Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

2 Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?

² The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ.

³ Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us.

⁴ He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them.

⁵ Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage.

⁶ But I am appointed king by him over Sion his holy mountain, preaching his commandment.

⁷ The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.

⁸ Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.

⁹ Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

¹⁰ And now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth.

¹¹ Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling.

¹² Embrace discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way.

¹³ When his wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed are all they that trust in him.

19 Thus saith the Lord: Go, and take a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests:

² And go forth into the valley of the son of Ennom, which is by the entry of the earthen gate: and there thou shalt proclaim the words that I shall tell thee.

³ And thou shalt say: Hear the word of the Lord, O ye kings of Juda, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will bring an affliction upon this place: so that whoever shall hear it, his ears shall tingle:

⁴ Because they have forsaken me, and have profaned this place: and have sacrificed therein to strange gods, whom neither they nor their fathers knew, nor the kings of Juda: and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents.

⁵ And they have built the high places of Baalim, to burn their children with fire for a holocaust to Baalim: which I did not command, nor speak of, neither did it once come into my mind.

⁶ Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom, but the valley of slaughter.

⁷ And I will defeat the counsel of Juda and of Jerusalem in this place: and I will destroy them with the sword in the sight of their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and I will give their carcasses to be meat for the fowls of the air, and for the beasts of the earth.

⁸ And I will make this city an astonishent, and a hissing: every one that shall pass by it, shall be astonished, and shall hiss because of all the plagues thereof.

⁹ And I will feed them with the flesh of their sons, and with the flesh of their daughters: and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege, and in the distress wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives shall straiten them.

¹⁰ And thou shalt break the bottle in the sight of the men that shall go with thee.

¹¹ And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: even so will I break this people, and this city, as the potter's vessel is broken, which cannot be made whole again: and they shall be buried in Topheth, because there is no other place to bury in.

¹² Thus will I do to this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof: and I will make this city as Topheth.

¹³ And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Juda shall be unclean as the place of Topheth: all the houses upon whose roofs they have sacrificed to all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings to strange gods.

¹⁴ Then Jeremias came from Topheth, whither the Lord had sent him to prophecy, and he stood in the court of the house of the Lord, and said to all the people:

¹⁵ Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will bring in upon this city, and upon all the cities thereof all the evils that I have spoken against it: because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.

⁶ These things proposing to the brethren, thou shalt be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished up in the words of faith, and of the good doctrine which thou hast attained unto.

⁷ But avoid foolish and old wives' fables: and exercise thyself unto godliness.

⁸ For bodily exercise is profitable to little: but godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

⁹ A faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation.

¹⁰ For therefore we labor and are reviled, because we hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of the faithful.

¹¹ These things command and teach.

¹² Let no man despise thy youth: but be thou an example of the faithful in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity.

¹³ Till I come, attend unto reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine.

¹⁴ Neglect not the grace that is in thee, which was given thee by prophesy, with imposition of the hands of the priesthood.

¹⁵ Meditate upon these things, be wholly in these things: that thy profiting may be manifest to all.

¹⁶ Take heed to thyself and to doctrine: be earnest in them. For in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.