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.
27 On that day Adonai,
with his great, strong, relentless sword,
will punish Livyatan the fleeing serpent,
the twisting serpent Livyatan;
he will slay the sea monster.
2 On that day, a pleasant vineyard —
sing about it!
3 “I, Adonai, guard it.
Moment to moment I water it.
So that no harm will come to it,
I guard it night and day.
4 I have no anger in me.
If it gives me briars and thorns,
then, as in war, I will trample it down
and burn it up at once;
5 unless it takes hold of my strength,
in order to make peace with me,
yes, to make peace with me.”
6 The time is coming when Ya‘akov will take root;
Isra’el will bud and flower,
and fill the whole world with a harvest.
7 [Adonai] will not strike Isra’el,
as he did others who struck Isra’el;
he will not kill them,
as he did the others.
8 Your controversy with her is fully resolved
by sending her [into exile].
He removes her with a rough gust of wind
on a day when it’s blowing from the east.
9 So the iniquity of Ya‘akov is atoned for by this,
and removing his sin produces this result:
he chops up all the altar stones like chalk —
sacred poles and sun-pillars stand no more.
10 For the fortified city is alone,
abandoned and deserted, like the desert.
Calves graze and lie down there,
stripping its branches bare.
11 When its harvest dries up, it is broken off;
women come and set it on fire.
For this is a people without understanding.
Therefore he who made them will not pity them,
he who formed them will show them no mercy.
12 On that day Adonai will beat out the grain
between the Euphrates River and the Vadi of Egypt;
and you will be gathered, one by one,
people of Isra’el!
13 On that day a great shofar will sound.
Those lost in the land of Ashur will come,
also those scattered through the land of Egypt;
and they will worship Adonai
on the holy mountain in Yerushalayim.
45 Then Yeshua entered the Temple grounds and began driving out those doing business there, 46 saying to them, “The Tanakh says, ‘My House is to be a house of prayer,’[a] but you have made it into a den of robbers!”[b]
47 Every day he taught at the Temple. The head cohanim, the Torah-teachers and the leaders of the people tried to find a way of putting an end to him; 48 but they couldn’t find any way of doing it, because all the people were hanging onto his every word.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.