Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

To the chief Musician. Upon the Gittith. Of the sons of Korah. A Psalm.

84 How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Jehovah of hosts!

² My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

³ Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she layeth her young, thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be constantly praising thee. Selah.

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee,—they, in whose heart are the highways.

⁶ Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a well-spring; yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.

⁷ They go from strength to strength: [each one] will appear before God in Zion.

⁸ Jehovah, God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

⁹ Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.

¹⁰ For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

¹¹ For Jehovah Elohim is a sun and shield: Jehovah will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

¹² Jehovah of hosts, blessed is the man that confideth in thee!

29 Hezekiah began to reign being twenty-five years old; and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Abijah, daughter of Zechariah.

² And he did what was right in the sight of Jehovah, according to all that David his father had done.

³ He, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of Jehovah, and repaired them.

⁴ And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them into the open place eastward;

⁵ and he said to them, Hear me, ye Levites: hallow yourselves now, and hallow the house of Jehovah the God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the sanctuary.

⁶ For our fathers have transgressed, and done evil in the sight of Jehovah our God, and have forsaken him and turned away their faces from the habitation of Jehovah, and have turned their backs.

⁷ Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered up burnt-offerings in the sanctuary to the God of Israel.

⁸ Therefore the wrath of Jehovah has been upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he has delivered them to vexation, to desolation, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes.

⁹ And behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.

¹⁰ Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with Jehovah the God of Israel, that his fierce anger may turn away from us.

¹¹ My sons, be not now negligent; for Jehovah has chosen you to stand before him, to do service unto him, and to be his ministers and incense-burners.

¹⁶ And the priests went into the inner part of the house of Jehovah to cleanse it, and carried forth all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of Jehovah, into the court of the house of Jehovah. And the Levites took it to carry it forth into the brook Kidron.

¹⁷ And they began on the first of the first month to hallow, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the porch of Jehovah; and they hallowed the house of Jehovah eight days; and on the sixteenth day of the first month they made an end.

¹⁸ And they went in to king Hezekiah, and said, We have cleansed all the house of Jehovah, and the altar of burnt-offering with all its vessels, and the table of the [bread] to be set in rows, and all its vessels;

¹⁹ and all the vessels that king Ahaz in his reign cast away in his transgression have we prepared and hallowed, and behold, they are before the altar of Jehovah.

²³ [It was] necessary then that the figurative representations of the things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with sacrifices better than these.

²⁴ For the Christ is not entered into holy places made with hand, figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us:

²⁵ nor in order that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters into the holy places every year with blood not his own;

²⁶ since he had [then] been obliged often to suffer from the foundation of the world. But now once in the consummation of the ages he has been manifested for [the] putting away of sin by his sacrifice.

²⁷ And forasmuch as it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment;

²⁸ thus the Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear to those that look for him the second time without sin for salvation.