Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
79 1-4 God! Barbarians have broken into your home,
violated your holy temple,
left Jerusalem a pile of rubble!
They’ve served up the corpses of your servants
as carrion food for birds of prey,
Threw the bones of your holy people
out to the wild animals to gnaw on.
They dumped out their blood
like buckets of water.
All around Jerusalem, their bodies
were left to rot, unburied.
We’re nothing but a joke to our neighbors,
graffiti scrawled on the city walls.
5-7 How long do we have to put up with this, God?
Do you have it in for us for good?
Will your smoldering rage never cool down?
If you’re going to be angry, be angry
with the pagans who care nothing about you,
or your rival kingdoms who ignore you.
They’re the ones who ruined Jacob,
who wrecked and looted the place where he lived.
8-10 Don’t blame us for the sins of our parents.
Hurry up and help us; we’re at the end of our rope.
You’re famous for helping; God, give us a break.
Your reputation is on the line.
Pull us out of this mess, forgive us our sins—
do what you’re famous for doing!
Don’t let the heathen get by with their sneers:
“Where’s your God? Is he out to lunch?”
Go public and show the godless world
that they can’t kill your servants and get by with it.
11-13 Give groaning prisoners a hearing;
pardon those on death row from their doom—you can do it!
Give our jeering neighbors what they’ve got coming to them;
let their God-taunts boomerang and knock them flat.
Then we, your people, the ones you love and care for,
will thank you over and over and over.
We’ll tell everyone we meet
how wonderful you are, how praiseworthy you are!
6-7 “On that great day,” God says,
“I will round up all the hurt and homeless,
everyone I have bruised or banished.
I will transform the battered into a company of the elite.
I will make a strong nation out of the long lost,
A showcase exhibit of God’s rule in action,
as I rule from Mount Zion, from here to eternity.
8 “And you stragglers around Jerusalem,
eking out a living in shantytowns:
The glory that once was will be again.
Jerusalem’s daughter will be the kingdom center.”
* * *
9-10 So why the doomsday hysterics?
You still have a king, don’t you?
But maybe he’s not doing his job
and you’re panicked like a woman in labor.
Well, go ahead—twist and scream, Daughter Jerusalem.
You are like a woman in childbirth.
You’ll soon be out of the city, on your way
and camping in the open country.
And then you’ll arrive in Babylon.
What you lost in Jerusalem will be found in Babylon.
God will give you new life again.
He’ll redeem you from your enemies.
11-12 But for right now, they’re ganged up against you,
many godless peoples, saying,
“Kick her when she’s down! Violate her!
We want to see Zion grovel in the dirt.”
These blasphemers have no idea
what God is thinking and doing in this.
They don’t know that this is the making of God’s people,
that they are wheat being threshed, gold being refined.
13 On your feet, Daughter of Zion! Be threshed of chaff,
be refined of dross.
I’m remaking you into a people invincible,
into God’s juggernaut to crush the godless peoples.
You’ll bring their plunder as holy offerings to God,
their wealth to the Master of the earth.
Doom to the City of Darkness
18 1-8 Following this I saw another Angel descend from Heaven. His authority was immense, his glory flooded earth with brightness, his voice thunderous:
Ruined, ruined, Great Babylon, ruined!
A ghost town for demons is all that’s left!
A garrison of carrion spirits,
garrison of loathsome, carrion birds.
All nations drank the wild wine of her whoring;
kings of the earth went whoring with her;
entrepreneurs made millions exploiting her.
Just then I heard another shout out of Heaven:
Get out, my people, as fast as you can,
so you don’t get mixed up in her sins,
so you don’t get caught in her doom.
Her sins stink to high Heaven;
God has remembered every evil she’s done.
Give her back what she’s given,
double what she’s doubled in her works,
double the recipe in the cup she mixed;
Bring her flaunting and wild ways
to torment and tears.
Because she gloated, “I’m queen over all,
and no widow, never a tear on my face,”
In one day, disasters will crush her—
death, heartbreak, and famine—
Then she’ll be burned by fire, because God,
the Strong God who judges her,
has had enough.
9-10 “The kings of the earth will see the smoke of her burning, and they’ll cry and carry on, the kings who went night after night to her brothel. They’ll keep their distance for fear they’ll get burned, and they’ll cry their lament:
Doom, doom, the great city doomed!
City of Babylon, strong city!
In one hour it’s over, your judgment come!
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson