Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 85

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.

¹ Lord, You have [at last] been favorable and have dealt graciously with Your land [of Canaan]; You have brought back [from Babylon] the captives of Jacob.

² You have forgiven and taken away the iniquity of Your people, You have covered all their sin. Selah [pause, and calmly realize what that means]!

³ You have withdrawn all Your wrath and indignation, You have turned away from the blazing anger [which You had let loose].

⁴ Restore us, O God of our salvation, and cause Your anger toward us to cease [forever].

⁵ Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger [and disfavor] and spread it out to all generations?

⁶ Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?

⁷ Show us Your mercy and loving-kindness, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation.

⁸ I will listen [with expectancy] to what God the Lord will say, for He will speak peace to His people, to His saints (those who are in right standing with Him)—but let them not turn again to [self-confident] folly.

⁹ Surely His salvation is near to those who reverently and worshipfully fear Him, [and is ready to be appropriated] that [the manifest presence of God, His] glory may tabernacle and abide in our land.

¹⁰ Mercy and loving-kindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

¹¹ Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

¹² Yes, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

¹³ Righteousness shall go before Him and shall make His footsteps a way in which to walk.

¹¹ Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall go up out of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel [for the spiritually reborn Israel, a divine offspring, the people whom the Lord has blessed.]^(A)

2 [Hosea], say to your brethren, Ammi [or You-are-my-people], and to your sisters, Ruhamah [or You-have-been-pitied-and-have-obtained-mercy].

² Plead with your mother [your nation]; plead, for she is not My wife and I am not her Husband; [plead] that she put away her [marks of] harlotry from her face and her adulteries from between her breasts,^(B)

³ Lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her as a wilderness and set her like a parched land and slay her with thirst.

⁴ Yes, for her children I will have no love nor pity nor mercy, for they are the children of harlotry.

⁵ For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has done shamefully, for she said, I will go after my lovers that give me my food and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my refreshing drinks.

⁶ Therefore, behold, I [the Lord God] will hedge up her way [even yours, O Israel] with thorns; and I will build a wall against her that she shall not find her paths.

⁷ And she shall follow after her lovers but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them [inquiring for and requiring them], but shall not find them. Then shall she say, Let me go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now.

⁸ For she has not noticed, understood, or realized that it was I [the Lord God] Who gave her the grain and the new wine and the fresh oil, and Who lavished upon her silver and gold which they used for Baal and made into his image.

⁹ Therefore will I return and take back My grain in the time for it and My new wine in the season for it, and will pluck away and recover My wool and My flax which were to cover her [Israel’s] nakedness.

¹⁰ And now will I uncover her lewdness and her shame in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of My hand.

¹¹ I will also cause to cease all her mirth, her feastmaking, her New Moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts and appointed festive assemblies.

¹² And I will lay waste and destroy her vines and her fig trees of which she has said, These are my reward or loose woman’s hire that my lovers have given me; and I will make [her plantations] an inaccessible forest, and the wild beasts of the open country shall eat them.

¹³ And I will visit [punishment] upon her for the feast days of the Baals, when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her earrings and nose rings and her jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot Me, says the Lord.

¹⁴ Therefore, behold, I will allure her [Israel] and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart.

¹⁵ There I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor [troubling] to be for her a door of hope and expectation. And she shall sing there and respond as in the days of her youth and as at the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt.^(C)

²² One of those days He and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, Let us go across to the other side of the lake. So they put out to sea.

²³ But as they were sailing, He fell off to sleep. And a ^[a] whirlwind revolving from below upwards swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in great danger.

²⁴ And the disciples came and woke Him, saying, Master, Master, we are perishing! And He, being thoroughly awakened, ^[b]censured and ^[c]blamed and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; and they ceased, and there came a calm.

²⁵ And He said to them, [Why are you so fearful?] Where is your faith (your trust, your confidence in Me—in My veracity and My integrity)? And they were seized with alarm and profound and reverent dread, and they marveled, saying to one another, Who then is this, that He commands even wind and sea, and they obey Him?