Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

79 O God, the heathen have come into Your inheritance. They have defiled Your Holy Temple and made Jerusalem heaps of stones.

² The dead bodies of Your servants they have given to be food to birds of the heaven, and the flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the Earth.

³ They have shed their blood like waters, all around Jerusalem; and there was no one to bury them.

⁴ We are a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to those around us.

⁵ LORD, how long will You be angry? Forever? Shall Your jealousy burn like fire?

⁶ Pour out Your wrath upon the heathen who have not known You, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon Your Name.

⁷ For they have devoured Jacob and made His dwelling place desolate.

⁸ Do not remember our former iniquities against us, but let Your tender mercies come quickly to meet us; for we are in great misery.

⁹ Help us, O God of Our Salvation, for the Glory of Your Name; and deliver us and be merciful to our sins for Your Name’s sake.

¹⁴ Why do we stay? Assemble yourselves! And let us enter into the strong cities! And let us be quiet there. For the LORD our God has put us to silence, and given us water with gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD.

¹⁵ We looked for peace, but no good; for a time of health, and behold troubles.

¹⁶ The neighing of His horses was heard from Dan. The whole land trembled at the noise of the neighing of His strong horses. For they have come, and have devoured the land with all that is in it: the city and those who dwell in it.

¹⁷ “For behold, I will send serpents and vipers among you, which will not be charmed. And they shall sting you,” says the LORD.

² Oh, that I had in the wilderness a cottage of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they are all adulterers, and an assembly of rebels!

³ “And they bend their tongues like their bows, for lies. But they have no courage for the truth upon the Earth. For they proceed from evil to worse, and they have not known Me,” says the LORD.

⁴ “Let everyone observe his neighbor. And do not trust in any brother. For every brother will use deceit, and every friend will deal deceitfully.

⁵ “And everyone will deceive his friend, and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and take great pains to do wickedly.

⁶ “Your habitation is in the midst of deceivers. Because of deceit, they refuse to know Me,” says the LORD.

⁷ Therefore, thus says the LORD of Hosts: “Behold, I will refine them and test them. For what else should I do for the Daughter of My people?

⁸ “Their tongue is as an arrow shot out and speaks deceit. One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth. But in his heart, he lays in wait for him.

⁹ “Shall I not reckon with them for these things?” says the LORD. “Or shall My Soul not be avenged on such a nation as this?

¹⁰ “Upon the mountains will I take up a weeping and a lamentation, and upon the fair places of the wilderness a mourning, because they are burnt up, so that no one can pass through them, nor can men hear the voice of the flock. Both the bird of the air and the beast have fled away, gone.

¹¹ “And I will make Jerusalem a heap, a den of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah waste, without an inhabitant.”

⁴¹ And as Jesus sat near the treasury, He saw how much money the people cast into the treasury. And many of the rich men cast in much.

⁴² And there came a certain poor widow. And she threw in two lepta (which make a kodrantes).

⁴³ Then He called His disciples to Him, and said to them, “Truly I say to you, that this poor widow has cast more in than all those who have cast into the treasury.

⁴⁴ “For they all cast in out of their excess. But she, out of her poverty, cast in all that she had, even all her living.”