Daily Readings - 14/03/2026

^6:1 ‘Come, let us return to Yahweh. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds;

^6:2 after a day or two he will bring us back to life, on the third day he will raise us and we shall live in his presence.

^6:4 What am I to do with you, Ephraim? What am I to do with you, Judah? This love of yours is like a morning cloud, like the dew that quickly disappears.

^6:6 since what I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.

^50:1 Yahweh, God of gods, speaks, he summons the earth. From east to west,

^50:2 from Zion, perfection of beauty, he shines.

^50:3 Let our God come, and be silent no more! Preceding him, a devouring fire, round him, a raging storm;

^50:4 he summons the heavens above and the earth, to his people’s trial:

^50:5 ‘Assemble my faithful before me who sealed my covenant by sacrifice!’

^50:6 Let the heavens proclaim his righteousness when God himself is judge! (Pause)

^50:8 ‘I am not finding fault with your sacrifices, those holocausts constantly before me;

^50:9 I do not claim one extra bull from your homes, nor one extra goat from your pens,

^50:10 ‘since all the forest animals are already mine, and the cattle on my mountains in their thousands;

^50:11 I know all the birds of the air, nothing moves in the field that does not belong to me.

^50:12 ‘If I were hungry, I should not tell you, since the world and all it holds is mine.

^50:13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink goats’ blood?

^50:14 ‘No, let thanksgiving be your sacrifice to God, fulfil the vows you make to the Most High;

^50:15 then you can invoke me in your troubles and I will rescue you, and you shall honour me.’

^50:16 But to the wicked man God says: ‘What business have you reciting my statutes, standing there mouthing my covenant,

^50:17 since you detest my discipline and thrust my words behind you?

^50:18 ‘You make friends with a thief as soon as you see one, you feel at home with adulterers,

^50:19 your mouth is given freely to evil and your tongue to inventing lies.

^50:20 ‘You sit there, slandering your own brother, you malign your own mother’s son.

^50:21 You do this, and expect me to say nothing?

^50:22 ‘You are leaving God out of account; take care! Or I will tear you to pieces where no one can rescue you!

^50:23 Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honours me; to the upright man I will show how God can save.’

^18:9 He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else,

^18:10 ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.

^18:11 The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here.

^18:12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.”

^18:13 The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”.

^18:14 This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.’