The Seventy Elders

¹⁶ So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting and have them take their place there with you.^{(A) 17} I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.^{(B) 18} And say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wailed in the hearing of the Lord, saying, “If only we had meat to eat! Surely it was better for us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.^{(C) 19} You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days,^{(D) 20} but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you—because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?” ’ ” ²¹ But Moses said, “The people I am with number six hundred thousand on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat for a whole month’! ²² Are there enough flocks and herds to slaughter for them? Are there enough fish in the sea to catch for them?”^{(E) 23} The Lord said to Moses, “Is the Lord’s power limited?^[a] Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.”^(F)

²⁴ So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy of the elders of the people and placed them all around the tent.^{(G) 25} Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.^(H)

²⁶ Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp.^{(I) 27} And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” ²⁸ And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men,^[b] said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”^{(J) 29} But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”^(K)

¹⁴ For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.^{(A) 15} And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised.

¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;^[a] even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,^[b] we no longer know him in that way.^{(B) 17} So if anyone is in Christ, there^[c] is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!^{[d](C) 18} All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;^{(D) 19} that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^[e] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.^{(E) 20} So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.^{(F) 21} For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.^(G)

6 As we work together with him,^[f] we entreat you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.^{(H) 2} For he says,

Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation!^{(I) 3} We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,^{(J) 4} but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵ beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;^{(K) 6} in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, ⁷ truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;^{(L) 8} in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, ⁹ as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed,^{(M) 10} as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

A New Covenant

³¹ The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.^{(A) 32} It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.^{(B) 33} But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.^{(C) 34} No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.^(D)

Ministers of the New Covenant

3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?^{(A) 2} You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, ³ and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.^[a](B)

⁴ Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God,^{(C) 6} who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.^(D)

⁷ Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets,^[b] came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside,^{(E) 8} how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? ⁹ For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,^[c] much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!^{(F) 10} Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, ¹¹ for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

¹² Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness,^{(G) 13} not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that^[d] was being set aside.^{(H) 14} But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside.^{(I) 15} Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds,^{[e] 16} but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.^{(J) 17} Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.^{(K) 18} And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.^(L)