Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

130 O Lord, from the depths of despair I cry for your help: ² “Hear me! Answer! Help me!”

^3-4 Lord, if you keep in mind our sins, then who can ever get an answer to his prayers? But you forgive! What an awesome thing this is! ⁵ That is why I wait expectantly, trusting God to help, for he has promised. ⁶ I long for him more than sentinels long for the dawn.

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord; for he is loving and kind and comes to us with armloads of salvation. ⁸ He himself shall ransom Israel from her slavery to sin.

1 ^1-3 Ezekiel was a priest (the son of Buzi) who lived with the Jewish exiles beside the Chebar Canal in Babylon.

One day late in June, when I was thirty years old,^[a] the heavens were suddenly opened to me and I saw visions from God.

⁸ Listen, son of dust, to what I say to you. Don’t you be a rebel too! Open your mouth and eat what I give you.”

^9-10 Then I looked and saw a hand holding out to me a scroll, with writing on both sides. He unrolled it, and I saw that it was full of warnings and sorrows and pronouncements of doom.

3 And he said to me: “Son of dust, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.”

² So I took the scroll.

³ “Eat it all,” he said. And when I ate it, it tasted sweet as honey.

10 Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, surrounded by a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face shone like the sun and his feet flashed with fire. ² And he held open in his hand a small scroll. He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth ³ and gave a great shout—it was like the roar of a lion—and the seven thunders crashed their reply.

⁴ I was about to write what the thunders said when a voice from heaven called to me, “Don’t do it. Their words are not to be revealed.”

⁵ Then the mighty angel standing on the sea and land lifted his right hand to heaven ⁶ and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it and the earth and all that it contains and the sea and its inhabitants, that there should be no more delay, ⁷ but that when the seventh angel blew his trumpet, then God’s veiled plan—mysterious through the ages ever since it was announced by his servants the prophets—would be fulfilled.

⁸ Then the voice from heaven spoke to me again, “Go and get the unrolled scroll from the mighty angel standing there upon the sea and land.”

⁹ So I approached him and asked him to give me the scroll. “Yes, take it and eat it,” he said. “At first it will taste like honey, but when you swallow it, it will make your stomach sour!” ¹⁰ So I took it from his hand, and ate it! And just as he had said, it was sweet in my mouth, but it gave me a stomachache when I swallowed it.

¹¹ Then he told me, “You must prophesy further about many peoples, nations, tribes, and kings.”