Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁵ O the happiness of him Who hath the God of Jacob for his help, His hope [is] on Jehovah his God,

⁶ Making the heavens and earth, The sea and all that [is] in them, Who is keeping truth to the age,

⁷ Doing judgment for the oppressed, Giving bread to the hungry.

⁸ Jehovah is loosing the prisoners, Jehovah is opening (the eyes of) the blind, Jehovah is raising the bowed down, Jehovah is loving the righteous,

⁹ Jehovah is preserving the strangers, The fatherless and widow He causeth to stand, And the way of the wicked He turneth upside down.

¹⁰ Jehovah doth reign to the age, Thy God, O Zion, to generation and generation, Praise ye Jah!

⁶ And she riseth, she and her daughters-in-law, and turneth back from the fields of Moab, for she hath heard in the fields of Moab that God hath looked after His people, -- to give to them bread.

⁷ And she goeth out from the place where she hath been, and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they go in the way to turn back unto the land of Judah.

⁸ And Naomi saith to her two daughters-in-law, `Go, turn back, each to the house of her mother; Jehovah doth with you kindness as ye have done with the dead, and with me;

⁹ Jehovah doth grant to you, and find ye rest each in the house of her husband;' and she kisseth them, and they lift up their voice and weep.

¹⁰ And they say to her, `Surely with thee we go back to thy people.'

¹¹ And Naomi saith, `Turn back, my daughters; why do ye go with me? are there yet to me sons in my bowels that they have been to you for husbands?

¹² Turn back, my daughters, go, for I am too aged to be to a husband; though I had said, There is for me hope, also, I have been to-night to a husband, and also I have borne sons:

¹³ for them do ye wait till that they grow up? for them do ye shut yourselves up, not to be to a husband? nay, my daughters, for more bitter to me than to you, for the hand of Jehovah hath gone out against me.'

¹⁴ And they lift up their voice, and weep again, and Orpah kisseth her mother-in-law, and Ruth hath cleaved to her.

¹⁵ And she saith, `Lo, thy sister-in-law hath turned back unto her people, and unto her god, turn thou back after thy sister-in-law.'

¹⁶ And Ruth saith, `Urge me not to leave thee -- to turn back from after thee; for whither thou goest I go, and where thou lodgest I lodge; thy people [is] my people, and thy God my God.

¹⁷ Where thou diest I die, and there I am buried; thus doth Jehovah to me, and thus doth He add -- for death itself doth part between me and thee.'

¹⁸ And she seeth that she is strengthening herself to go with her, and she ceaseth to speak unto her;

3 This, now, beloved, a second letter to you I write, in both which I stir up your pure mind in reminding [you],

² to be mindful of the sayings said before by the holy prophets, and of the command of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour,

³ this first knowing, that there shall come in the latter end of the days scoffers, according to their own desires going on,

⁴ and saying, `Where is the promise of his presence? for since the fathers did fall asleep, all things so remain from the beginning of the creation;'

⁵ for this is unobserved by them willingly, that the heavens were of old, and the earth out of water and through water standing together by the word of God,

⁶ through which the then world, by water having been deluged, was destroyed;

⁷ and the present heavens and the earth, by the same word are treasured, for fire being kept to a day of judgment and destruction of the impious men.

⁸ And this one thing let not be unobserved by you, beloved, that one day with the Lord [is] as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day;

⁹ the Lord is not slow in regard to the promise, as certain count slowness, but is long-suffering to us, not counselling any to be lost but all to pass on to reformation,

¹⁰ and it will come -- the day of the Lord -- as a thief in the night, in which the heavens with a rushing noise will pass away, and the elements with burning heat be dissolved, and earth and the works in it shall be burnt up.