Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
100 Shout with joy before the Lord, O earth! 2 Obey him gladly; come before him, singing with joy.
3 Try to realize what this means—the Lord is God! He made us—we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Go through his open gates with great thanksgiving; enter his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. 5 For the Lord is always good. He is always loving and kind, and his faithfulness goes on and on to each succeeding generation.
15 Then he blessed Joseph with this blessing: “May God, the God of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, the God who has shepherded me all my life, wonderfully bless these boys. 16 He is the Angel who has kept me from all harm. May these boys be an honor to my name and to the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and may they become a mighty nation.”
17 But Joseph was upset and displeased when he saw that his father had laid his right hand on Ephraim’s head; so he lifted it to place it on Manasseh’s head instead.
18 “No, Father,” he said. “You’ve got your right hand on the wrong head! This one over here is the older. Put your right hand on him!”
19 But his father refused. “I know what I’m doing, my son,” he said. “Manasseh too shall become a great nation, but his younger brother shall become even greater.”
20 So Jacob blessed the boys that day with this blessing: “May the people of Israel bless each other by saying, ‘God make you as prosperous as Ephraim and Manasseh.’” (Note that he put Ephraim before Manasseh.)
21 Then Israel said to Joseph, “I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to Canaan, the land of your fathers. 22 And I have given the choice land of Shekem to you instead of to your brothers, as your portion of that land which I took from the Amorites with my sword and with my bow.”
14 Then I saw a Lamb standing on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and with him were 144,000 who had his Name and his Father’s Name written on their foreheads. 2 And I heard a sound from heaven like the roaring of a great waterfall or the rolling of mighty thunder. It was the singing of a choir accompanied by harps.
3 This tremendous choir—144,000 strong—sang a wonderful new song in front of the throne of God and before the four Living Beings and the twenty-four Elders; and no one could sing this song except those 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. 4 For they are spiritually undefiled, pure as virgins,[a] following the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been purchased from among the men on the earth as a consecrated offering to God and the Lamb. 5 No falsehood can be charged against them; they are blameless.
6 And I saw another angel flying through the heavens, carrying the everlasting Good News to preach to those on earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people.
7 “Fear God,” he shouted, “and extol his greatness. For the time has come when he will sit as Judge. Worship him who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all its sources.”
8 Then another angel followed him through the skies, saying, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen—that great city—because she seduced the nations of the world and made them share the wine of her intense impurity and sin.”
9 Then a third angel followed them shouting, “Anyone worshiping the Creature from the sea[b] and his statue, and accepting his mark on the forehead or the hand 10 must drink the wine of the anger of God; it is poured out undiluted into God’s cup of wrath. And they will be tormented with fire and burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb. 11 The smoke of their torture rises forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night, for they have worshiped the Creature and his statue, and have been tattooed with the code of his name.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.