Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹⁹ [O Lord] remember [earnestly] my affliction and my misery, my wandering and my outcast state, the wormwood and the gall.

²⁰ My soul has them continually in remembrance and is bowed down within me.

²¹ But this I recall and therefore have I hope and expectation:

²² It is because of the Lord’s mercy and loving-kindness that we are not consumed, because His [tender] compassions fail not.^(A)

²³ They are new every morning; great and abundant is Your stability and faithfulness.^(B)

²⁴ The Lord is my portion or share, says my living being (my inner self); therefore will I hope in Him and wait expectantly for Him.^(C)

²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait hopefully and expectantly for Him, to those who seek Him [inquire of and for Him and require Him by right of necessity and on the authority of God’s word].

²⁶ It is good that one should hope in and wait quietly for the salvation (the safety and ease) of the Lord.

52 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah [not the prophet] of Libnah.^(A)

² And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.

³ For all this came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah because of the anger of the Lord, and [in the end] He cast them out from His presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

⁴ And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, ^[a]Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem; and they pitched against it and built moveable towers and siege mounds against it round about.^(B)

⁵ So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.^(C)

⁶ And in the fourth month, on the ninth day of the month, the famine was so severe in the city that there was no bread for the people of the land.

⁷ Then the city [wall] was broken through, so that all the men of war might flee, and they went forth out of the city by night [as Ezekiel had foretold] by way of the gate between the two walls by the king’s garden, though the Chaldeans were round about the city. And they [the Jewish soldiers fled] by way of the Arabah (the Jordan Valley).^(D)

⁸ But the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him.

⁹ Then they seized the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the [Syrian] land of Hamath [on the northern border of Israel], where he pronounced sentence upon him.

¹⁰ And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he slew also all the princes of Judah at Riblah.

¹¹ Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him with shackles and carried him to Babylon and put him in prison ^[b][mill] till the day of his death.^(E)

⁸ And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Smyrna write: These are the words of the First and the Last, Who died and came to life again:^(A)

⁹ I know your affliction and distress and pressing trouble and your poverty—but you are rich! and how you are abused and reviled and slandered by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

¹⁰ Fear nothing that you are about to suffer. [Dismiss your dread and your fears!] Behold, the devil is indeed about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and proved and critically appraised, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be loyally faithful unto death [even if you must die for it], and I will give you the crown of life.^(B)

¹¹ He who is able to hear, let him listen to and heed what the Spirit says to the assemblies (churches). He who overcomes (is victorious) shall in no way be injured by the second death.