
33 You do not know the rules that the stars above obey.
    You cannot make the earth obey those rules.
³⁴ You cannot shout commands to the clouds.
You cannot tell them to pour down their rain,
    so that a flood of water covers you.
³⁵ You cannot send the lightning
    to hit the place that you want it to go.
The lightning does not say to you,
    “We are ready to go wherever you want.”
³⁶ Who has given people wisdom,
    so that they understand things with their minds?
³⁷ Is anyone wise enough to count the clouds?
    Can anyone cause the clouds to pour down rain from above?
³⁸ The rain causes the dust of the dry ground to become hard.
    The dry soil becomes pieces of mud.