Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

102 A prayer when overwhelmed with trouble.

Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!

² Don’t turn away from me in this time of my distress. Bend down your ear and give me speedy answers, ^3-4 for my days disappear like smoke. My health is broken, and my heart is sick; it is trampled like grass and is withered. My food is tasteless, and I have lost my appetite. ⁵ I am reduced to skin and bones because of all my groaning and despair. ⁶ I am like a vulture in a far-off wilderness or like an owl alone in the desert. ⁷ I lie awake, lonely as a solitary sparrow on the roof.

⁸ My enemies taunt me day after day and curse at me. ^9-10 I eat ashes instead of bread. My tears run down into my drink because of your anger against me, because of your wrath. For you have rejected me and thrown me out. ¹¹ My life is passing swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering like grass, ¹² while you, Lord, are a famous King forever. Your fame will endure to every generation.

¹³ I know that you will come and have mercy on Jerusalem—and now is the time to pity her—the time you promised help. ¹⁴ For your people love every stone in her walls and feel sympathy for every grain of dust in her streets. ¹⁵ Now let the nations and their rulers tremble before the Lord, before his glory. ¹⁶ For Jehovah will rebuild Jerusalem! He will appear in his glory!

¹⁷ He will listen to the prayers of the destitute, for he is never too busy to heed their requests.

⁸ The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Don’t let the false prophets and mediums who are there among you fool you. Don’t listen to the dreams that they invent, ⁹ for they prophesy lies in my name. I have not sent them, says the Lord. ¹⁰ The truth is this: You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised and bring you home again. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² In those days when you pray, I will listen. ¹³ You will find me when you seek me, if you look for me in earnest.

¹⁴ Yes, says the Lord, I will be found by you, and I will end your slavery and restore your fortunes; I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and bring you back home again to your own land.

¹⁵ But now, because you accept the false prophets among you and say the Lord has sent them, ^16-17 I will send war, famine, and plague upon the people left here in Jerusalem—on your relatives who were not exiled to Babylon, and on the king who sits on David’s throne—and make them like rotting figs, too bad to eat. ¹⁸ And I will scatter them around the world. And in every nation where I place them they will be cursed and hissed and mocked, ¹⁹ for they refuse to listen to me though I spoke to them again and again through my prophets.

²⁰ Therefore listen to the word of God, all you Jewish captives over there in Babylon. ²¹ The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says this about your false prophets, Ahab (son of Kolaiah) and Zedekiah (son of Maaseiah), who are declaring lies to you in my name: Look, I am turning them over to Nebuchadnezzar to execute publicly. ²² Their fate shall become proverbial of all evil, so that whenever anyone wants to curse someone he will say, “The Lord make you like Zedekiah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon burned alive!” ²³ For these men have done a terrible thing among my people. They have committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives and have lied in my name. I know, for I have seen everything they do, says the Lord.

²⁴ Suddenly Festus shouted, “Paul, you are insane. Your long studying has broken your mind!”

²⁵ But Paul replied, “I am not insane, Most Excellent Festus. I speak words of sober truth. ²⁶ And King Agrippa knows about these things. I speak frankly for I am sure these events are all familiar to him, for they were not done in a corner! ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe the Prophets? But I know you do—”

²⁸ Agrippa interrupted him. “With trivial proofs like these,^[a] you expect me to become a Christian?”

²⁹ And Paul replied, “Would to God that whether my arguments are trivial or strong, both you and everyone here in this audience might become the same as I am, except for these chains.”