Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

20 The LORD hear you on the day of trouble. The Name of the God of Jacob defend you;

² send you help from the Sanctuary and strengthen you out of Zion.

³ Let Him remember all your offerings and turn your burnt offerings into ashes. Selah.

⁴ Grant you according to your heart and fulfill all your purpose,

⁵ so that we may rejoice in your salvation—and set up the banner in the Name of our God—when the LORD shall perform all your petitions.

⁶ Now I know that the LORD will help His anointed; and will hear him from His Sanctuary, by the mighty help of His right hand.

⁷ Some trust in chariots, and some in horses. But we will remember the Name of the LORD our God.

⁸ They are brought down and fallen. But we are risen and stand upright.

⁹ Save, LORD! Let the king hear us on the day that we call! To him who excels: A Psalm of David.

¹⁵ Thus says the LORD: “A voice was heard on high — a mourning and bitter weeping. Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”

¹⁶ Thus says the LORD: “Restrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for your work shall be rewarded,” says the LORD, “and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

¹⁷ “And there is hope in your future,” says the LORD, “that your children shall come back to their own borders.

¹⁸ “I have heard Ephraim lamenting, ‘You have corrected me,’ and ‘I was chastised as an untamed calf. Convert me, and I shall be converted. For You are the LORD my God.

¹⁹ ‘Surely, after I was converted, I repented. And after I was instructed, I struck my thigh. I was ashamed — yea, even humiliated — because I bore the reproach of my youth.’

²⁰ “Is Ephraim My dear son or pleasant child? Yet, though I spoke against him, I still remembered him. Therefore, My Core is troubled for him. I will surely have compassion upon him,” says the LORD.

²¹ “Set up signs for yourselves. Make yourselves heaps. Set your heart toward the path and way that you have walked. Turn back, O virgin of Israel! Turn back to these, your cities!

²² “How long will you go astray, O you rebellious daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing on the Earth: A woman shall turn around a man.”

⁴¹ And when He had come near, He looked at the city and wept for it,

⁴² saying, “O, if you had known (even at the least, and on this your day) those things which belong to your peace! But now are they hidden from your eyes.

⁴³ “For the days shall come upon you that your enemies will cast a rampart around you, and surround you, and trap you on every side,

⁴⁴ “And shall make you even with the ground (and your children who are in you). And they shall not leave a stone upon a stone within you. Because you did not know the time of your visitation.”