Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

94 Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.

² Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.

³ For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

⁴ For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his.

⁵ For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶ Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us.

⁷ For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

⁸ To day if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts:

⁹ As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.

¹⁰ Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart.

¹¹ And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.

5 Go about through the streets of Jerusalem, and see, and consider, and seek in the broad places thereof, if you can find a man that executeth judgement, and seeketh faith: and I will be merciful unto it.

² And though they say: The Lord liveth; this also they will swear falsely.

³ O Lord, thy eyes are upon truth: thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved: thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than the rock, and they have refused to return.

⁴ But I said: Perhaps these are poor and foolish, that know not the way of the Lord, the judgement of their God.

⁵ I will go therefore to the great men, and I will speak to them: for they known the way of the Lord, the judgement of their God: and behold these have together broken the yoke more, and have burst the bonds.

⁶ Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening, hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions are strengthened.

⁷ How can I be merciful to thee? Thy children have forsaken me, and swear by them that are not gods: I fed them to the full, and they committed adultery, and rioted in the harlot's house.

⁸ They are become as amorous horses and stallions, every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.

⁹ Shall I not visit for these things, sayeth the Lord? and shall not my soul take revenge on such a nation?

¹⁰ Scale down the walls thereof, and throw them down, but do not utterly destroy: take away the branches thereof, because they are not the Lord's.

¹¹ For the house of Israel, and the house of Juda have greatly transgressed against me, saith the Lord.

¹² They have denied the Lord, and said, It is not he: and the evil shall not come upon us: we shall not see the sword and famine.

¹³ The prophets have spoken in the wind, and there was no word of God in them: these things therefore shall befall them.

¹⁴ Thus saith the Lord the God of hosts: Because you have spoken this word, behold I will make my words in thy mouth as fire, and this people as wood, and it shall devour them.

¹⁵ Behold I will bring upon you a nation from afar, O house of Israel, saith the Lord: a strong nation, an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou shalt not know, nor understand what they say.

¹⁶ Their quiver is as an open sepulchre, they are all valiant.

¹⁷ And they shall eat up thy corn, and thy bread: they shall devour thy sons, and thy daughters: they shall eat up thy flocks, and thy herds: they shall eat thy vineyards, and thy figs: and with the sword they shall destroy thy strong cities, wherein thou trustest.

¹⁸ This precept I commend to thee, O son Timothy; according to the prophecies going before on thee, that thou war in them a good warfare,

¹⁹ Having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have made shipwreck concerning the faith.

²⁰ Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.