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7  Sacrifice and offering you do not desire ♦︎
   but my ears you have opened;
8  Burnt offering and sacrifice for sin you have not required; ♦︎
   then said I: ‘Lo, I come.
9  ‘In the scroll of the book it is written of me
      that I should do your will, O my God; ♦︎
   I delight to do it: your law is within my heart.’
10  I have declared your righteousness in the great congregation; ♦︎
   behold, I did not restrain my lips,
      and that, O Lord, you know.
11  Your righteousness I have not hidden in my heart;
      I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; ♦︎
   I have not concealed your loving-kindness and truth
      from the great congregation.
12  Do not withhold your compassion from me, O Lord; ♦︎
   let your love and your faithfulness always preserve me,
13  For innumerable troubles have come about me;
      my sins have overtaken me so that I cannot look up; ♦︎
   they are more in number than the hairs of my head,
      and my heart fails me.
14  Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; ♦︎
   O Lord, make haste to help me.
15  Let them be ashamed and altogether dismayed
      who seek after my life to destroy it; ♦︎
   let them be driven back and put to shame
      who wish me evil.
16  Let those who heap insults upon me ♦︎
   be desolate because of their shame.
17  Let all who seek you rejoice in you and be glad; ♦︎
   let those who love your salvation say always,
      ‘The Lord is great.’
18  Though I am poor and needy, ♦︎
   the Lord cares for me.
19  You are my helper and my deliverer; ♦︎
   O my God, make no delay.

¹² Listen to me, O Jacob,
   and Israel, whom I called:
I am He; I am the first,
   and I am the last.
¹³ My hand laid the foundation of the earth,
   and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I summon them,
   they stand at attention.

¹⁴ Assemble, all of you, and hear!
   Who among them has declared these things?
The Lord loves him;
   he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,
   and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken and called him,
   I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
¹⁶ Draw near to me, hear this!
   From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,
   from the time it came to be I have been there.
And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

¹⁷ Thus says the Lord,
   your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I am the Lord your God,
   who teaches you for your own good,
   who leads you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ O that you had paid attention to my commandments!
   Then your prosperity would have been like a river,
   and your success like the waves of the sea;
¹⁹ your offspring would have been like the sand,
   and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
   or destroyed from before me.

²⁰ Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,
   declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,
send it forth to the end of the earth;
   say, ‘The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
   he made water flow for them from the rock;
   he split open the rock and the water gushed out.

The Question about Fasting

14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often,^* but your disciples do not fast?’ ¹⁵And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. ¹⁶No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. ¹⁷Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.’