Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁶⁸ Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:

⁶⁹ And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant:

⁷⁰ As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who are from the beginning:

⁷¹ Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us:

⁷² To perform mercy to our fathers, and to remember his holy testament,

⁷³ The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant to us,

⁷⁴ That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear,

⁷⁵ In holiness and justice before him, all our days.

⁷⁶ And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:

⁷⁷ To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:

⁷⁸ Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:

⁷⁹ To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.

¹⁸ Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Joakim the son of Josias king of Juda: They shall not mourn for him, Alas, my brother, and Alas, sister: they shall not lament for him, Alas, my Lord, or, Alas, the noble one.

¹⁹ He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, rotten and cast forth without the gates of Jerusalem.

²⁰ Go up to Libanus, and cry: and lift up thy voice in Basan, and cry to them that pass by, for all thy lovers are destroyed.

²¹ I spoke to thee in thy properity: and thou saidst: I will not hear: this hath been thy way from thy youth, because thou hast not heard my voice.

²² The wind shall feed all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: and then shalt thou be confounded, and ashamed of all thy wickedness.

²³ Thou that sittest in Libanus, and makest thy nest in the cedars, how hast thou mourned when sorrows came upon thee, as the pains of a woman in labour?

²⁴ As I live, saith the Lord, if Jechonias the son of Joakim the king of Juda were a ring on my right hand, I would pluck him thence.

²⁵ And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, and into the hand of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans.

²⁶ And I will send thee, and thy mother that bore thee, into a strange country, in which you were not born, and there you shall die:

²⁷ And they shall not return into the land, whereunto they lift up their mind to return thither.

²⁸ Is this man Jechonias an earthen and a broken vessel? is he a vessel wherein there is no pleasure? why are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they know not?

²⁹ O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.

³⁰ Thus saith the Lord: Write this man barren, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for there shall not be a man of his seed that shall sit upon the throne of David, and have power any more in Juda.

¹⁵ And they brought unto him also infants, that he might touch them. Which when the disciples saw, they rebuked them.

¹⁶ But Jesus, calling them together, said: Suffer children to come to me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

¹⁷ Amen, I say to you: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a child, shall not enter into it.