Daily Reading for Monday, August 21st, 2023

Reading 1, Judges 2:11-19

¹¹ The Israelites then did what is evil in Yahweh's eyes and served the Baals.

¹² They deserted Yahweh, God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt, and they followed other gods, from those of the surrounding peoples. They bowed down to these; they provoked Yahweh;

¹³ they deserted Yahweh to serve Baal and Astartes.

¹⁴ Then Yahweh's anger grew hot against Israel. He handed them over to pillagers who plundered them; he delivered them to the enemies surrounding them, and they were no longer able to resist their enemies.

¹⁵ Whenever they mounted an expedition, Yahweh's hand was there to foil them, as Yahweh had told them and as Yahweh had sworn to them, so that they were in dire distress.

¹⁶ Yahweh then appointed them judges, who rescued them from the hands of their plunderers.

¹⁷ But even to their judges they refused to listen. They prostituted themselves to other gods and bowed down before these. Very quickly they left the path which their ancestors had trodden in obedience to the orders of Yahweh; they did not follow their example.

¹⁸ When Yahweh appointed judges for them, Yahweh was with the judge and rescued them from the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived, since Yahweh relented at their groans under their persecutors and oppressors.

¹⁹ But once the judge was dead, they relapsed into even worse corruption than their ancestors. They followed other gods; they served them and bowed before them and would not give up the practices and stubborn ways of their ancestors at all.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 106:34-35, 36-37, 39-40, 43, 44

³⁴ They did not destroy the nations, as Yahweh had told them to do,

³⁵ but intermarried with them, and adopted their ways.

³⁶ They worshipped those nations' false gods, till they found themselves entrapped,

³⁷ and sacrificed their own sons and their daughters to demons.

³⁹ They defiled themselves by such actions, their behaviour was that of a harlot.

⁴⁰ Yahweh's anger blazed out at his people, his own heritage filled him with disgust.

⁴³ Time and again he rescued them, but they still defied him deliberately, and sank ever deeper in their guilt;

⁴⁴ even so he took pity on their distress, as soon as he heard them cry out.