Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

22 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why do you refuse to help me or even to listen to my groans? ² Day and night I keep on weeping, crying for your help, but there is no reply— ^3-4 for you are holy.

The praises of our fathers surrounded your throne; they trusted you and you delivered them. ⁵ You heard their cries for help and saved them; they were never disappointed when they sought your aid.

⁶ But I am a worm, not a man, scorned and despised by my own people and by all mankind. ⁷ Everyone who sees me mocks and sneers and shrugs. ⁸ “Is this the one who rolled his burden on the Lord?” they laugh. “Is this the one who claims the Lord delights in him? We’ll believe it when we see God rescue him!”

^9-11 Lord, how you have helped me before!^[a] You took me safely from my mother’s womb and brought me through the years of infancy. I have depended upon you since birth; you have always been my God. Don’t leave me now, for trouble is near and no one else can possibly help.

¹² I am surrounded by fearsome enemies, strong as the giant bulls from Bashan. ¹³ They come at me with open jaws, like roaring lions attacking their prey. ¹⁴ My strength has drained away like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart melts like wax; ¹⁵ my strength has dried up like sun-baked clay; my tongue sticks to my mouth, for you have laid me in the dust of death.

17 “I am sick and near to death; the grave is ready to receive me. ² I am surrounded by mockers. I see them everywhere. ^3-4 Will no one anywhere confirm my innocence? But you, O God, have kept them back from understanding this. Oh, do not let them triumph. ⁵ If they accept bribes to denounce their friends, their children shall go blind.

⁶ “He has made me a mockery among the people; they spit in my face. ⁷ My eyes are dim with weeping and I am but a shadow of my former self. ⁸ Fair-minded men are astonished when they see me.

“Yet, finally, the innocent shall come out on top, above the godless; ⁹ the righteous shall move onward and forward; those with pure hearts shall become stronger and stronger.

¹⁰ “As for you—all of you please go away; for I do not find a wise man among you. ¹¹ My good days are in the past. My hopes have disappeared. My heart’s desires are broken. ¹² They say that night is day and day is night; how they pervert the truth!

^13-14 “If I die, I go out into darkness, and call the grave my father, and the worm my mother and my sister. ¹⁵ Where then is my hope? Can anyone find any? ¹⁶ No, my hope will go down with me to the grave. We shall rest together in the dust!”

^7-8 And since Christ is so much superior, the Holy Spirit warns us to listen to him, to be careful to hear his voice today and not let our hearts become set against him, as the people of Israel did. They steeled themselves against his love and complained against him in the desert while he was testing them. ⁹ But God was patient with them forty years, though they tried his patience sorely; he kept right on doing his mighty miracles for them to see. ¹⁰ “But,” God says, “I was very angry with them, for their hearts were always looking somewhere else instead of up to me, and they never found the paths I wanted them to follow.”

¹¹ Then God, full of this anger against them, bound himself with an oath that he would never let them come to his place of rest.

¹² Beware then of your own hearts, dear brothers, lest you find that they, too, are evil and unbelieving and are leading you away from the living God. ¹³ Speak to each other about these things every day while there is still time so that none of you will become hardened against God, being blinded by the glamor^[a] of sin. ¹⁴ For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as we did when we first became Christians, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.

¹⁵ But now is the time. Never forget the warning, “Today if you hear God’s voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.”

¹⁶ And who were those people I speak of, who heard God’s voice speaking to them but then rebelled against him? They were the ones who came out of Egypt with Moses their leader. ¹⁷ And who was it who made God angry for all those forty years? These same people who sinned and as a result died in the wilderness. ¹⁸ And to whom was God speaking when he swore with an oath that they could never go into the land he had promised his people? He was speaking to all those who disobeyed him. ¹⁹ And why couldn’t they go in? Because they didn’t trust him.