The office of Christ: the mission of the Apostles; the happiness of
their converts.
61:1. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed
me: he hath sent me to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of
heart, and to preach a release to the captives, and deliverance to them
that are shut up.
61:2. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of
vengeance of our God: to comfort all that mourn:
61:3. To appoint to the mourners of Sion, and to give them a crown for
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, a garment of praise for the spirit
of grief: and they shall be called in it the mighty ones of justice, the
planting of the Lord to glorify him.
61:4. And they shall build the places that have been waste from of old,
and shall raise up ancient ruins, and shall repair the desolate cities,
that were destroyed for generation and generation.
61:5. And strangers shall stand and shall feed your flocks: and the sons
of strangers shall be your husbandman, and the dressers of your vines.
61:6. But you shall be called the priests of the Lord: to you it shall
be said: Ye ministers of our God: you shall eat the riches of the
Gentiles, and you shall pride yourselves in their glory.
61:7. For your double confusion and shame, they shall praise their part:
therefore shall they receive double in their land, everlasting joy shall
be unto them.
61:8. For I am the Lord that love judgment, and hate robbery in a
holocaust: and I will make their work in truth, and I will make a
perpetual covenant with them.
61:9. And they shall know their seed among the Gentiles, and their
offspring in the midst of peoples: all that shall see them, shall know
them, that these are the seed which the Lord hath blessed.
61:10. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall be joyful
in my God: for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation: and
with the robe of justice he hath covered me, as a bridegroom decked with
a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels.
61:11. For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden
causeth her seed to shoot forth: so shall the Lord God make justice to
spring forth, and praise before all the nations.