Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁵ Blessed is he who hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Jehovah his God,

⁶ Who made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is therein; who keepeth truth for ever;

⁷ Who executeth judgment for the oppressed, who giveth bread to the hungry. Jehovah looseth the prisoners;

⁸ Jehovah openeth [the eyes of] the blind; Jehovah raiseth up them that are bowed down; Jehovah loveth the righteous;

⁹ Jehovah preserveth the strangers; he lifteth up the fatherless and the widow; but the way of the wicked doth he subvert.

¹⁰ Jehovah will reign for ever, [even] thy God, O Zion, from generation to generation. Halleluiah!

⁶ And she arose, she and her daughters-in-law, and returned from the fields of Moab; for she had heard in the fields of Moab how that Jehovah had visited his people to give them bread.

⁷ Wherefore she went forth out of the place where she had been, and her two daughters-in-law with her; and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

⁸ And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each to her mother's house. Jehovah deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me.

⁹ Jehovah grant you that ye may find rest, each in the house of her husband. And she kissed them; and they lifted up their voice and wept.

¹⁰ And they said to her, We will certainly return with thee to thy people.

¹¹ And Naomi said, Return, my daughters: why will ye go with me? Are there yet sons in my womb, that they could be your husbands?

¹² Return, my daughters, go; for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say, I have hope, should I even have a husband to-night, and should I also bear sons,

¹³ would ye wait on that account till they were grown? Would ye stay on that account from having husbands? No, my daughters, for I am in much more bitterness than you; for the hand of Jehovah is gone out against me.

¹⁴ And they lifted up their voice and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave to her.

¹⁵ And she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back to her people and to her gods: return after thy sister-in-law.

¹⁶ And Ruth said, Do not intreat me to leave thee, to return from [following] after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God;

¹⁷ where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried. Jehovah do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part me and thee!

¹⁸ And when she saw that she was stedfastly minded to go with her, she left off speaking to her.

3 This, a second letter, beloved, I already write to you, in [both] which I stir up, in the way of putting you in remembrance, your pure mind,

² to be mindful of the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of the Lord and Saviour by your apostles;

³ knowing this first, that there shall come at [the] close of the days mockers with mocking, walking according to their own lusts,

⁴ and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for from the time the fathers fell asleep all things remain thus from [the] beginning of [the] creation.

⁵ For this is hidden from them through their own wilfulness, that heavens were of old, and an earth, having its subsistence out of water and in water, by the word of God,

⁶ through which [waters] the then world, deluged with water, perished.

⁷ But the present heavens and the earth by his word are laid up in store, kept for fire unto a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

⁸ But let not this one thing be hidden from you, beloved, that one day with [the] Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

⁹ [The] Lord does not delay his promise, as some account of delay, but is longsuffering towards you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

¹⁰ But the day of [the] Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, and [the] elements, burning with heat, shall be dissolved, and [the] earth and the works in it shall be burnt up.