Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
81 (0) For the Leader. On the gittit. By Asaf:
2 (1) Sing for joy to God our strength!
Shout to the God of Ya‘akov!
3 (2) Start the music! Beat the drum!
Play the sweet lyre and the lute!
4 (3) Sound the shofar at Rosh-Hodesh
and at full moon for the pilgrim feast,
5 (4) because this is a law for Isra’el,
a ruling of the God of Ya‘akov.
6 (5) He placed it as a testimony in Y’hosef
when he went out against the land of Egypt.
I heard an unfamiliar voice say,
7 (6) “I lifted the load from his shoulder;
his hands were freed from the [laborer’s] basket.
8 (7) You called out when you were in trouble,
and I rescued you;
I answered you from the thundercloud;
I tested you at the M’rivah Spring [by saying,] (Selah)
9 (8) “‘Hear, my people, while I give you warning!
Isra’el, if you would only listen to me!
10 (9) There is not to be with you any foreign god;
you are not to worship an alien god.
11 (10) I am Adonai your God,
who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth, and I will fill it.’
12 (11) “But my people did not listen to my voice;
Isra’el would have none of me.
13 (12) So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to live by their own plans.
14 (13) How I wish my people would listen to me,
that Isra’el would live by my ways!
15 (14) I would quickly subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
16 (15) Those who hate Adonai would cringe before him,
while [Isra’el’s] time would last forever.
17 (16) They would be fed with the finest wheat,
and I would satisfy you with honey from the rocks.”
4 Hear the word of Adonai, house of Ya‘akov
and all families in the house of Isra’el;
5 here is what Adonai says:
“What did your ancestors find wrong with me
to make them go so far away from me,
to make them go after nothings
and become themselves nothings?
6 They didn’t ask, ‘Where is Adonai,
who brought us out of the land of Egypt,
who led us through the desert,
through a land of wastes and ravines,
through a land of drought and death-dark shadows,
through a land where no one travels
and where no one ever lived?’
7 I brought you into a fertile land
to enjoy its fruit and all its good things;
but when you entered, you defiled my land
and made my heritage loathsome.
8 The cohanim didn’t ask, ‘Where is Adonai?’
Those who deal with the Torah did not know me,
the people’s shepherds rebelled against me;
the prophets prophesied by Ba‘al
and went after things of no value.
9 “So again I state my case against you,” says Adonai,
“and state it against your grandchildren too.
10 Cross to the coasts of the Kitti’im and look;
send to Kedar and observe closely;
see if anything like this has happened before:
11 has a nation ever exchanged its gods
(and theirs are not gods at all!)?
Yet my people have exchanged their Glory
for something without value.
12 Be aghast at this, you heavens!
Shudder in absolute horror!” says Adonai.
13 “For my people have committed two evils:
they have abandoned me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns,
that can hold no water!
14 Not until the festival was half over did Yeshua go up to the Temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Judeans were surprised: “How does this man know so much without having studied?” they asked. 16 So Yeshua gave them an answer: “My teaching is not my own, it comes from the One who sent me. 17 If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or I speak on my own. 18 A person who speaks on his own is trying to win praise for himself; but a person who tries to win praise for the one who sent him is honest, there is nothing false about him. 19 Didn’t Moshe give you the Torah? Yet not one of you obeys the Torah! Why are you out to kill me?” 20 “You have a demon!” the crowd answered. “Who’s out to kill you?” 21 Yeshua answered them, “I did one thing; and because of this, all of you are amazed. 22 Moshe gave you b’rit-milah — not that it came from Moshe but from the Patriarchs — and you do a boy’s b’rit-milah on Shabbat. 23 If a boy is circumcised on Shabbat so that the Torah of Moshe will not be broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man’s whole body well on Shabbat? 24 Stop judging by surface appearances, and judge the right way!”
25 Some of the Yerushalayim people said, “Isn’t this the man they’re out to kill? 26 Yet here he is, speaking openly; and they don’t say anything to him. It couldn’t be, could it, that the authorities have actually concluded he’s the Messiah? 27 Surely not — we know where this man comes from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he comes from.” 28 Whereupon Yeshua, continuing to teach in the Temple courts, cried out, “Indeed you do know me! And you know where I’m from! And I have not come on my own! The One who sent me is real. But him you don’t know! 29 I do know him, because I am with him, and he sent me!”
30 At this, they tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him; because his time had not yet come. 31 However, many in the crowd put their trust in him and said, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”
37 Now on the last day of the festival, Hoshana Rabbah, Yeshua stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! 38 Whoever puts his trust in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” 39 (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who trusted in him were to receive later — the Spirit had not yet been given, because Yeshua had not yet been glorified.)
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.