Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

84 How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

² My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

³ Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young” even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they will be ever praising Thee. Selah

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are Thy ways,

⁶ who passing through the Valley of Baca makes it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

⁷ They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

⁸ O Lord God of 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; 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; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.

¹² O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee!

29 Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And 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 He, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, 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 street,

⁵ and said unto them, “Hear me, ye Levites! Sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.

⁶ For our fathers have trespassed and done that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God, and have forsaken Him, and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord, and turned their backs.

⁷ Also they have shut up the doors of the porch and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel.

⁸ Therefore the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and He hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes.

⁹ For lo, 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 mine heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that His fierce wrath may turn away from us.

¹¹ My sons, be not now negligent; for the Lord hath chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, and that ye should minister unto Him and burn incense.”

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 on the first day of the first month to sanctify, and on the eighth day of the month came they to the porch of the Lord. So they sanctified the house of the Lord in eight days, and on 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 the vessels thereof, and the showbread table with all the vessels thereof.

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

²³ It was therefore necessary that the copies of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

²⁴ For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into Heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

²⁵ Nor yet should He offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place with blood of others every year;

²⁶ for then would He have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once, in the end of the world, hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

²⁷ And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the Judgment,

²⁸ so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto those who look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin, unto salvation.