Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

78 Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old,

³ which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

⁴ We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done.

⁵ For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded to our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;

⁶ that the generation to come might know them, even the children who should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children,

⁷ that they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal,

³¹ as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: “an altar of whole stones over which no man hath lifted up any iron.” And they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the Lord, and sacrificed peace offerings.

³² And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the Law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel.

³³ And all Israel, and their elders and officers and their judges, stood on this side of the ark and on that side before the priests, the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, the stranger as well as he that was born among them — half of them over against Mount Gerizim and half of them over against Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel.

³⁴ And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.

³⁵ There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women and the little ones and the strangers who walked among them.

¹³ And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which stands before God,

¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Loose the four angels who are bound in the great river Euphrates.”

¹⁵ And the four angels were loosed, who had been prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, to slay a third part of men.

¹⁶ And the number of the army of horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand, and I heard the number of them.

¹⁷ And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and they that sat on them had breastplates of fire and of jacinth and brimstone; and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

¹⁸ By these three was a third part of men killed by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

¹⁹ For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails were like unto serpents and had heads, and with them they cause hurt.

²⁰ And the rest of the men, who were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold and silver, and brass and stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk;

²¹ neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.