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Psalm 74

1  O God, why have you utterly disowned us? ♦︎
   Why does your anger burn
      against the sheep of your pasture?
2  Remember your congregation that you purchased of old, ♦︎
   the tribe you redeemed for your own possession,
      and Mount Zion where you dwelt.
3  Hasten your steps towards the endless ruins, ♦︎
   where the enemy has laid waste all your sanctuary.
4  Your adversaries roared in the place of your worship; ♦︎
   they set up their banners as tokens of victory.
5  Like men brandishing axes on high in a thicket of trees, ♦︎
   all her carved work they smashed down with hatchet and hammer.
6  They set fire to your holy place; ♦︎
   they defiled the dwelling place of your name
      and razed it to the ground.
7  They said in their heart, ‘Let us make havoc of them altogether,’ ♦︎
   and they burned down all the sanctuaries of God in the land.
8  There are no signs to see, not one prophet left, ♦︎
   not one among us who knows how long.
9  How long, O God, will the adversary scoff? ♦︎
   Shall the enemy blaspheme your name for ever?
10  Why have you withheld your hand ♦︎
   and hidden your right hand in your bosom?
11  Yet God is my king from of old, ♦︎
   who did deeds of salvation in the midst of the earth.
12  It was you that divided the sea by your might ♦︎
   and shattered the heads of the dragons on the waters;
13  You alone crushed the heads of Leviathan ♦︎
   and gave him to the beasts of the desert for food.
14  You cleft the rock for fountain and flood; ♦︎
   you dried up ever-flowing rivers.
15  Yours is the day, yours also the night; ♦︎
   you established the moon and the sun.
16  You set all the bounds of the earth; ♦︎
   you fashioned both summer and winter.
17  Remember now, Lord, how the enemy scoffed, ♦︎
   how a foolish people despised your name.
18  Do not give to wild beasts the soul of your turtle dove; ♦︎
   forget not the lives of your poor for ever.
19  Look upon your creation,
      for the earth is full of darkness, ♦︎
   full of the haunts of violence.
20  Let not the oppressed turn away ashamed, ♦︎
   but let the poor and needy praise your name.
21  Arise, O God, maintain your own cause; ♦︎
   remember how fools revile you all the day long.
22  Forget not the clamour of your adversaries, ♦︎
   the tumult of your enemies that ascends continually.

¹⁴ Is Israel a slave? Is he a home-born servant?
   Why then has he become plunder?
¹⁵ The lions have roared against him,
   they have roared loudly.
They have made his land a waste;
   his cities are in ruins, without inhabitant.
¹⁶ Moreover, the people of Memphis and Tahpanhes
   have broken the crown of your head.
¹⁷ Have you not brought this upon yourself
   by forsaking the Lord your God,
   while he led you in the way?
¹⁸ What then do you gain by going to Egypt,
   to drink the waters of the Nile?
Or what do you gain by going to Assyria,
   to drink the waters of the Euphrates?
¹⁹ Your wickedness will punish you,
   and your apostasies will convict you.
Know and see that it is evil and bitter
   for you to forsake the Lord your God;
   the fear of me is not in you,

says the Lord God of hosts.

²⁰ For long ago you broke your yoke
   and burst your bonds,
   and you said, ‘I will not serve!’
On every high hill
   and under every green tree
   you sprawled and played the whore.
²¹ Yet I planted you as a choice vine,
   from the purest stock.
How then did you turn degenerate
   and become a wild vine?
²² Though you wash yourself with lye
   and use much soap,
   the stain of your guilt is still before me,

says the Lord God.
²³ How can you say, ‘I am not defiled,
   I have not gone after the Baals’?
Look at your way in the valley;
   know what you have done—
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,
²⁴   a wild ass at home in the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
   Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
   in her month they will find her.
²⁵ Keep your feet from going unshod
   and your throat from thirst.
But you said, ‘It is hopeless,
   for I have loved strangers,
   and after them I will go.’

²⁶ As a thief is shamed when caught,
   so the house of Israel shall be shamed—
they, their kings, their officials,
   their priests, and their prophets,
²⁷ who say to a tree, ‘You are my father’,
   and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
For they have turned their backs to me,
   and not their faces.
But in the time of their trouble they say,
   ‘Come and save us!’
²⁸ But where are your gods
   that you made for yourself?
Let them come, if they can save you,
   in your time of trouble;
for you have as many gods
   as you have towns, O Judah.

²⁹ Why do you complain against me?
   You have all rebelled against me,

says the Lord.
³⁰ In vain I have struck down your children;
   they accepted no correction.
Your own sword devoured your prophets
   like a ravening lion.
³¹ And you, O generation, behold the word of the Lord!^*
Have I been a wilderness to Israel,
   or a land of thick darkness?
Why then do my people say, ‘We are free,
   we will come to you no more’?
³² Can a girl forget her ornaments,
   or a bride her attire?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
   days without number.

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

4Now when Jesus^* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— ² although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— ³he left Judea and started back to Galilee. ⁴But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^{* 10}Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ ¹¹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ ¹³Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ ¹⁵The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ ¹⁷The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ ¹⁹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you^* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ ²¹Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ ²⁵The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ ²⁶Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,^* the one who is speaking to you.’