Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

An instruction. Of Asaph.

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

² I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter riddles from of old,

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

⁴ We will not hide [them] from their sons, shewing forth to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and his strength, and his marvellous works which he hath done.

⁵ For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children;

⁶ That the generation to come might know [them], the children that should be born; that they might rise up and tell [them] to their children,

⁷ And that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but observe his commandments;

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to Jehovah the God of Israel, in mount Ebal,

³¹ as Moses the servant of Jehovah had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which iron had not been lifted up. And they offered up burnt-offerings on it to Jehovah, and sacrificed peace-offerings.

³² And he wrote there on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written before the children of Israel.

³³ And all Israel, and their elders, and their officers and judges, stood on this side and on that side of the ark before the priests the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, as well the stranger as the home-born [Israelite]; half of them toward mount Gerizim, and the other half of them toward mount Ebal; as Moses the servant of Jehovah had commanded, that they should bless the people of Israel, in the beginning.

³⁴ And afterwards he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law.

³⁵ There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded which Joshua read not before the whole congregation of Israel, and the women, and the children, and the strangers that lived among them.

¹³ And the sixth angel sounded [his] trumpet: and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which [is] before God,

¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel that had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound at the great river Euphrates.

¹⁵ And the four angels were loosed, who are prepared for the hour and day and month and year, that they might slay the third part of men;

¹⁶ and the number of the hosts of horse [was] twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

¹⁷ And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those that sat upon them, having breastplates of fire and jacinth and brimstone; and the heads of the horses [were] as heads of lions, and out of their mouths goes out fire and smoke and brimstone.

¹⁸ By these three plagues were the third part of men killed, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which goes out of their mouths.

¹⁹ For the power of the horses is in their mouth and in their tails: for their tails [are] like serpents, having heads, and with them they injure.

²⁰ And the rest of men who were not killed with these plagues repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and the golden and silver and brazen and stone and wooden idols, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.

²¹ And they repented not of their murders, nor of their witchcrafts, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.