Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

³ You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Go back to the dust, children of Adam.”
⁴ For You a thousand years is like a day when it is over,
    a watch during the night;
    there is no difference to You.

^5-6 You release the waters of death to sweep mankind away in his slumber.
    In the morning, we are blades of grass,
Growing rapidly under the sun but withering quickly;
    yet in the evening, we fade and die, soon to be cut down.

¹³ How long will we wait here alone?
    Return, O Eternal One, with mercy.
    Rescue Your servants with compassion.
¹⁴ With every sun’s rising, surprise us with Your love,
    satisfy us with Your kindness.
    Then we will sing with joy and celebrate every day we are alive.
¹⁵ You have spent many days afflicting us with pain and sorrow;
    now match those with years of unspent joy.
¹⁶ Let Your work of love be on display for all Your servants;
    let Your children see Your majesty.
¹⁷ And then let the beauty and grace of the Lord—our God—rest upon us
    and bring success to all we do;
    yes, bring success to all we do!

32 Moses: Listen, O sky, so I may speak!
        Pay attention, O earth, to what I say!
²     Let my teaching fall on you like raindrops;
        let what I say collect like the dew,
    Like rain sprinkling the grass,
        like showers on the green plants.
³     I will proclaim the name of the Eternal;
        I will utter greatness to our God.
⁴     He’s the Rock, and His work is perfect; everything He does is right.
    He’s the God who can be trusted, who never does wrong
        because He’s righteous and upright.
⁵     But a perverse and crooked generation has broken its word to Him.
        They are not counted as His children—not with such deficiencies.
⁶     Is this how you repay the Eternal,
        you foolish, unwise people?
    Isn’t He your Father who produced you,
        who made you and established you?
⁷     Remember the days long ago;
        consider the years of past generations.
    Ask your father, and he’ll explain it to you;
        ask the elders, and they’ll tell you:
⁸     When God, the Most High in heaven gave all the nations their inherited territory,
        when He divided the descendants of Adam into nations,
    When He established the boundaries of the peoples,
        as the number of the sons of God,
⁹     Because the Eternal’s territory is His people;
        and Jacob is the territory of God’s inheritance.
¹⁰     The Eternal found Jacob out in the wilderness,
        out in an empty, windswept desert wasteland.
    He put His arms around him and took care of him;
        He protected him as the apple of His eye.
¹¹     Just as an eagle stirs up its nest, encouraging its young to fly,
        and then hovers over them in case they need help,
    And spreads its wings and catches them if they fall,
        and carries them up high on its wings;
¹²     So the Eternal guided Jacob through the wilderness
        without the help of any foreign god.
¹³     He set him on the heights of the land
        and fed him from the produce of the fields.
    He even fed him honey from the rocks
        and oil from flinty stones,
¹⁴     Butter from his cows and milk from his flocks,
        fattened young lambs, rams raised in Bashan, and goats,
        the finest fatty kernels of wheat, and wine from the lifeblood of grapes.