Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

78 O my people, listen to my teaching. Open your ears to what I am saying. ^2-3 For I will show you lessons from our history, stories handed down to us from former generations. ⁴ I will reveal these truths to you so that you can describe these glorious deeds of Jehovah to your children and tell them about the mighty miracles he did.

^11-12 And they forgot about the wonderful miracles God had done for them and for their fathers in Egypt. ¹³ For he divided the sea before them and led them through! The water stood banked up along both sides of them! ¹⁴ In the daytime he led them by a cloud, and at night by a pillar of fire. ¹⁵ He split open the rocks in the wilderness to give them plenty of water, as though gushing from a spring. ¹⁶ Streams poured from the rock, flowing like a river!

¹⁷ The Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, says: I am the Lord your God, who punishes you for your own good and leads you along the paths that you should follow.

¹⁸ Oh, that you had listened to my laws! Then you would have had peace flowing like a gentle river, and great waves of righteousness. ¹⁹ Then you would have become as numerous as the sands along the seashores of the world, too many to count, and there would have been no need for your destruction.

²⁰ Yet even now, be free from your captivity! Leave Babylon, singing as you go; shout to the ends of the earth that the Lord has redeemed his servants, the Jews. ²¹ They were not thirsty when he led them through the deserts; he divided the rock, and water gushed out for them to drink.

¹¹ Don’t criticize and speak evil about each other, dear brothers. If you do, you will be fighting against God’s law of loving one another, declaring it is wrong. But your job is not to decide whether this law is right or wrong, but to obey it. ¹² Only he who made the law can rightly judge among us. He alone decides to save us or destroy. So what right do you have to judge or criticize others?

¹³ Look here, you people who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to such and such a town, stay there a year, and open up a profitable business.” ¹⁴ How do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? For the length of your lives is as uncertain as the morning fog—now you see it; soon it is gone. ¹⁵ What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we shall live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ Otherwise you will be bragging about your own plans, and such self-confidence never pleases God.