Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 78

A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of Asaph.

¹ Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

² I will open my mouth in a parable (in instruction by numerous examples); I will utter dark sayings of old [that hide important truth]—^(A)

³ Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.

⁴ We will not hide them from their children, but we will tell to the generation to come the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonderful works that He has performed.

⁵ For He established a testimony (an express precept) in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, commanding our fathers that they should make [the great facts of God’s dealings with Israel] known to their children,

⁶ That the generation to come might know them, that the children still to be born might arise and recount them to their children,

⁷ That they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but might keep His commandments

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,

³¹ As Moses the servant of the Lord commanded the Israelites, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, an altar of unhewn stones, upon which no man has lifted up an iron tool; and they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings.

³² And there, in the presence of the Israelites, [Joshua] wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses.

³³ And all Israel, sojourner as well as he who was born among them, with their elders, officers, and judges, stood on either side of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded before that they should bless the Israelites.

³⁴ Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, all that is written in the Book of the Law.

³⁵ There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and little ones, and the foreigners who were living among them.

¹³ Then the sixth angel blew [his] trumpet, and from the four horns of the golden altar which stands before God I heard a solitary voice,

¹⁴ Saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, Liberate the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.

¹⁵ So the four angels who had been in readiness for that hour in the appointed day, month, and year were liberated to destroy a third of mankind.

¹⁶ The number of their troops of cavalry was twice ten thousand times ten thousand (200,000,000); I heard what their number was.

¹⁷ And in [my] vision the horses and their riders appeared to me like this: the riders wore breastplates the color of fiery red and sapphire blue and sulphur (brimstone) yellow. The heads of the horses looked like lions’ heads, and from their mouths there poured fire and smoke and sulphur (brimstone).

¹⁸ A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues—by the fire and the smoke and the sulphur (brimstone) that poured from the mouths of the horses.

¹⁹ For the power of the horses to do harm is in their mouths and also in their tails. Their tails are like serpents, for they have heads, and it is by means of them that they wound people.

²⁰ And the rest of humanity who were not killed by these plagues even then did not repent of [the worship of] the works of their [own] hands, so as to cease paying homage to the demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor move.^(A)

²¹ And they did not repent of their murders or their practice of magic (sorceries) or their sexual vice or their thefts.