Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

146 Praise the Lord! Yes, really praise him! ² I will praise him as long as I live, yes, even with my dying breath.

³ Don’t look to men for help; their greatest leaders fail; ⁴ for every man must die. His breathing stops, life ends, and in a moment all he planned for himself is ended. ⁵ But happy is the man who has the God of Jacob as his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God— ⁶ the God who made both earth and heaven, the seas and everything in them. He is the God who keeps every promise, ⁷ who gives justice to the poor and oppressed and food to the hungry. He frees the prisoners ⁸ and opens the eyes of the blind; he lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads. For the Lord loves good men. ⁹ He protects the immigrants and cares for the orphans and widows. But he turns topsy-turvy the plans of the wicked.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever. O Jerusalem,^[a] your God is King in every generation! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

¹⁴ Long has he been silent; he has restrained himself. But now he will give full vent to his wrath; he will groan and cry like a woman delivering her child. ¹⁵ He will level the mountains and hills and blight their greenery. He will dry up the rivers and pools. ¹⁶ He will bring blind Israel along a path they have not seen before. He will make the darkness bright before them and smooth and straighten out the road ahead. He will not forsake them. ¹⁷ But those who trust in idols and call them gods will be greatly disappointed; they will be turned away.

¹⁸ Oh, how blind and deaf you are toward God! Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you see? ¹⁹ Who in all the world is as blind as my own people,^[a] who are designed to be my messengers of truth? Who is so blind as my “dedicated one,” the “servant of the Lord”? ²⁰ You see and understand what is right but won’t heed nor do it; you hear, but you won’t listen.

²¹ The Lord has magnified his law and made it truly glorious. Through it he had planned to show the world that he is righteous.

⁹ So ever since we first heard about you we have kept on praying and asking God to help you understand what he wants you to do; asking him to make you wise about spiritual things; ¹⁰ and asking that the way you live will always please the Lord and honor him, so that you will always be doing good, kind things for others, while all the time you are learning to know God better and better.

¹¹ We are praying, too, that you will be filled with his mighty, glorious strength so that you can keep going no matter what happens—always full of the joy of the Lord, ¹² and always thankful to the Father who has made us fit to share all the wonderful things that belong to those who live in the Kingdom of light. ¹³ For he has rescued us out of the darkness and gloom of Satan’s kingdom and brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, ¹⁴ who bought our freedom with his blood and forgave us all our sins.