Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

74 Unto the end, corrupt not, a psalm of a canticle for Asaph.

² We will praise thee, O God: we will praise, and we will call upon thy name. We will relate thy wondrous works:

³ When I shall take a time, I will judge justices.

⁴ The earth is melted, and all that dwell therein: I have established the pillars thereof.

⁵ I said to the wicked: Do not act wickedly: and to the sinners: Lift not up the horn.

⁶ Lift not up your horn on high: speak not iniquity against God.

⁷ For neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert hills:

⁸ For God is the judge. One he putteth down, and another he lifteth up:

⁹ For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup of strong wine full of mixture. And he hath poured it out from this to that: but the dregs thereof are not emptied: all the sinners of the earth shall drink.

¹⁰ But I will declare for ever: I will sing to the God of Jacob.

¹¹ And I will break all the horns of sinners: but the horns of the just shall be exalted.

⁸ Woe to you that join house to house and lay field to field, even to the end of the place: shall you alone dwell in the midst of the earth?

⁹ These things are in my ears, saith the Lord of hosts: unless many great and fair houses shall become desolate, without an inhabitant.

¹⁰ For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one little measure, and thirty bushels of seed shall yield three bushels.

¹¹ Woe to you that rise up early in the morning to follow drunkenness, and to drink till the evening, to be inflamed with wine.

¹² The harp, and the lyre, and the timbrel, and the pipe, and wine are in your feasts: and the work of the Lord you regard not, nor do you consider the works of his hands.

¹³ Therefore is my people led away captive, because they had not knowledge, and their nobles have perished with famine, and their multitude were dried up with thirst.

¹⁴ Therefore hath hell enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth without any bounds, and their strong ones, and their people, and their high and glorious ones shall go down into it.

¹⁵ And man shall be brought down, and man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be brought low.

¹⁶ And the Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and the holy God shall be sanctified in justice.

¹⁷ And the lambs shall feed according to their order, and strangers shall eat the deserts turned into fruitfulness.

¹⁸ Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as the rope of a cart.

¹⁹ That say: Let him make haste, and let his work come quickly, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel come, that we may know it.

²⁰ Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.

²¹ Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes, and prudent in your own conceits.

²² Woe to you that are mighty to drink wine, and stout men at drunkenness.

²³ That justify the wicked for gifts, and take away the justice of the just from him.

4 Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

² By this is the spirit of God known. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God:

³ And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God: and this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh, and he is now already in the world.

⁴ You are of God, little children, and have overcome him. Because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

⁵ They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them.

⁶ We are of God. He that knoweth God, heareth us. He that is not of God, heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.