Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

79 The nations have come into your inheritance, God!
    They’ve defiled your holy temple.
    They’ve made Jerusalem a bunch of ruins.
² They’ve left your servants’ bodies
    as food for the birds;
    they’ve left the flesh of your faithful
    to the wild animals of the earth.
³ They’ve poured out the blood of the faithful
    like water all around Jerusalem,
    and there’s no one left to bury them.
⁴ We’ve become a joke to our neighbors,
    nothing but objects of ridicule
    and disapproval to those around us.

⁴ Say to them, The Lord proclaims:
When people fall down, don’t they get up?
    When they turn aside, don’t they turn back?
⁵ Why then does this people, rebellious Jerusalem,
    persistently turn away from me?
They cling to deceit
    and refuse to return.
⁶ I have listened carefully
    but haven’t heard a word of truth from them.
No one regrets their wrongdoing;
    no one says, “What have I done?”
Everyone turns to their own course,
    like a stallion dashing into the thick of battle.
⁷ Even the stork in the sky knows the seasons,
    and the dove, swallow,^[a] and crane^[b]
        return in due time.
            But my people don’t know the Lord’s ways.
⁸ How can you say, “We are wise;
    we possess the Lord’s Instruction,”
        when the lying pen of the scribes has surely distorted it?
⁹ The wise will be shamed and shocked
    when they are caught.
Look, they have rejected the Lord’s word;
    what kind of wisdom is that?
¹⁰ Therefore, I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to their captors.
From the least to the greatest,
    all are eager to profit.
From prophet to priest,
    all trade in falsehood.
¹¹ They treat the wound of my people
    as if it were nothing:
“All is well, all is well,” they insist,
    when in fact nothing is well.
¹² They should be ashamed
        of their detestable practices,
    but they have no shame;
        they don’t even blush!
Therefore, they will fall among the fallen
    and stumble when disaster arrives,
        declares the Lord.
¹³ I will put an end to them,^[c]
        declares the Lord;
    there are no grapes on the vine,
        no figs on the tree,
        only withered leaves.
They have squandered what I have given them!^[d]

We are being put to death all day long for your sake.
    We are treated like sheep for slaughter.^[a]