Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
BOOK V
(Psalms 107–150)
Psalm 107
107 “Give thanks to the Lord because he is good,
because his faithful love lasts forever!”
2 That’s what those who are redeemed by the Lord say,
the ones God redeemed from the power of their enemies,
3 the ones God gathered from various countries,
from east and west, north and south.
4 Some of the redeemed had wandered into the desert, into the wasteland.
They couldn’t find their way to a city or town.
5 They were hungry and thirsty;
their lives were slipping away.
6 So they cried out to the Lord in their distress,
and God delivered them from their desperate circumstances.
7 God led them straight to human habitation.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his faithful love
and his wondrous works for all people,
9 because God satisfied the one who was parched with thirst,
and he filled up the hungry with good things!
43 Whoever is wise will pay attention to these things,
carefully considering the Lord’s faithful love.
Arrival of divine judgment
9 Don’t rejoice, Israel!
Don’t celebrate as other nations do;
for as whores you have gone away from your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s pay
on all threshing floors of grain.
2 Threshing floor and wine vat won’t feed them;
the new wine will fail them.
3 They won’t remain in the land of the Lord;
but Ephraim will return to Egypt,
and in Assyria they will eat unclean food.
4 They won’t pour wine as an offering to the Lord;
their sacrifices won’t please him.
Such sacrifices will be like food for those who touch the dead;
all who eat of it will be unclean;
their bread will be for their hunger alone;
it will not come to the Lord’s house.
5 What will you do on the day of appointed festival,
on the day of the Lord’s festival?
6 Even if they escape destruction,
Egypt will gather them,
Memphis will bury them.
Briars will possess their precious things of silver;[a]
thorns will be in their tents.
7 The days of punishment have come;
the days of judgment have arrived;
Israel cries,
“The prophet is a fool,
the spiritual man is mad!”
Because of your great wickedness,
your rejection of me is great.
Tragic consequences
8 The prophet is God’s watchman
looking over Ephraim,
yet a hunter’s trap is set, covering all his ways,
and rejection is in his God’s house.
9 They have corrupted themselves terribly
as in the days of Gibeah;
he will remember their wickedness;
he will punish their sins.
10 Like grapes in the wilderness,
I found Israel.
In its first season,
like the first fruit on the fig tree,
I saw your ancestors.
But they came to Baal-peor,
and worshipped a thing of shame;
they became detestable like the thing they loved.[b]
11 Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
12 Though they bring up children,
I will make them childless
until no one is left.
Doom to them indeed when I leave them!
13 When I looked toward Tyre,
Ephraim was planted in a lovely meadow;
but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter.
14 Give them, Lord—
what will you give them?
Give them a womb that miscarries
and breasts that are dried up.
15 Every wickedness of theirs began at Gilgal;
there I came to hate them.
Because of the wickedness of their deeds
I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more;
all their officials are rebels.
16 Ephraim is sick,
their root is dried up,
they will bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will put to death their much-loved little ones.
17 Because they haven’t listened to him,
my God will reject them;
they will wander among the nations.
The old and new life
17 So I’m telling you this, and I insist on it in the Lord: you shouldn’t live your life like the Gentiles anymore. They base their lives on pointless thinking, 18 and they are in the dark in their reasoning. They are disconnected from God’s life because of their ignorance and their closed hearts. 19 They are people who lack all sense of right and wrong, and who have turned themselves over to doing whatever feels good and to practicing every sort of corruption along with greed.
20 But you didn’t learn that sort of thing from Christ. 21 Since you really listened to him and you were taught how the truth is in Jesus, 22 change the former way of life that was part of the person you once were, corrupted by deceitful desires. 23 Instead, renew the thinking in your mind by the Spirit 24 and clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible