Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
God judges all people
94 Lord, you are the God
who punishes guilty people.
God, show your power
to punish people as they deserve![a]
2 Judge of all people on the earth, do something!
Punish proud people as they deserve!
3 How long will wicked people continue to be happy?
Yes, Lord, how long?
4 Those people who do evil things
speak many proud words.
They boast about how great they are.
5 Lord, see how they hurt your own people.
They are cruel to the people that belong to you.
6 They kill widows
and foreign people who live in our land.
They murder children that have no family.
7 They say, ‘The Lord does not see us.
Israel's God does not see what we are doing.’
8 Think again, all you fools among the people!
Stupid people, become wise!
9 God made our ears!
Can he himself not hear?
He made our eyes!
Does he not see?
10 He teaches the nations what is right.
Will he not punish you,
when you do what is wrong?
He teaches people what they should know.
11 The Lord knows what people think.
He knows that their thoughts are empty.
12 Lord, when you teach people what is right,
you have really blessed them.
You use your Law to teach them.
13 When those people have troubles,
you keep them safe.
Then the wicked people fall into a deep hole
that you have dug to catch them.
14 The Lord will not leave his people alone.
He will not forget to help the people that belong to him.
15 Once again, judges will do what is right and fair,
and good, honest people will agree.
16 Who would fight for me
against the wicked people?[b]
Who would keep me safe
from the people who do evil things?
17 Unless the Lord had helped me,
I would soon have become silent in death.
18 When I think, ‘I am falling down,’
your faithful love keeps me safe, Lord.
19 When I have troubles in my mind,
so that I am afraid,
you help me to be happy again.
20 You will not become a friend of cruel rulers.
They make laws that only hurt people.
21 They join together to work against good people.
They say that people are guilty
who have done nothing wrong.
They say that they must die.
22 But the Lord is a strong place for me.
Yes, my God is a rock
where I can hide and be safe.
23 He will punish those wicked leaders.
He will destroy them,
because they do evil things.
The Lord our God will completely destroy them.
Punishment for Judah's people
5 The Lord said,
‘Run along all the streets of Jerusalem.
Look carefully all around you.
Look in all the public places of the city.
Try to find one person who is honest.
Try to find one person who wants to know the truth.
If you find one person like that,
I will forgive all the people in the city.
2 They make promises and they say,
“I will do it, as surely as the Lord lives.”
But what they say is all lies.’
3 Lord, you want people to be honest and true.
You have punished your people,
but they did not feel any pain.
You nearly destroyed them,
but they still refuse to change.
Their minds have become as hard as rock.
They refuse to turn back to you.
4 I thought, ‘These are poor, foolish people.
They do not understand what the Lord wants them to do.
They do not know his commands.
5 So I will go to speak to the leaders.
They will surely understand what the Lord wants.
They will know his commands.’
But all of them have turned against the Lord too.
They refuse to obey his authority.
6 So lions will come out of the forest to attack them.
Wolves will come from the desert to destroy them.
Leopards will wait outside their cities.
They will kill anyone who goes outside.[a]
That will happen because the people have turned against the Lord.
They have done many bad things.
7 The Lord said,
‘Jerusalem, I have to punish you.
Your people have turned away from me.
They have served gods that are not true gods.
I gave them everything that they needed.
But they left me, like a wife who leaves her husband.
The men hurry to the houses of prostitutes.
8 They are like strong male horses.
They cannot wait to have sex with another man's wife.’
9 The Lord says this:
‘I must punish them for what they have done.
I will pay back this wicked nation for their sins.’
10 The Lord says this to Judah's enemies:
‘March through the vineyards of Israel and Judah,
and destroy the vines.
But do not destroy them completely.
Pull the branches from the trees.
Do this, because these people do not belong to the Lord.[b]
11 The people of Israel and Judah have turned against me.
12 They have told lies about the Lord.
They have said, “He will not punish us!
No trouble will come to us.
There will be no war. There will be no famine.
13 The prophets speak empty words.
They do not speak the Lord's messages.
The troubles that they talk about should happen to them, not us!” ’
14 Because of that, the Lord God Almighty said to me,
‘That is what the people are saying.
So I will give you a strong message to speak to them.
It will be like fire that comes out of your mouth.
And the people will burn like wood in that fire.’
15 The Lord says this:
‘Listen to me, you people of Israel.
I will bring an army to attack you.
They will come from a nation that is far away.
It is a strong nation that started long ago.
You do not know their language.
You cannot understand what they say.
16 They are all brave soldiers.
They shoot arrows that will kill you.
17 They will eat all the crops in your fields
and the food that you have stored.
They will take your sons and your daughters for themselves.
They will kill your sheep and your cows for food.
They will eat all your grapes and your figs.
They will attack your strong cities
where you thought you would be safe.
Their soldiers will knock down the walls.’
Timothy should be a good leader in the church
18 Timothy, you are like my own child. So now I am telling you to serve God well. Remember the words from God that people spoke about you, when you became a servant of God.[a] Those words will help you to be strong, like a soldier who fights well.[b] 19 You must continue to trust God. Always do what you know to be right. Some people have refused to do what is right, even when they know what they should do. As a result, they no longer believe God's true message. 20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are people like that.[c] I have given them to Satan so that he may punish them. Then they will learn not to say bad things against God any more.
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