Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
74 (0) A maskil of Asaf:
(1) Why have you rejected us forever, God,
with your anger smoking against the sheep you once pastured?
2 Remember your community, which you acquired long ago,
the tribe you redeemed to be your very own.
Remember Mount Tziyon, where you came to live.
3 Hurry your steps to these endless ruins,
to the sanctuary devastated by the enemy.
4 The roar of your foes filled your meeting-place;
they raised their own banners as a sign of their conquest.
5 The place seemed like a thicket of trees
when lumbermen hack away with their axes.
6 With hatchet and hammer they banged away,
smashing all the carved woodwork.
7 They set your sanctuary on fire,
tore down and profaned the abode of your name.
8 They said to themselves, “We will oppress them completely.”
They have burned down all God’s meeting-places in the land.
9 We see no signs, there is no prophet any more;
none of us knows how long it will last.
10 How much longer, God, will the foe jeer at us?
Will the enemy insult your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand?
Draw your right hand from your coat, and finish them off!
12 God has been my king from earliest times,
acting to save throughout all the earth.
13 By your strength you split the sea in two,
in the water you smashed sea monsters’ heads,
14 you crushed the heads of Livyatan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.
15 You cut channels for springs and streams,
you dried up rivers that had never failed.
16 The day is yours, and the night is yours;
it was you who established light and sun.
17 It was you who fixed all the limits of the earth,
you made summer and winter.
18 Remember how the enemy scoffs at Adonai,
how a brutish people insults your name.
19 Don’t hand over the soul of your dove to wild beasts,
don’t forget forever the life of your poor.
20 Look to the covenant, for the land’s dark places
are full of the haunts of violence.
21 Don’t let the oppressed retreat in confusion;
let the poor and needy praise your name.
22 Arise, God, and defend your cause;
remember how brutish men insult you all day.
23 Don’t forget what your foes are saying,
the ever-rising uproar of your adversaries.
24 Therefore, as fire licks up the stubble,
and the chaff is consumed in the flame;
so their root will rot,
and their flowers scatter like dust;
because they have rejected the Torah
of Adonai-Tzva’ot,
they have despised the word
of the Holy One of Isra’el.
25 This is why Adonai’s anger blazed up against his people,
why he stretched out his hand against them and struck them
[so hard that] the hills shook,
and corpses lay like trash in the streets.
Even after all this, his anger remains,
his upraised hand still threatens.
26 He will give a signal to faraway nations,
he will whistle for them to come
from the ends of the earth;
and here they come, so fast! —
27 none of them tired or stumbling,
none of them sleeping or drowsy,
none with a loose belt,
none with a broken sandal-strap.
28 Their arrows are sharp,
all their bows are strung,
their horses’ hoofs are like flint,
and their [chariot] wheels like a whirlwind.
29 They will roar like lions —
yes, roaring like young lions,
they growl and seize the prey
and carry it off, with no one to rescue.
30 On that day they will growl at them,
like the sea when it growls —
and when one looks toward land,
one sees darkness closing in;
the light is dissipated
in the obscuring overcast.
44 “Our fathers had the Tent of Witness in the wilderness. It had been made just as God, who spoke to Moshe, had ordered it made, according to the pattern Moshe had seen. 45 Later on, our fathers who had received it brought it in with Y’hoshua when they took the Land away from the nations that God drove out before them.
“So it was until the days of David. 46 He enjoyed God’s favor and asked if he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Ya‘akov 47 and Shlomo did build him a house. 48 But Ha‘Elyon does not live in places made by hand! As the prophet says,
49 ‘Heaven is my throne,’ says Adonai,
‘and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house could you build for me?
What kind of place could you devise for my rest?
50 Didn’t I myself make all these things?’[a]
51 “Stiffnecked people,[b] with uncircumcised hearts and ears![c] You continually oppose the Ruach HaKodesh![d] You do the same things your fathers did! 52 Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who told in advance about the coming of the Tzaddik, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers! — 53 you! — who receive the Torah as having been delivered by angels — but do not keep it!”
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.