Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

א (Alef)

³⁴ Then, at last, the land will be paid its Shabbats. As long as it lies desolate and you are in the lands of your enemies, the land will rest and be repaid its Shabbats. ³⁵ Yes, as long as it lies desolate it will have rest, the rest it did not have during your Shabbats, when you lived there. ³⁶ As for those of you who are left, I will fill their hearts with anxiety in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will frighten them, so that they will flee as one flees from the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. ³⁷ Yes, with no one pursuing they will stumble over each other as if fleeing the sword — you will have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸ And among the nations you will perish; the land of your enemies will devour you.

³⁹ Those of you who remain will pine away in the lands of your enemies from guilt over your misdeeds and those of your ancestors. ⁴⁰ Then they will confess their misdeeds and those of their ancestors which they committed against me in their rebellion; they will admit that they went against me. ⁴¹ At that time I will be going against them, bringing them into the lands of their enemies. But if their uncircumcised hearts will grow humble, and they are paid the punishment for their misdeeds; ⁴² then I will remember my covenant with Ya‘akov, also my covenant with Yitz’chak and my covenant with Avraham; and I will remember the land. ⁴³ For the land will lie abandoned without them, and it will be paid its Shabbats while it lies desolate without them; and they will be paid the punishment for their misdeeds, because they rejected my rulings and loathed my regulations. ⁴⁴ Yet, in spite of all that, I will not reject them when they are in the lands of their enemies, nor will I loathe them to the point of utterly destroying them and thus break my covenant with them, because I am Adonai their God. ⁴⁵ Rather, for their sakes, I will remember the covenant of their ancestors whom I brought out of the land of Egypt — with the nations watching — so that I might be their God; I am Adonai.’”

⁴⁶ These are the laws, rulings and teachings that Adonai himself gave to the people of Isra’el on Mount Sinai through Moshe.

⁷ Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command. On the contrary, it is an old command, which you have had from the beginning; the old command is the message which you have heard before. ⁸ Yet I am writing you a new command, and its reality is seen both in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. ⁹ Anyone who claims to be in this light while hating his brother is still in the dark. ¹⁰ The person who keeps loving his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him that could make him trip. ¹¹ But the person who hates his brother is in the dark — yes, he is walking in the dark, and he doesn’t know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things of the world. If someone loves the world, then love for the Father is not in him; ¹⁶ because all the things of the world — the desires of the old nature, the desires of the eyes, and the pretensions of life — are not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away, along with its desires. But whoever does God’s will remains forever.