Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
Suffering and Waiting for Deliverance
For the music director; according to The Doe of the Dawn. A psalm of David.[a]
22 My God, my God why have you forsaken me?
Why are you far from helping me, far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I call by day and you do not answer,
and by night but I have no rest.[b]
3 Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 Our ancestors[c] trusted you;
they trusted and you delivered them.
5 They cried to you and were saved;
they trusted you and were not ashamed.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by humankind and despised by people.
7 All who see me mock me.
They open wide their lips;
they shake the head, saying:
8 “He trusts Yahweh.[d] Let him rescue him.
Let him deliver him because he delights in him.”
9 Yet you took me from the belly;
you made me trust while on my mother’s breasts.
10 On you I was cast from the womb.
From my mother’s belly you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me
because trouble is near;
because there is no helper.
12 Many bulls have encircled me;
mighty bulls of Bashan have surrounded me.
13 They open their mouth against me
like a lion tearing and roaring.
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax;
it is melted within me.[e]
15 My strength is dry like a potsherd,
and my tongue is sticking to my jaws;
and you have placed me in the dust of death.
Job’s Fifth Speech, Continued
17 “My spirit is pulled down; my days are extinguished;
the graveyard is for me.
2 Surely[a] mockery is with me,
and my eye rests[b] on their provocation.
3 Please lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
who is he who will give security for my hand?[c]
4 Indeed,[d] you have closed their mind from understanding;
therefore, you will not let them triumph.
5 He denounces friends for reward,
so[e] his children’s eyes will fail.
6 “And he has made me a proverb for[f] the peoples,
and I am one before whom people spit.[g]
7 And my eye has grown dim from grief,
and the limbs of my body are all[h] like a shadow.
8 The upright are appalled at this,
and the innocent excites himself over the godless.
9 But[i] the righteous holds on to his way,
and he who has clean hands[j] increases in strength.
10 But[k] all of you must return[l]—please come![m]
But[n] I shall not find a wise person among you.
11 “My days are past; my plans are broken down—
even the desires of my heart.
12 They make night into day,
saying, ‘Light is near to darkness.’[o]
13 If I hope for Sheol as my house,
if I spread my couch in the darkness,
14 if I call to the pit, ‘You are my father,’
to the maggot, ‘You are my mother or[p] my sister,’
15 where[q] then is my hope?
And who will see my hope?[r]
16 Will they go down to the bars of Sheol?
Or shall we descend together into the dust?”
A Serious Warning Against Unbelief
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
in the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers tested me by trial
and saw my works 10 for forty years.
Therefore I was angry with this generation,
and I said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,
and they do not know my ways.’
11 As I swore in my anger,
‘They will never enter[a] into my rest.’”[b]
12 Watch out, brothers, lest there be in some of you an evil, unbelieving heart, with the result that you fall away[c] from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day by day[d], as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you become hardened[e] by the deception of sin. 14 For we have become partners of Christ, if indeed we hold fast the beginning of our commitment steadfast until the end, 15 while it is said[f],
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”[g]
16 For who, when they[h] heard it, were disobedient? Surely it was not all who went out from Egypt through Moses? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear they would not enter into his rest, except those who were disobedient? 19 And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
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