Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

To the Overcomer upon Gittith, A Psalm for the sons of Korah.

¹ ¶ How amiable are thy habitations, O LORD of the hosts!

² My soul longs, and even faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing to the living God.

³ Even the sparrow has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young upon thine altars, O LORD of the hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Happy are those that dwell in thy house; they shall continually praise thee. Selah.

⁵ Happy is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are thy ways,

⁶ who passing through the valley of Baca, shall make it a well; the rain also shall fill the pools.

⁷ They go forth in a great multitude; and in order, they shall see God in Zion.

⁸ ¶ O LORD God of the hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

⁹ Behold, O God our shield and look upon the face of thine anointed,

¹⁰ for a day in thy courts is better than a thousand outside of them. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

¹¹ For the LORD God is a sun and shield unto us; the LORD will give grace and glory; he will not withhold good from those that walk uprightly.

¹² O LORD of the hosts, happy is the man that trusts in thee.

29 ¶ Hezekiah began to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.

² And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David, his father, had done.

³ In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the LORD and repaired them.

⁴ And he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them together into the east plaza

⁵ and said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and ye shall sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers and carry forth the filthiness out of the sanctuary.

⁶ For our fathers have rebelled and done that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD our God, for they have forsaken him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD and turned their backs.

⁷ They even shut up the doors of the porch and put out the lamps and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the sanctuary unto the God of Israel.

⁸ Therefore, the wrath of the LORD has come upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he has delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes.

⁹ For, behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.

¹⁰ Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the LORD God of Israel that his fierce wrath may turn away from us.

¹¹ My sons, do not deceive yourselves, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should be his ministers and burn incense unto him.

¹⁶ And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the Brook Kidron.

¹⁷ Now they began to sanctify on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the porch of the LORD; and they sanctified the house of the LORD in eight days; and in the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.

¹⁸ Then they went in to Hezekiah, the king, and said, We have cleansed all the house of the LORD and the altar of burnt offering, with all its vessels, and the showbread table with all its vessels.

¹⁹ Likewise we have prepared and sanctified all the vessels, which King Ahaz in his reign cast away in his transgression, and, behold, they are before the altar of the LORD.

²³ ¶ So that it was necessary that the figures of the heavenly things should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

²⁴ For Christ is not entered into the sanctuary made with hands (which is a figure of the true), but into the heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,

²⁵ nor yet that he should offer himself many times (as the high priest enters into the sanctuary each year with blood that is not his own);

²⁶ otherwise it would have been necessary for him to suffer many times since the foundation of the world; but now once in the consummation of the ages he has appeared to abolish sin by the sacrifice of himself.

²⁷ And as it is appointed unto men to die once, and after this the judgment;

²⁸ so also the Christ is offered once to take away the sins of many; and unto those that wait for him without sin he shall appear the second time unto saving health.