Friday 29th April 2022

⁴¹ They tested God again and again,
   and provoked the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They did not keep in mind his power,
   or the day when he redeemed them from the foe;
⁴³ when he displayed his signs in Egypt,
   and his miracles in the fields of Zoan.
⁴⁴ He turned their rivers to blood,
   so that they could not drink of their streams.
⁴⁵ He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them,
   and frogs, which destroyed them.
⁴⁶ He gave their crops to the caterpillar,
   and the fruit of their labour to the locust.
⁴⁷ He destroyed their vines with hail,
   and their sycomores with frost.
⁴⁸ He gave over their cattle to the hail,
   and their flocks to thunderbolts.
⁴⁹ He let loose on them his fierce anger,
   wrath, indignation, and distress,
   a company of destroying angels.
⁵⁰ He made a path for his anger;
   he did not spare them from death,
   but gave their lives over to the plague.
⁵¹ He struck all the firstborn in Egypt,
   the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham.
⁵² Then he led out his people like sheep,
   and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
⁵³ He led them in safety, so that they were not afraid;
   but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
⁵⁴ And he brought them to his holy hill,
   to the mountain that his right hand had won.
⁵⁵ He drove out nations before them;
   he apportioned them for a possession
   and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

⁵⁶ Yet they tested the Most High God,
   and rebelled against him.
   They did not observe his decrees,
⁵⁷ but turned away and were faithless like their ancestors;
   they twisted like a treacherous bow.
⁵⁸ For they provoked him to anger with their high places;
   they moved him to jealousy with their idols.
⁵⁹ When God heard, he was full of wrath,
   and he utterly rejected Israel.
⁶⁰ He abandoned his dwelling at Shiloh,
   the tent where he dwelt among mortals,
⁶¹ and delivered his power to captivity,
   his glory to the hand of the foe.
⁶² He gave his people to the sword,
   and vented his wrath on his heritage.
⁶³ Fire devoured their young men,
   and their girls had no marriage song.
⁶⁴ Their priests fell by the sword,
   and their widows made no lamentation.
⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
   like a warrior shouting because of wine.
⁶⁶ He put his adversaries to rout;
   he put them to everlasting disgrace.

⁶⁷ He rejected the tent of Joseph,
   he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
⁶⁸ but he chose the tribe of Judah,
   Mount Zion, which he loves.
⁶⁹ He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,
   like the earth, which he has founded for ever.
⁷⁰ He chose his servant David,
   and took him from the sheepfolds;
⁷¹ from tending the nursing ewes he brought him
   to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
   of Israel, his inheritance.
⁷² With upright heart he tended them,
   and guided them with skilful hand.

NRSV