Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

84 O LORD of Hosts, how lovely are Your Tabernacles!

² My soul longs, indeed, and fainted for the courts of the LORD! My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God!

³ Indeed, the sparrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for her; where she may lay her young by Your altars, O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Blessed are those who dwell in Your House. They will ever praise You. Selah.

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are Your ways.

⁶ They, going through the valley of Baca, make wells therein. The rain also covers the pools.

⁷ They go from strength to strength, until every one appears before God in Zion.

⁸ O, LORD God of Hosts, hear my prayer! Give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah.

⁹ Behold, O God Our Shield, and look upon the face of Your Anointed.

¹⁰ For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God than to dwell in the tabernacles of wickedness.

¹¹ For the LORD God is the Sun and Shield. The LORD will give grace and glory; and He will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly.

¹² O, LORD of Hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You. To him who excels: A Psalm committed to the sons of Korah

29 Hezekiah began to reign when he was twenty-five years old and reigned for twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

² And he did uprightly in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done.

³ He opened the Doors of the House of the LORD in the first year, and in the first month of his reign, and repaired them.

⁴ And he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them into the east street,

⁵ and said to them, “Hear me, you Levites! Sanctify yourselves now, and sanctify the House of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the Sanctuary!

⁶ “For our fathers have trespassed and done evil in the Eyes of the LORD our God, and have forsaken Him, and turned away their faces from the Tabernacle of the LORD and turned their backs.”

⁷ “They have also shut the doors of the porch and quenched the lamps and have neither burnt incense nor offered Burnt Offerings to the God of Israel in the Sanctuary.

⁸ “Therefore, the wrath of the LORD has been on Judah and Jerusalem. And He has made them a scattering, a desolation, and a hissing, as you see with your eyes.

⁹ “For lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword. And our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for the same reason.

¹⁰ “Now I intend to make a Covenant with the LORD God of Israel, so that He may turn away His fierce wrath from us.

¹¹ “Now my sons, do not be deceived. For the LORD has chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, and to be His ministers, and to burn incense.”

¹⁶ And the priests went into the inner parts of the House of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the Temple of the LORD into the court of the House of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out to the brook Kidron.

¹⁷ They began to sanctify it on the first day of the first month. And on the eighth day of the month, they came to the porch of the LORD. So they sanctified the House of the LORD in eight days. And on the sixteenth day of the first month, they finished.

¹⁸ Then they went in to Hezekiah the king and said, “We have cleansed all the House of the LORD, and the Altar of Burnt Offering, with all its vessels, and the Showbread Table, with all its vessels.

¹⁹ “And have we prepared and sanctified all the vessels which King Ahaz had cast aside when he reigned and transgressed. And behold, they are before the Altar of the LORD.”

²³ It was necessary, then, that the representations of heavenly things should be purified with such things. But the heavenly things themselves are purified with better sacrifices than these.

²⁴ For Christ has not entered into the Holy Places that are made with hands - which are representations of the true things - but into Heaven itself, to appear now in the sight of God for us.

²⁵ Not that He should offer himself often, as the High Priest entered into the Holy Place every year with others’ blood.

²⁶ For then He would have had to suffer often, since the foundation of the world. But now, in the end of the world, He has appeared once, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

²⁷ And as much as it has been appointed to man that he shall die once (and after that comes the Judgment),

²⁸ so Christ was once offered to take away the sins of many. And to those who look for Him, He shall appear a second time - without sin - for salvation.