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. ⁵ For he gave his laws to Israel and commanded our fathers to teach them to their children, ⁶ so that they in turn could teach their children too. Thus his laws pass down from generation to generation. ⁷ In this way each generation has been able to obey his laws and to set its hope anew on God and not forget his glorious miracles.

³⁰ Then Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel at Mount Ebal, ³¹ as Moses had commanded^[a] in the book of his laws: “Make me an altar of boulders that have neither been broken nor carved,” the Lord had said concerning Mount Ebal. Then the priests offered burnt sacrifices and peace offerings to the Lord on the altar. ³² And as the people of Israel watched, Joshua carved upon the stones of the altar each of the Ten Commandments.^[b]

³³ Then all the people of Israel—including the elders, officers, judges, and the foreigners living among them—divided into two groups, half of them standing at the foot of Mount Gerizim and half at the foot of Mount Ebal. Between them stood the priests with the Ark, ready to pronounce their blessing. (This was all done in accordance with the instructions given long before by Moses.) ³⁴ Joshua then read to them all of the statements of blessing and curses that Moses had written in the book of God’s laws. ³⁵ Every commandment Moses had ever given was read before the entire assembly, including the women and children and the foreigners who lived among the Israelis.

¹³ The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice speaking from the four horns of the golden altar that stands before the throne of God, ¹⁴ saying to the sixth angel, “Release the four mighty demons^[a] held bound at the great River Euphrates.” ¹⁵ They had been kept in readiness for that year and month and day and hour, and now they were turned loose to kill a third of all mankind. ¹⁶ They led an army of 200,000,000 warriors^[b]—I heard an announcement of how many there were.

^17-18 I saw their horses spread out before me in my vision; their riders wore fiery-red breastplates, though some were sky-blue and others yellow. The horses’ heads looked much like lions’, and smoke and fire and flaming sulphur billowed from their mouths, killing one-third of all mankind. ¹⁹ Their power of death was not only in their mouths, but in their tails as well, for their tails were similar to serpents’ heads that struck and bit with fatal wounds.

²⁰ But the men left alive after these plagues still refused to worship God! They would not renounce their demon-worship, nor their idols made of gold and silver, brass, stone, and wood—which neither see nor hear nor walk! ²¹ Neither did they change their mind and attitude about all their murders and witchcraft, their immorality and theft.