Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹ Lord, through all the generations
    you have been our home!
² Before the mountains were born,
    before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
    from beginning to end, you are God.

³ You turn people back to dust, saying,
    “Return to dust, you mortals!”
⁴ For you, a thousand years are as a passing day,
    as brief as a few night hours.
⁵ You sweep people away like dreams that disappear.
    They are like grass that springs up in the morning.
⁶ In the morning it blooms and flourishes,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

¹³ O Lord, come back to us!
    How long will you delay?
    Take pity on your servants!
¹⁴ Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,
    so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.
¹⁵ Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!
    Replace the evil years with good.
¹⁶ Let us, your servants, see you work again;
    let our children see your glory.
¹⁷ And may the Lord our God show us his approval
    and make our efforts successful.
    Yes, make our efforts successful!

32 “Listen, O heavens, and I will speak!
    Hear, O earth, the words that I say!
² Let my teaching fall on you like rain;
    let my speech settle like dew.
Let my words fall like rain on tender grass,
    like gentle showers on young plants.
³ I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
    how glorious is our God!
⁴ He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect.
    Everything he does is just and fair.
He is a faithful God who does no wrong;
    how just and upright he is!

⁵ “But they have acted corruptly toward him;
    when they act so perversely,
are they really his children?^[a]
    They are a deceitful and twisted generation.
⁶ Is this the way you repay the Lord,
    you foolish and senseless people?
Isn’t he your Father who created you?
    Has he not made you and established you?
⁷ Remember the days of long ago;
    think about the generations past.
Ask your father, and he will inform you.
    Inquire of your elders, and they will tell you.
⁸ When the Most High assigned lands to the nations,
    when he divided up the human race,
he established the boundaries of the peoples
    according to the number in his heavenly court.^[b]

⁹ “For the people of Israel belong to the Lord;
    Jacob is his special possession.
¹⁰ He found them in a desert land,
    in an empty, howling wasteland.
He surrounded them and watched over them;
    he guarded them as he would guard his own eyes.^[c]
11 Like an eagle that rouses her chicks
    and hovers over her young,
so he spread his wings to take them up
    and carried them safely on his pinions.
¹² The Lord alone guided them;
    they followed no foreign gods.
¹³ He let them ride over the highlands
    and feast on the crops of the fields.
He nourished them with honey from the rock
    and olive oil from the stony ground.
¹⁴ He fed them yogurt from the herd
    and milk from the flock,
    together with the fat of lambs.
He gave them choice rams from Bashan, and goats,
    together with the choicest wheat.
You drank the finest wine,
    made from the juice of grapes.

¹⁸ You neglected the Rock who had fathered you;
    you forgot the God who had given you birth.