Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A song of David.

The Lord Wants His People to Return

1 Zechariah son of Berekiah received a message from the Lord. This was in the eighth month of the second year that Darius^[a] was king in Persia. (Zechariah was the son of Berekiah, who was the son of Iddo the prophet.) This is that message:

² The Lord became very angry with your ancestors. ³ So you must tell the people what the Lord All-Powerful says, “Come back to me, says the Lord All-Powerful, and I will come back to you.” This is what the Lord All-Powerful said.

⁴ “Don’t be like your ancestors. In the past the prophets spoke to them and said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful wants you to change your evil way of living. Stop doing evil things!’ But your ancestors did not listen to me.” This is what the Lord said.

⁵ “Your ancestors are gone, and those prophets did not live forever. ⁶ The prophets were my servants. I used them to tell your ancestors about my laws and teachings. Your ancestors finally learned their lesson and said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful did what he said he would do. He punished us for the way we lived and for all the evil things we did.’ So they came back to God.”

The Four Horses

⁷ On the 24th day of the eleventh month (Shebat) of the second year that Darius was king of Persia, Zechariah received another message from the Lord. (This was Zechariah son of Berekiah, son of Iddo.) This is the message:

⁸ At night I saw a man riding a red horse. He was standing among some myrtle bushes in the valley. Behind him, there were red, brown, and white horses. ⁹ I said, “Sir, what are these horses for?”

Then the angel speaking to me said, “I will show you what these horses are for.”

¹⁰ Then the man standing among the myrtle bushes said, “The Lord sent these horses to go here and there on earth.”

¹¹ Then the horses spoke to the Lord’s angel standing among the myrtle bushes and said, “We have walked here and there on the earth, and everything is calm and quiet.”

¹² Then the Lord’s angel said, “Lord All-Powerful, how long before you comfort Jerusalem and the cities of Judah? You have shown your anger at these cities for 70 years now.”

¹³ Then the Lord answered the angel who was talking with me. He spoke good, comforting words.

¹⁴ Then the angel told me to tell the people this: The Lord All-Powerful says:

²² The people stopped listening when Paul said this last thing. They all shouted, “Get rid of this man! He doesn’t deserve to live.” ²³ They kept on shouting, ripping off their clothes and throwing dust into the air.^{[a] 24} Then the commander told the soldiers to take Paul into the army building and beat him. He wanted to make Paul tell why the people were shouting against him like this. ²⁵ So the soldiers were tying Paul, preparing to beat him. But he said to an army officer there, “Do you have the right to beat a Roman citizen^[b] who has not been proven guilty?”

²⁶ When the officer heard this, he went to the commander and told him about it. The officer said, “Do you know what you are doing? This man is a Roman citizen!”

²⁷ The commander came to Paul and said, “Tell me, are you really a Roman citizen?”

He answered, “Yes.”

²⁸ The commander said, “I paid a lot of money to become a Roman citizen.”

But Paul said, “I was born a citizen.”

²⁹ The men who were preparing to question Paul moved away from him immediately. The commander was afraid because he had already put Paul in chains, and he was a Roman citizen.

Paul Speaks to the Jewish Leaders

³⁰ The next day the commander decided to learn why the Jews were accusing Paul. So he ordered the leading priests and the whole high council to meet together. He had Paul’s chains taken off and had him brought in to face the council.

23 Paul looked at the council members and said, “Brothers, I have lived my life in a good way before God. I have always done what I thought was right.” ² Ananias,^[c] the high priest, was there. When he heard this, he told the men who were standing near Paul to hit him in the mouth. ³ Paul said to Ananias, “God will hit you too! You are like a dirty wall that has been painted white. You sit there and judge me, using the Law of Moses. But you are telling them to hit me, and that is against the law.”

⁴ The men standing near Paul said to him, “Are you sure you want to insult God’s high priest like that?”

⁵ Paul said, “Brothers, I did not know this man was the high priest. The Scriptures say, ‘You must not say bad things about a leader of your people.’^[d]”

⁶ Paul knew that some of the men in the council meeting were Sadducees and some were Pharisees. So he shouted, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee and my father was a Pharisee! I am on trial here because I believe that people will rise from death.”

⁷ When Paul said this, a big argument started between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The group was divided. ⁸ (The Sadducees believe that after people die, they will not live again as an angel or as a spirit. But the Pharisees believe in both.) ⁹ All these Jews began shouting louder and louder. Some of the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, stood up and argued, “We find nothing wrong with this man. Maybe an angel or a spirit really did speak to him.”

¹⁰ The argument turned into a fight, and the commander was afraid that the Jews would tear Paul to pieces. So he told the soldiers to go down and take Paul away from these Jews and put him in the army building.

¹¹ The next night the Lord Jesus came and stood by Paul. He said, “Be brave! You have told people in Jerusalem about me. You must do the same in Rome.”