Daily Readings - 28/07/2026

^14:17 ‘Say this word to them, “Tears flood my eyes night and day, unceasingly, since a crushing blow falls on the daughter of my people, a most grievous injury.

^14:18 If I go into the countryside, there lie men killed by the sword; if I go into the city, I see people sick with hunger; even prophets and priests plough the land: they are at their wit’s end.”‘

^14:19 ‘Have you rejected Judah altogether? Does your very soul revolt at Zion? Why have you struck us down without hope of cure? We were hoping for peace – no good came of it! For the moment of cure – nothing but terror!

^14:20 Yahweh, we do confess our wickedness and our fathers’ guilt: we have indeed sinned against you.

^14:21 For your name’s sake do not reject us, do not dishonour the throne of your glory. Remember us; do not break your covenant with us.

^14:22 Can any of the pagan Nothings make it rain? Can the heavens produce showers? No, it is you, Yahweh. O our God, you are our hope, since it is you who do all this.’

^78:1 Listen to this Law, my people, pay attention to what I say;

^78:2 I am going to speak to you in parable and expound the mysteries of our past.

^78:3 What we have heard and known for ourselves, and what our ancestors have told us,

^78:4 must not be withheld from their descendants, but be handed on by us to the next generation; that is: the titles of Yahweh, his power and the miracles he has done.

^78:5 When he issued the decrees for Jacob and instituted a Law in Israel, he gave our ancestors strict orders to teach it to their children;

^78:6 the next generation was to learn it, the children still to be born, and these in their turn were to tell their own children

^78:7 so that they too would put their confidence in God, never forgetting God’s achievements, and always keeping his commandments,

^78:8 and not becoming, like their ancestors, a stubborn and unruly generation, a generation with no sincerity of heart, in spirit unfaithful to God.

^78:9 The sons of Ephraim, who were bowmen, turned tail when the time came to fight;

^78:10 they had not kept God’s covenant, they refused to follow his Law;

^78:11 they had forgotten his achievements, the marvels he had shown them:

^78:12 he had worked wonders for their ancestors in the plains of Zoan, down in Egypt:

^78:13 dividing the sea, bringing them through, making the waters stand up like dikes,

^78:14 leading them with a cloud by day and with a fiery glow at night,

^78:15 splitting rocks in the wilderness, quenching their thirst with unlimited water,

^78:16 conjuring streams from the rock and bringing down water in torrents.

^78:17 They only sinned against him more than ever, defying the Most High in the desert,

^78:18 deliberately challenging God by demanding their favourite food.

^78:19 They blasphemed against God, ‘Is it likely’ they said ‘that God could give a banquet in the wilderness?

^78:20 ‘Admittedly, when he struck the rock, waters gushed, torrents streamed out, but bread now, can he give us that, can he provide meat for his people?’

^78:21 Yahweh was enraged when he heard them, a fire flared at Jacob, the wrath attacked Israel

^78:22 for having no faith in God, no trust in his power to save.

^78:23 He gave orders to the skies above, he opened the doors of heaven,

^78:24 he rained down manna to feed them, he gave them the wheat of heaven;

^78:25 men ate the bread of Immortals, he sent them more food than they could eat.

^78:26 He stirred up an east wind in the heavens, he conjured up a south wind by his power,

^78:27 he rained down meat on them like dust; birds as thick as sand on the seashore

^78:28 he sent tumbling into their camp, in all directions round their tents.

^78:29 They all had enough and to spare, he having provided what they wanted;

^78:30 but they had hardly satisfied their craving, the food was still in their mouths,

^78:31 when the wrath of God attacked them, slaughtering their strongest men and laying the flower of Israel low.

^78:32 Despite all this they went on sinning, and put no faith in his marvels;

^78:33 for which he blasted their days and their years in a flash.

^78:34 Whenever he slaughtered them they sought him, they came to their senses and sought him earnestly

^78:35 remembering that God was their rock, God the Most High, their redeemer.

^78:36 But though they outwardly flattered him and used their tongues to lie to him,

^78:37 in their hearts they were not true to him, they were unfaithful to his covenant.

^78:38 Compassionately, however, he forgave their guilt instead of killing them, repeatedly repressing his anger instead of rousing his full wrath,

^78:39 remembering they were creatures of flesh, a puff of wind that passes and does not return.

^78:40 How often they defied him in the wilderness, how often they outraged him in the desert,

^78:41 repeatedly challenging God, provoking the Holy One of Israel –

^78:42 entirely oblivious of his hand and of the time he saved them from the oppressor:

^78:43 by imposing his signs on Egypt, by displaying his wonders in the plains of Zoan,

^78:44 by turning their rivers into blood to stop them drinking from their streams,

^78:45 by sending horseflies to eat them and frogs to devastate them,

^78:46 by consigning their crops to the caterpillar and their hard-won harvest to the locust,

^78:47 by killing their vines with hail and their sycamore trees with frost,

^78:48 by condemning their cattle to plague and their flocks to feverish pests,

^78:49 by unleashing his fierce anger, rage, indignation and hardship on them, a mission of angels of disaster,

^78:50 by giving his anger free rein, by not even exempting them from death, by condemning them to plague,

^78:51 by striking down all the first-born in Egypt, the first-fruits of their virility in the tents of Ham,

^78:52 by driving his people out like sheep, by leading them through the wilderness like a flock,

^78:53 by guiding them safe and unafraid while the sea engulfed their enemies,

^78:54 by bringing them to his sacred frontier, the highlands conquered by his own right hand,

^78:55 by expelling the pagans in front of them and by marking out a heritage for each, in which the tribes of Israel could pitch their tents.

^78:56 Even so, they went on challenging God the Most High, rebelliously disregarding his decrees;

^78:57 as perverse and disloyal as their ancestors, treacherous as a bow with a warp,

^78:58 provoking him with their high places and rousing his jealousy with their idols.

^78:59 God was enraged when he heard them, he rejected Israel out of hand,

^78:60 he left his home in Shiloh, that tent where he once lived with men.

^78:61 He consigned his power to captivity, his splendour[*a] to the enemy’s clutches;

^78:62 he condemned his own people to the sword, he raged at his heritage,

^78:63 whose young men were then burnt to death – no brides left to hear the wedding song;

^78:64 whose priests fell by the sword – no widows left to raise the dirge.

^78:65 Then, like a sleeper, like a hero fighting-mad with wine, the Lord woke up

^78:66 to strike his enemies on the rump and put them to everlasting shame.

^78:67 Rejecting the tent of Joseph, not choosing the tribe of Ephraim,

^78:68 instead he chose the tribe of Judah and his well-loved mountain of Zion,

^78:69 where he built his sanctuary, a copy of high heaven, founding it firm as the earth for ever.

^78:70 Choosing David as his servant, he took him from the sheepfolds,

^78:71 called him from tending ewes in lamb to pasture his people Jacob and Israel his heritage:

^78:72 who did this with unselfish care and led them with a sensitive hand.

^13:36 Then, leaving the crowds, he went to the house; and his disciples came to him and said, ‘Explain the parable about the darnel in the field to us’.

^13:37 He said in reply, ‘The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man.

^13:38 The field is the world; the good seed is the subjects of the kingdom; the darnel, the subjects of the evil one;

^13:39 the enemy who sowed them, the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; the reapers are the angels.

^13:40 Well then, just as the darnel is gathered up and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of time.

^13:41 The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that provoke offences and all who do evil,

^13:42 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.

^13:43 Then the virtuous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.[*c] Listen, anyone who has ears!