Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

A Psalm of Asaph.

¹ ¶ O God, the Gentiles are come into thine inheritance; they have defiled the temple of thy holiness; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

² The dead bodies of thy slaves they have given to be food unto the fowls of the heavens, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.

³ They have shed their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.

⁴ We are reproached by our neighbours, scorned, and derided by those that are round about us.

⁵ How long, LORD? wilt thou be angry for ever? shall thy jealousy burn like fire?

⁶ ¶ Pour out thy wrath upon the Gentiles that do not know thee and upon the kingdoms that do not call upon thy name.

⁷ For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place.

⁸ O remember not against us former iniquities; let thy tender mercies speedily meet us on the way, for we are very poor.

⁹ Help us, O God, our saving health, for the honor of thy name and deliver us and purge away our sins, for thy name’s sake.

8 ¶ At that time, said the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of his princes and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves;

² and they shall spread them before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved and whom they have served and after whom they have walked and whom they have sought and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.

³ And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of those that remain of this evil generation, in all the places where I have driven those that remain, said the LORD of the hosts.

⁴ ¶ Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus hath the LORD said: The one who falls, does he never arise? he who turns away, does he never return?

⁵ Why then is this people of Jerusalem rebellious with a perpetual rebellion? They hold fast deceit; they refuse to return.

⁶ I hearkened and heard, but they did not speak aright: there was no man that repented of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? each one returned to his course as the horse rushes into the battle.

⁷ Even the stork in the heaven knows her appointed time; and the turtle dove and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people did not know the judgment of the LORD.

⁸ How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Behold, certainly in vain did he make the pen; the scribes were in vain.

⁹ The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?

¹⁰ Therefore I will give their wives unto others and their fields unto those that shall inherit them: for each one from the least even unto the greatest is given to greed; from the prophet even unto the priest every one deals falsely.

¹¹ For they have treated the destruction of the daughter of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

¹² Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among those that should fall: when I visit them, they shall fall, saith the LORD.

¹³ ¶ I will surely cut them off completely, said the LORD: there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fall; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.

³¹ ¶ What shall we then say to these things? If God is for us, who shall be against us?

³² He that did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also give us all things with him?

³³ Who shall accuse the chosen of God’s? God is he that justifies them.

³⁴ Who is he that condemns them? Christ, Jesus, is he who died and, even more, he that also rose again, who furthermore is at the right hand of God, who also makes entreaty for us.

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?

³⁶ (As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.)

³⁷ Nevertheless, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

³⁸ Therefore I am certain that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come

³⁹ nor height nor depth nor any creature shall be able to separate us from the charity of God, which is in Christ, Jesus our Lord.