Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

99 A psalm of praise.

² Sing joyfully to God, all the earth: serve ye the Lord with gladness. Come in before his presence with exceeding great joy.

³ Know ye that the Lord he is God: he made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Go ye into his gates with praise, into his courts with hymns: and give glory to him. Praise ye his name:

⁵ For the Lord is sweet, his mercy endureth for ever, and his truth to generation and generation.

¹¹ And Elcana went to Ramatha, to his house: but the child ministered in the sight of the Lord before the face of Heli the priest.

¹² Now the sons of Heli were children of Belial, not knowing the Lord,

¹³ Nor the office of the priests to the people: but whosoever had offered a sacrifice, the servant of the priest came, while the flesh was in boiling, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand,

¹⁴ And thrust it into the kettle, or into the caldron, or into the pot, or into the pan: and all that the fleshhook brought up, the priest took to himself. Thus did they to all Israel that came to Silo.

¹⁵ Also before they burnt the fat, the servant of the priest came, and said to the man that sacrificed: Give me flesh to boil for the priest: for I will not take of thee sodden flesh, but raw.

¹⁶ And he that sacrificed said to him: Let the fat first be burnt to day according to the custom, and then take as much as thy soul desireth. But he answered and said to him: Not so: but thou shalt give it me now, or else I will take it by force.

¹⁷ Wherefore the sin of the young men was exceeding great before the Lord: because they withdrew men from the sacrifice of the Lord.

¹⁹ Thou wilt say therefore to me: Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?

²⁰ O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus?

²¹ Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

²² What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction,

²³ That he might shew the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath prepared unto glory?

²⁴ Even us, whom also he hath called, nor only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles.

²⁵ As in Osee he saith: I will call that which was not my people, my people; and her that was not beloved, beloved; and her that had not obtained mercy, one that hath obtained mercy.

²⁶ And it shall be, in the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people; there they shall be called the sons of the living God.

²⁷ And Isaias crieth out concerning Israel: If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.

²⁸ For he shall finish his word, and cut it short in justice; because a short word shall the Lord make upon the earth.

²⁹ And as Isaias foretold: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom, and we had been like unto Gomorrha.