Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁵ Great is our Lord, and great is his power: and of his wisdom there is no number.

⁶ The Lord lifteth up the meek, and bringeth the wicked down even to the ground.

⁷ Sing ye to the Lord with praise: sing to our God upon the harp.

⁸ Who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth. Who maketh grass to grow on the mountains, and herbs for the service of men.

⁹ Who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon him.

¹⁰ He shall not delight in the strength of the horse: nor take pleasure in the legs of a man.

⁶ And she arose to go from the land of Moab to her own country with both her daughters in law: for she had heard that the Lord had looked upon his people, and had given them food.

⁷ Wherefore she went forth out of the place of her sojournment, with both her daughters in law: and being now in the way to return into the land of Juda,

⁸ She said to them: Go ye home to your mothers: the Lord deal mercifully with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

⁹ May he grant you to find rest in the houses of the husbands which you shall take. And she kissed them. And they lifted up their voice and began to weep,

¹⁰ And to say: We will go on with thee to thy people.

¹¹ But she answered them: Return, my daughters: why come ye with me? have I any more sons in my womb, that you may hope for husbands of me?

¹² Return again, my daughters, and go your ways: for I am now spent with age, and not fit for wedlock. Although I might conceive this night, and bear children,

¹³ If you would wait till they were grown up, and come to man's estate, you would be old women before you marry. Do not so, my daughters, I beseech you: for I am grieved the more for your distress, and the hand of the Lord is gone out against me.

¹⁴ And they lifted up their voice, and began to weep again: Orpha kissed her mother in law and returned: Ruth stuck close to her mother in law.

¹⁵ And Noemi said to her: Behold thy kinswoman is returned to her people, and to her gods, go thou with her.

¹⁶ She answered: Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

¹⁷ The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.

¹⁸ Then Noemi, seeing that Ruth was steadfastly determined to go with her, would not be against it, nor persuade her any more to return to her friends:

3 Behold this second epistle I write to you, my dearly beloved, in which I stir up by way of admonition your sincere mind:

² That you may be mindful of those words which I told you before from the holy prophets, and of your apostles, of the precepts of the Lord and Saviour.

³ Knowing this first, that in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

⁴ Saying: Where is his promise or his coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

⁵ For this they are wilfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.

⁶ Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

⁷ But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men.

⁸ But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹ The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.

¹⁰ But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.