Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
God’s Abundant Favor to Earth and Man.
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. A Song.
65 To You belongs silence [the submissive wonder of reverence], and [it bursts into] praise in Zion, O God;
And to You the vow shall be performed.
2
O You who hear prayer,
To You all mankind comes.
3
Wickedness and guilt prevail against me;
Yet as for our transgressions,
You forgive them [removing them from Your sight].
4
Blessed is the one whom You choose and bring near
To dwell in Your courts.
We will be filled with the goodness of Your house,
Your holy temple.
5
By awesome and wondrous things You answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation,
You who are the trust and hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea;
6
Who creates the mountains by His strength,
Being clothed with power,
7
Who stills the roaring of the seas,
The roaring of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples,
8
So they who dwell at the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs [the evidence of Your presence].(A)
You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy.
9
You visit the earth and make it overflow [with water];
You greatly enrich it;
The stream of God is full of water;
You provide their grain, when You have prepared the earth.
10
You water its furrows abundantly,
You smooth its ridges;
You soften it with showers,
You bless its growth.
11
You crown the year with Your bounty,
And Your paths overflow.
12
The pastures of the wilderness drip [with dew],
And the hills are encircled with joy.
13
The meadows are clothed with flocks
And the valleys are covered with grain;
They shout for joy and they sing.
1 The word of the Lord that came to [a]Joel, the son of Pethuel.
The Devastation of Locusts
2
Hear this, O elders,
Listen closely, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing as this occurred in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
3
Tell your children about it,
And let your children tell their children,
And their children the next generation.
4
What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten;
And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten;
And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten [in judgment of Judah].
5
Awake [from your intoxication], you drunkards, and weep;
Wail, all you drinkers of wine,
Because of the [fresh] sweet wine
That is cut off from your mouth.
6
For a [pagan and hostile] nation has invaded My land [like locusts],
Mighty and without number;
Its teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And it has the fangs of a lioness.(A)
7
It has made My vine (My people) a waste and object of horror,
And splintered and broken My fig tree.
It has stripped them completely bare and thrown them away;
Their branches have become white.(B)
8
Wail like a virgin [bride] clothed with [b]sackcloth
For the bridegroom of her youth [who has died].
9
The [daily] grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
From the house of the Lord;
The priests mourn
Who minister to the Lord.
10
The field is ruined,
The ground mourns;
For the grain is ruined,
The new wine is dried up,
The fresh oil fails.
11
Be ashamed, O farmers;
Wail, O vinedressers,
For the wheat and for the barley,
Because the harvest of the field has perished.
12
The vine dries up
And the fig tree fails;
The pomegranate, the palm also, and the apple tree,
All the trees of the field dry up,
Indeed, joy dries up and withdraws
From the sons of men.
13
Clothe yourselves with sackcloth
And lament (cry out in grief), O priests;
Wail, O ministers of the altar!
Come, spend the night in sackcloth [and pray without ceasing],
O ministers of my God,
For the grain offering and the drink offering
Are withheld from the house of your God.
Starvation and Drought
14
Consecrate a fast,
Proclaim a solemn assembly,
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
To the house of the Lord your God,
And cry out to the Lord [in penitent pleadings].
15
Alas for the day!
For the [judgment] day of the Lord is at hand,
And it will come [upon the nation] as a destruction from the [c]Almighty.(C)
16
Has not the food been cut off before our eyes,
Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17
The seeds [of grain] shrivel under the clods,
The storehouses are desolate and empty,
The barns are in ruins
Because the grain is dried up.
18
How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle are bewildered and wander aimlessly
Because they have no pasture;
Even the flocks of sheep suffer.
19
O Lord, I cry out to You,
For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness,
And the flame has burned up all the trees of the field.
20
Even the wild animals pant [in longing] for You;
For the water brooks are dried up
And fire has consumed the pastures of the wilderness.
“Difficult Times Will Come”
3 But understand this, that in the last days dangerous times [of great stress and trouble] will come [difficult days that will be hard to bear]. 2 For people will be lovers of self [narcissistic, self-focused], lovers of money [impelled by greed], boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane, 3 [and they will be] unloving [devoid of natural human affection, calloused and inhumane], irreconcilable, malicious gossips, devoid of self-control [intemperate, immoral], brutal, haters of good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of [sensual] pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them. 6 For among them are those who worm their way into homes and captivate morally weak and spiritually-dwarfed women weighed down by [the burden of their] sins, easily swayed by various impulses, 7 always learning and listening to anybody who will teach them, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres [the court magicians of Egypt] opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, unqualified and worthless [as teachers] in regard to the faith.(A) 9 But they will not get very far, for their meaningless nonsense and ignorance will become obvious to everyone, as was that of Jannes and Jambres.
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