Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Present Defeat and Past Deliverance
For the music director. Of the sons of Korah. A maskil.[a]
44 O God, we have heard with our ears;
our ancestors[b] have told us
of work you worked in their days,
in days of old.
2 You with your hand drove out the nations,
but them[c] you planted.
You harmed the peoples,
but them[d] you let spread out.
3 For not with their sword
did they possess the land,
and their arm did not give them victory.
Rather it was your right hand and your arm
and the light of your presence,
because you delighted in them.
4 You are my king, O God.
Command[e] victories for Jacob.
5 By you we push down our enemies;
by your name we tread down those who rise up against us.
6 For I do not trust my bow,
and my sword cannot give me victory.
7 Rather you have saved us from our enemies,[f]
and have humiliated those who hate us.
8 In God we boast all the day,
and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
9 Surely you have rejected and disgraced us,
and have not gone out with our armies.
10 You have caused us to pull back from the enemy,
and so those who hate us have plundered for themselves.
11 You have given us as sheep for food,
and among the nations you have scattered us.
12 You have sold your people cheaply,[g]
and did not profit by their price.
13 You have made us a taunt to our neighbors,
a derision and a scorn to those around us.
14 You have made us a byword among the nations,
a shaking of the head among the peoples.
15 All day long[h] my disgrace is before me,
and the shame of my face covers me,
16 because of the voice of the taunter and the reviler,
because of the enemy and the avenger.
17 All this has befallen us, though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
and our steps have not turned aside from your way.
19 But you have crushed us in a place of jackals,
and have covered us with deep shadow.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God,
or had spread out our hands in prayer to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this,
for he knows the secrets of the heart?
22 Rather, on account of you we are killed all day long;[i]
we are accounted as sheep for slaughter.
23 Wake up! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Awake! Do not reject forever.
24 Why do you hide your face?
Have you forgotten our misery and our oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust.
Our body[j] clings to the ground.
26 Rise up! Be a help for us,
and redeem us for the sake of your loyal love.
14 Therefore, Look! I am going to allure her
and bring her into the desert,
and I will speak tenderly to her.[a]
15 From there I will give her
her vineyards,
and the Valley of Achor as a doorway of hope.
And there she will respond,
as in the days of her youth,
just as in the day of her coming out of
the land of Egypt.
16 And on that day—[b]
a declaration of Yahweh—
you will call me, “My husband;”[c]
you will no longer call me, “My Baal.”[d]
17 I will remove the names
of the Baals from her mouth,
and they will no longer be mentioned by their name.
18 I will make a covenant for them on that day,
with the animals[e] of the field,
with the birds[f] of the heaven, and
with the creeping things[g] of the ground;
the bow, the sword, and the war I will abolish from the land, and I will let them lie down in safety.
19 And I will take you as my wife forever;
I will take you as a wife for myself in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love and in mercy.
20 I will take you as my wife[h] in faithfulness,
and you will know Yahweh.
21 On that day I will answer, declares Yahweh,[i]
I will answer the heavens,
and they will answer the earth.
22 And the earth will answer
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they will answer Jezreel.[j]
23 I will sow her for myself in the land;
I will have pity on Lo-ruhama;[k]
I will say to Lo-ammi,[l]
“You are my people,”
and he himself will say, “you are my God.”
Another Symbolic Marriage
3 And Yahweh said to me again,
“Go, love a woman
who has a lover[m] and is committing adultery,
just like the love of Yahweh for the children of Israel,
but they are turning to other gods
and love raisin cakes.”
2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver
and a homer of barely and a measure of wine.[n]
3 And I said to her,
“You must remain as mine[o] for many days,
and you will not play the whore;
you will not belong[p] to a man,
and I will belong to you.”
4 The children of Israel will remain for many days
without a king and prince,
without sacrifice and stone pillar, ephod and teraphim.
5 Afterward the children of Israel will return
and seek Yahweh their God and David their king.
They will come in fear to Yahweh
and to his goodness at the end of days.
Do Not Be Judged by Human Religious Rules
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you with reference to eating or[a] drinking or participation in a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath, 17 which are a shadow of what is to come, but the reality is Christ. 18 Let no one condemn you, taking pleasure in humility and the worship of angels, going into detail about the things which he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by the ligaments and sinews, grows with the growth of God.
20 If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you submit to them as if living in the world? 21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,” 22 which things are all meant for destruction by consuming according to human commandments and teachings, 23 which things although they have[b],[c] to be sure, an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and humility and unsparing treatment of the body, do not have any value[d] against the indulgence of the flesh.
Seek the Things Above
3 Therefore, if you have been raised together with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
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