Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

26 Dismiss all the charges against me, Lord, for I have tried to keep your laws and have trusted you without wavering. ² Cross-examine me, O Lord, and see that this is so; test my motives and affections too. ³ For I have taken your loving-kindness and your truth as my ideals. ⁴ I do not have fellowship with tricky, two-faced men; they are false and hypocritical. ⁵ I hate the sinners’ hangouts and refuse to enter them. ⁶ I wash my hands to prove my innocence and come before your altar, ⁷ singing a song of thanksgiving and telling about your miracles.

⁸ Lord, I love your home, this shrine where the brilliant, dazzling splendor of your presence lives.

^9-10 Don’t treat me as a common sinner or murderer who plots against the innocent and demands bribes.

¹¹ No, I am not like that, O Lord; I try to walk a straight and narrow path of doing what is right; therefore in mercy save me.

¹² I publicly praise the Lord for keeping me from slipping and falling.

7 “How mankind must struggle. A man’s life is long and hard, like that of a slave. ² How he longs for the day to end. How he grinds on to the end of the week and his wages. ³ And so to me also have been allotted months of frustration, these long and weary nights. ⁴ When I go to bed I think, ‘Oh, that it were morning,’ and then I toss till dawn.

⁵ “My skin is filled with worms and blackness. My flesh breaks open, full of pus. ⁶ My life drags by—day after hopeless day. ⁷ My life is but a breath, and nothing good is left. ⁸ You see me now, but not for long. Soon you’ll look upon me dead. ⁹ As a cloud disperses and vanishes, so those who die shall go away forever— ¹⁰ gone forever from their family and their home—never to be seen again. ¹¹ Ah, let me express my anguish. Let me be free to speak out of the bitterness of my soul.

¹² “O God, am I some monster that you never leave me alone? ^13-14 Even when I try to forget my misery in sleep, you terrify with nightmares. ¹⁵ I would rather die of strangulation than go on and on like this. ¹⁶ I hate my life. Oh, leave me alone for these few remaining days. ¹⁷ What is mere man that you should spend your time persecuting him? ¹⁸ Must you be his inquisitor every morning and test him every moment of the day? ¹⁹ Why won’t you leave me alone—even long enough to spit?

²⁰ “Has my sin harmed you, O God, watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your target, and made my life so heavy a burden to me? ²¹ Why not just pardon my sin and take it all away? For all too soon I’ll lie down in the dust and die, and when you look for me, I shall be gone.”

¹⁴ The Pharisees, who dearly loved their money, naturally scoffed at all this.

¹⁵ Then he said to them, “You wear a noble, pious expression in public, but God knows your evil hearts. Your pretense brings you honor from the people, but it is an abomination in the sight of God. ¹⁶ Until John the Baptist began to preach, the laws of Moses and the messages of the prophets were your guides. But John introduced the Good News that the Kingdom of God would come soon. And now eager multitudes are pressing in. ¹⁷ But that doesn’t mean that the Law has lost its force in even the smallest point. It is as strong and unshakable as heaven and earth.

¹⁸ “So anyone who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”