Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
5 O Lord, your loyal love reaches to the sky,[a]
your faithfulness to the clouds.[b]
6 Your justice is like the highest mountains,[c]
your fairness like the deepest sea;
you, Lord, preserve[d] mankind and the animal kingdom.[e]
7 How precious[f] is your loyal love, O God!
The human race finds shelter under your wings.[g]
8 They are filled with food from your house,
and you allow them to drink from the river of your delicacies.
9 For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.[h]
10 Extend[i] your loyal love to your faithful followers,[j]
and vindicate[k] the morally upright.[l]
19 “I thought to myself,[a]
‘Oh what a joy it would be for me to treat you like a son![b]
What a joy it would be for me to give[c] you a pleasant land,
the most beautiful piece of property there is in all the world!’[d]
I thought you would call me ‘Father’[e]
and would never cease being loyal to me.[f]
20 But, you have been unfaithful to me, nation of Israel,[g]
like an unfaithful wife who has left her husband,”[h]
says the Lord.
21 “A noise is heard on the hilltops.
It is the sound of the people of Israel crying and pleading to their gods.
Indeed they have followed sinful ways;[i]
they have forgotten to be true to the Lord their God.[j]
22 Come back to me, you wayward people.
I want to cure your waywardness.[k]
Say,[l] ‘Here we are. We come to you
because you are the Lord our God.
23 We know our noisy worship of false gods
on the hills and mountains did not help us.[m]
We know that the Lord our God
is the only one who can deliver Israel.[n]
24 From earliest times our worship of that shameful god, Baal,
has taken away[o] all that our ancestors[p] worked for.
It has taken away our flocks and our herds
and even our sons and daughters.
25 Let us acknowledge[q] our shame.
Let us bear the disgrace that we deserve.[r]
For we have sinned against the Lord our God,
both we and our ancestors.
From earliest times to this very day
we have not obeyed the Lord our God.’
Celibacy and Marriage
7 Now with regard to the issues you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”[a] 2 But because of immoralities, each man should have relations with[b] his own wife and each woman with[c] her own husband. 3 A husband should fulfill his marital responsibility[d] to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband. 4 It is not the wife who has the rights to her own body, but the husband. In the same way, it is not the husband who has the rights to his own body, but the wife. 5 Do not deprive each other, except by mutual agreement for a specified time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.[e] Then resume your relationship,[f] so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that everyone was as I am. But each has his own gift from God, one this way, another that.
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