Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

93 Jehovah is King! He is robed in majesty and strength. The world is his throne.^[a]

² O Lord, you have reigned from prehistoric times, from the everlasting past. ³ The mighty oceans thunder your praise. ⁴ You are mightier than all the breakers pounding on the seashores of the world! ⁵ Your royal decrees cannot be changed. Holiness is forever the keynote of your reign.

15 Then the Spirit of God came upon Azariah (son of Oded), ² and he went out to meet King Asa as he was returning from the battle.

“Listen to me, Asa! Listen, armies of Judah and Benjamin!” he shouted. “The Lord will stay with you as long as you stay with him! Whenever you look for him, you will find him. But if you forsake him, he will forsake you. ³ For a long time now, over in Israel, the people haven’t worshiped the true God and have not had a true priest to teach them. They have lived without God’s laws. ⁴ But whenever they have turned again to the Lord God of Israel in their distress and searched for him he has helped them. ⁵ In their times of rebellion against God there was no peace. Problems troubled the nation on every hand. Crime was on the increase everywhere. ⁶ There were external wars and internal fighting of city against city, for God was plaguing them with all sorts of trouble. ⁷ But you men of Judah, keep up the good work and don’t get discouraged, for you will be rewarded.”

⁸ When King Asa heard this message from God, he took courage and destroyed all the idols in the land of Judah and Benjamin and in the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim, and he rebuilt the altar of the Lord in front of the Temple.

⁹ Then he summoned all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the immigrants from Israel (for many had come from the territories of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon in Israel when they saw that the Lord God was with King Asa). ¹⁰ They all came to Jerusalem in June of the fifteenth year of King Asa’s reign ¹¹ and sacrificed to the Lord seven hundred oxen and seven thousand sheep—it was part of the plunder they had captured in the battle. ¹² Then they entered into a contract to worship only the Lord God of their fathers ¹³ and agreed that anyone who refused to do this must die—whether old or young, man or woman. ¹⁴ They shouted out their oath of loyalty to God with trumpets blaring and horns sounding. ¹⁵ All were happy for this covenant with God, for they had entered into it with all their hearts and wills and wanted him above everything else, and they found him! And he gave them peace throughout the nation.

¹⁵ The angel held in his hand a golden measuring stick to measure the city and its gates and walls. ¹⁶ When he measured it, he found it was a square as wide as it was long; in fact it was in the form of a cube, for its height was exactly the same as its other dimensions—1,500 miles each way. ¹⁷ Then he measured the thickness of the walls and found them to be 216 feet across (the angel called out these measurements to me, using standard units).^[a]

^18-20 The city itself was pure, transparent gold like glass! The wall was made of jasper, and was built on twelve layers of foundation stones inlaid with gems: the first layer^[b] with jasper; the second with sapphire; the third with chalcedony; the fourth with emerald; the fifth with sardonyx; the sixth layer with sardus; the seventh with chrysolite; the eighth with beryl; the ninth with topaz; the tenth with chrysoprase; the eleventh with jacinth; the twelfth with amethyst.

²¹ The twelve gates were made of pearls—each gate from a single pearl! And the main street was pure, transparent gold, like glass.

²² No temple could be seen in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are worshiped in it everywhere.^[c]