Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
123 (0) A song of ascents:
(1) I raise my eyes to you,
whose throne is in heaven.
2 As a servant looks to the hand of his master,
or a slave-girl to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes turn to Adonai our God,
until he has mercy on us.
3 Have mercy on us, Adonai, have mercy;
for we have had our fill of contempt,
4 more than our fill of scorn from the complacent
and contempt from the arrogant.
6 When Y’hoshua had sent the people away, the people of Isra’el had gone each one to his assigned property in order to take possession of the land. 7 The people served Adonai throughout Y’hoshua’s life and throughout the lives of all the older men who outlived Y’hoshua and who had seen all the great work of Adonai which he had done for Isra’el. 8 When Y’hoshua the son of Nun, the servant of Adonai, died, he was 110 years old; 9 and they buried him near the boundary of his property in Timnat-Heres, in the hills of Efrayim, north of Mount Ga‘ash.
10 When that entire generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation arose that knew neither Adonai nor the work he had done for Isra’el. 11 Then the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective and served the ba‘alim. 12 They abandoned Adonai, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, selected from the gods of the peoples around them, and worshipped them; this made Adonai angry. 13 They abandoned Adonai and served Ba‘al and the ‘ashtarot. 14 The anger of Adonai blazed against Isra’el; and he handed them over to pillagers, who plundered them, and to their enemies around them; so that they could no longer resist their enemies. 15 Whenever they launched an attack, the power of Adonai was against them, so that things turned out badly — just as Adonai had said would happen and had sworn to them. They were in dire distress.
16 I heard a loud voice from the sanctuary say to the seven angels, “Go, and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of God’s fury!”
2 So the first one went and poured his bowl onto the earth, and disgusting and painful sores appeared on all the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped its image.
3 The second one poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died.
4 The third one poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they turned to blood. 5 Then I heard the angel of the waters say,
“O HaKadosh, the One who is and was,
you are just in these judgments of yours.
6 They poured out the blood of your people and your prophets,
so you have made them drink blood. They deserve it!”
7 Then I heard the altar say,
“Yes, Adonai, God of heaven’s armies,[a]
your judgments are true and just!”
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.