Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁵ But happy is the man who has the God of Jacob as his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God— ⁶ the God who made both earth and heaven, the seas and everything in them. He is the God who keeps every promise, ⁷ who gives justice to the poor and oppressed and food to the hungry. He frees the prisoners ⁸ and opens the eyes of the blind; he lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads. For the Lord loves good men. ⁹ He protects the immigrants and cares for the orphans and widows. But he turns topsy-turvy the plans of the wicked.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever. O Jerusalem,^[a] your God is King in every generation! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

^6-7 She decided to return to Israel with her daughters-in-law, for she had heard that the Lord had blessed his people by giving them good crops again.

⁸ But after they had begun their homeward journey, she changed her mind and said to her two daughters-in-law, “Why don’t you return to your parents’ homes instead of coming with me? And may the Lord reward you for your faithfulness to your husbands and to me. ⁹ And may he bless you with another happy marriage.” Then she kissed them, and they all broke down and cried.

¹⁰ “No,” they said. “We want to go with you to your people.”

¹¹ But Naomi replied, “It is better for you to return to your own people. Do I have younger sons who could grow up to be your husbands?^{[a] 12} No, my daughters, return to your parents’ homes, for I am too old to have a husband. And even if that were possible, and I became pregnant tonight, and bore sons ¹³ would you wait for them to grow up? No, of course not, my daughters; oh, how I grieve for you that the Lord has punished me in a way that injures you.”

¹⁴ And again they cried together, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, and returned to her childhood home; but Ruth insisted on staying with Naomi.

¹⁵ “See,” Naomi said to her, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; you should do the same.”

¹⁶ But Ruth replied, “Don’t make me leave you, for I want to go wherever you go and to live wherever you live; your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God; ¹⁷ I want to die where you die and be buried there. May the Lord do terrible things to me if I allow anything but death to separate us.”

¹⁸ And when Naomi saw that Ruth had made up her mind and could not be persuaded otherwise, she stopped urging her.

3 ^1-2 This is my second letter to you, dear brothers, and in both of them I have tried to remind you—if you will let me—about facts you already know: facts you learned from the holy prophets and from us apostles who brought you the words of our Lord and Savior.

³ First, I want to remind you that in the last days there will come scoffers who will do every wrong they can think of and laugh at the truth. ⁴ This will be their line of argument: “So Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? He’ll never come! Why, as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation.”

^5-6 They deliberately forget this fact: that God did destroy the world with a mighty flood long after he had made the heavens by the word of his command and had used the waters to form the earth and surround it. ⁷ And God has commanded that the earth and the heavens be stored away for a great bonfire at the judgment day, when all ungodly men will perish.

⁸ But don’t forget this, dear friends, that a day or a thousand years from now is like tomorrow to the Lord. ⁹ He isn’t really being slow about his promised return, even though it sometimes seems that way. But he is waiting, for the good reason that he is not willing that any should perish, and he is giving more time for sinners to repent. ¹⁰ The day of the Lord is surely coming, as unexpectedly as a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the heavenly bodies will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be burned up.