Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 10

¹ Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself, [veiling Your eyes] in times of trouble (distress and desperation)?

² The wicked in pride and arrogance hotly pursue and persecute the poor; let them be taken in the schemes which they have devised.

³ For the wicked man boasts (sings the praises) of his own heart’s desire, and the one greedy for gain curses and spurns, yes, renounces and despises the Lord.

⁴ The wicked one in the pride of his countenance will not seek, inquire for, and yearn for God; all his thoughts are that there is no God [so He never punishes].

⁵ His ways are grievous [or persist] at all times; Your judgments [Lord] are far above and on high out of his sight [so he never thinks about them]; as for all his foes, he sniffs and sneers at them.

⁶ He thinks in his heart, I shall not be moved; for throughout all generations I shall not come to want or be in adversity.

⁷ His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, oppression (fraud); under his tongue are trouble and sin (mischief and iniquity).

⁸ He sits in ambush in the villages; in hiding places he slays the innocent; he watches stealthily for the poor (the helpless and unfortunate).

⁹ He lurks in secret places like a lion in his thicket; he lies in wait that he may seize the poor (the helpless and the unfortunate); he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.

¹⁰ [The prey] is crushed, sinks down; and the helpless falls by his mighty [claws].

¹¹ [The foe] thinks in his heart, God has quite forgotten; He has hidden His face; He will never see [my deed].

¹² Arise, O Lord! O God, lift up Your hand; forget not the humble [patient and crushed].

¹³ Why does the wicked [man] condemn (spurn and renounce) God? Why has he thought in his heart, You will not call to account?

¹⁴ You have seen it; yes, You note trouble and grief (vexation) to requite it with Your hand. The unfortunate commits himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless.

¹⁵ Break the arm of the wicked man; and as for the evil man, search out his wickedness until You find no more.

¹⁶ The Lord is King forever and ever; the nations will perish out of His land.

¹⁷ O Lord, You have heard the desire and the longing of the humble and oppressed; You will prepare and strengthen and direct their hearts, You will cause Your ear to hear,

¹⁸ To do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man, who is of the earth, may not terrify them any more.

7 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

² Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house and proclaim there this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord.

³ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

⁴ Trust not in the lying words [of the false prophets who maintain that God will protect Jerusalem because His temple is there], saying, This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

⁵ For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly and truly execute justice between every man and his neighbor,

⁶ If you do not oppress the transient and the alien, the fatherless, and the widow or shed innocent blood [by oppression and by judicial murders] in [Jerusalem] or go after other gods to your own hurt,

⁷ Then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers to dwell in forever.

⁸ Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot benefit [so that you do not profit].

⁹ Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known,

¹⁰ And [then dare to] come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My ^[a]Name, and say, [By the discharge of this religious formality] we are set free!—only to go on with this wickedness and these abominations?

¹¹ Has this house, which is called by My Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes [a place of retreat for you between acts of violence]? Behold, I Myself have seen it, says the Lord.

¹² But go now to My place which was in Shiloh [in Ephraim], where I set My Name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.^(A)

¹³ And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and [because] when I spoke to you persistently [even rising up early and speaking], you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer,

¹⁴ Therefore will I do to this house (the temple), which is called by My Name and in which you trust, to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh.

¹⁵ And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole posterity of Ephraim.

⁷ Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you will hear His voice,

⁸ Do not harden your hearts, as [happened] in the rebellion [of Israel] and their provocation and ^[a]embitterment [of Me] in the day of testing in the wilderness,

⁹ Where your fathers tried [My patience] and tested [My forbearance] and ^[b]found I stood their test, and they saw My works for forty years.

¹⁰ And so I was provoked (displeased and sorely grieved) with that generation, and said, They always err and are led astray in their hearts, and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them.

¹¹ Accordingly, I swore in My wrath and indignation, They shall not enter into My rest.^(A)

¹² [Therefore beware] brethren, take care, lest there be in any one of you a wicked, unbelieving heart [which refuses to cleave to, trust in, and rely on Him], leading you to turn away and desert or stand aloof from the living God.

¹³ But instead warn (admonish, urge, and encourage) one another every day, as long as it is called Today, that none of you may be hardened [into settled rebellion] by the deceitfulness of sin [by the fraudulence, the stratagem, the trickery which the delusive glamor of his sin may play on him].

¹⁴ For we ^[c]have become fellows with Christ (the Messiah) and share in all He has for us, if only we hold our first newborn confidence and original assured expectation [in virtue of which we are believers] firm and unshaken to the end.

¹⁵ Then while it is [still] called Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion [in the desert, when the people provoked and irritated and embittered God against them].^(B)

¹⁶ For who were they who heard and yet were rebellious and provoked [Him]? Was it not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?

¹⁷ And with whom was He irritated and provoked and grieved for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose ^[d]dismembered bodies were strewn and left in the desert?

¹⁸ And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who disobeyed [who had not listened to His word and who refused to be compliant or be persuaded]?

¹⁹ So we see that they were not able to enter [into His rest], because of their unwillingness to adhere to and trust in and rely on God [unbelief had shut them out].^(C)

4 Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered [today], let us be afraid [^[e]to distrust it], lest any of you should ^[f]think he has come too late and has come short of [reaching] it.

² For indeed we have had the glad tidings [Gospel of God] proclaimed to us just as truly as they [the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them]; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with ^[g]the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; ^[h]neither were they united in faith with the ones [Joshua and Caleb] who heard (did believe).

³ For we who have believed (adhered to and trusted in and relied on God) do enter that rest, ^[i]in accordance with His declaration that those [who did not believe] should not enter when He said, As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest; and this He said although [His] works had been completed and prepared [and waiting for all who would believe] from the foundation of the world.^(D)

⁴ For in a certain place He has said this about the seventh day: And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.^(E)

⁵ And [they forfeited their part in it, for] in this [passage] He said, They shall not enter My rest.^(F)

⁶ Seeing then that the promise remains over [from past times] for some to enter that rest, and that those who formerly were given the good news about it and the opportunity, failed to appropriate it and did not enter because of disobedience,

⁷ Again He sets a definite day, [a new] Today, [and gives another opportunity of securing that rest] saying through David after so long a time in the words already quoted, Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts.^(G)

⁸ [This mention of a rest was not a reference to their entering into Canaan.] For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not speak afterward about another day.

⁹ So then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest reserved for the [true] people of God;

¹⁰ For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors ^[j]peculiarly His own.^(H)

¹¹ Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell].