Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
128 Blessings on all who reverence and trust the Lord—on all who obey him!
2 Their reward shall be prosperity and happiness. 3 Your wife shall be contented in your home. And look at all those children! There they sit around the dinner table as vigorous and healthy as young olive trees. 4 That is God’s reward to those who reverence and trust him.
5 May the Lord continually bless you with heaven’s blessings[a] as well as with human joys. 6 May you live to enjoy your grandchildren! And may God bless Israel!
22 “Therefore say to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord God says: I am bringing you back again, but not because you deserve it; I am doing it to protect my holy name, which you tarnished among the nations. 23 I will honor my great name, that you defiled, and the people of the world shall know I am the Lord. I will be honored before their eyes by delivering you from exile among them.[a] 24 For I will bring you back home again to the land of Israel.
25 “‘Then it will be as though I had sprinkled clean water on you, for you will be clean—your filthiness will be washed away, your idol worship gone. 26 And I will give you a new heart—I will give you new and right desires—and put a new spirit within you. I will take out your stony hearts of sin and give you new hearts of love.[b] 27 And I will put my Spirit within you so that you will obey my laws and do whatever I command.
28 “‘And you shall live in Israel, the land which I gave your fathers long ago. And you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will cleanse away your sins. I will abolish crop failures and famine. 30 I will give you huge harvests from your fruit trees and fields, and never again will the surrounding nations be able to scoff at your land for its famines. 31 Then you will remember your past sins and loathe yourselves for all the evils you did. 32 But always remember this: It is not for your own sakes that I will do this, but for mine. O my people Israel, be utterly ashamed of all that you have done!’”
53 [a] Then the meeting broke up and everybody went home.
8 Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and talked to them. 3 As he was speaking, the Jewish leaders and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery and placed her out in front of the staring crowd.
4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. 5 Moses’ law says to kill her. What about it?”
6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, hurl the stones at her until she dies. But only he who never sinned may throw the first!”
8 Then he stooped down again and wrote some more in the dust. 9 And the Jewish leaders slipped away one by one, beginning with the eldest, until only Jesus was left in front of the crowd with the woman.
10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
11 “No, sir,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.