Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

You shook earth to the foundations,
    ripped open huge crevasses.
Heal the breaks! Everything’s
    coming apart at the seams.

^3-5 You made your people look doom in the face,
    then gave us cheap wine to drown our troubles.
Then you planted a flag to rally your people,
    an unfurled flag to look to for courage.
Now do something quickly, answer right now,
    so the one you love best is saved.

^6-8 That’s when God spoke in holy splendor,
    “Bursting with joy,
I make a present of Shechem,
    I hand out Succoth Valley as a gift.
Gilead’s in my pocket,
    to say nothing of Manasseh.
Ephraim’s my hard hat,
    Judah my hammer;
Moab’s a scrub bucket,
    I mop the floor with Moab,
Spit on Edom,
    rain fireworks all over Philistia.”

^9-10 Who will take me to the thick of the fight?
    Who’ll show me the road to Edom?
You aren’t giving up on us, are you, God?
    refusing to go out with our troops?

^11-12 Give us help for the hard task;
    human help is worthless.
In God we’ll do our very best;
    he’ll flatten the opposition for good.

^4-6 “I’m still your God,
    the God who saved you out of Egypt.
I’m the only real God you’ve ever known.
    I’m the one and only God who delivers.
I took care of you during the wilderness hard times,
    those years when you had nothing.
I took care of you, took care of all your needs,
    gave you everything you needed.
You were spoiled. You thought you didn’t need me.
    You forgot me.

^7-12 “I’ll charge them like a lion,
    like a leopard stalking in the brush.
I’ll jump them like a sow grizzly robbed of her cubs.
    I’ll rip out their guts.
Coyotes will make a meal of them.
    Crows will clean their bones.
I’m going to destroy you, Israel.
    Who is going to stop me?
Where is your trusty king you thought would save you?
    Where are all the local leaders you wanted so badly?
All these rulers you insisted on having,
    demanding, ‘Give me a king! Give me leaders!’?
Well, long ago I gave you a king, but I wasn’t happy about it.
    Now, fed up, I’ve gotten rid of him.
I have a detailed record of your infidelities—
    Ephraim’s sin documented and stored in a safe-deposit box.

^13-15 “When birth pangs signaled it was time to be born,
    Ephraim was too stupid to come out of the womb.
When the passage into life opened up,
    he didn’t show.
Shall I intervene and pull them into life?
    Shall I snatch them from a certain death?
Who is afraid of you, Death?
    Who cares about your threats, Tomb?
In the end I’m abolishing regret,
    banishing sorrow,
Even though Ephraim ran wild,
    the black sheep of the family.

^15-16 “God’s tornado is on its way,
    roaring out of the desert.
It will devastate the country,
    leaving a trail of ruin and wreckage.
The cities will be gutted,
    dear possessions gone for good.
Now Samaria has to face the charges
    because she has rebelled against her God:
Her people will be killed, babies smashed on the rocks,
    pregnant women ripped open.”