The Daily Audio Bible

¹¹ Then Adonai said to me, “Don’t pray for this people or for their welfare. ¹² When they fast, I will not hear their cry; when they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Rather, I will destroy them with war, famine and disease.” ¹³ Then I said, “Adonai, God! The prophets are telling them, ‘You won’t see war, and you won’t have famine; but I will give you secure peace in this place.’” ¹⁴ Adonai replied, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I didn’t send them, order them or speak to them. They are prophesying false visions to you, worthless divinations, the delusions of their own minds. ¹⁵ Therefore,” Adonai says, “concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name, whom I did not send, yet they say, ‘There will be neither war nor famine in this land’ — it will be war and famine that will destroy those prophets. ¹⁶ And the people to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Yerushalayim because of the famine and war, with no one to bury them — them, or their wives, or their sons, or their daughters — because I will pour their own wickedness out upon them. ¹⁷ You are to give them this message:

15 Then Adonai said to me, “Even if Moshe and Sh’mu’el were standing in front of me, my heart would not turn toward this people! Drive them out of my sight, get them out of here! ² And when they ask you where they should go, tell them that this is what Adonai says:

¹¹ Adonai said, “I promise to release you for good, I promise to make your enemies appeal to you when calamity and trouble come.

¹² “Can iron break iron and bronze from the north? ¹³ I will give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder, and you will not be paid for them, because of all your sins throughout your territory; ¹⁴ and I will make you pass together with your enemies into a land you do not know. For my anger has become a blazing fire, and it will flare up against you.”

16 This word of Adonai came to me: ² “You are not to marry or have sons and daughters in this place. ³ For this is what Adonai says concerning the sons and daughters born here, as well as their mothers who gave birth to them and their fathers who conceived them in this land: ⁴ ‘They will die terrible deaths without being mourned or buried; they will be left on the ground like dung. They will die by the sword and by famine, and their corpses will be food for the birds in the air and the wild animals.’

⁵ “For here is what Adonai says: ‘Do not enter any house where there is mourning; don’t lament them, and don’t grieve for them; for I have removed my shalom from this people, as well as my grace and compassion,’ says Adonai. ⁶ ‘Great and small alike will die in this land; they will not be buried, people will not lament them; nor will they cut their flesh or shave their heads for them. ⁷ No one will prepare a meal for those in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; and no one will give them a cup to drink, to console them for their father or mother.’ ⁸ And you are not to go into any house where there is celebrating to sit with them, eating and drinking. ⁹ For here is what Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Isra’el, says: ‘In this place, while you are still alive, before your very eyes, I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bridegroom and bride.’

¹⁰ “When you tell this people all that I have said, and they ask you, ‘Why has Adonai decreed all this terrible disaster against us? What is our iniquity, what is our sin, that we have committed against Adonai our God?’ ¹¹ then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your ancestors abandoned me, says Adonai, and went after other gods, serving and worshipping them, but abandoned me and did not keep my Torah. ¹² And you have done worse than your ancestors, for — look! — each of you lives according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, so that you don’t listen to me. ¹³ Therefore I am thrusting you out of this land into a land you have not known, neither you nor your ancestors; and there you will serve other gods day and night; for I will show you no favor.’

¹⁴ “‘Therefore,’ says Adonai, ‘the day will come when people will no longer swear, “As Adonai lives, who brought the people of Isra’el out of the land of Egypt,” ¹⁵ but, “As Adonai lives, who brought the people of Isra’el out of the land to the north and out of all the countries where he drove them”; for I will bring them back to their own land, which I gave to their ancestors.

⁹ For you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship, how we worked night and day not to put a burden on any of you while we were proclaiming God’s Good News to you. ¹⁰ You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless our behavior was in the sight of you believers; ¹¹ for you know that we treated each one of you the way a father treats his children — ¹² we encouraged you and comforted you and appealed to you to lead lives worthy of God, who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.

¹³ Another reason we regularly thank God is that when you heard the Word of God from us, you received it not merely as a human word, but as it truly is, God’s Word, which is at work in you believers. ¹⁴ For, brothers, you came to be imitators of God’s congregations in Y’hudah that are united with the Messiah Yeshua — you suffered the same things from your countrymen as they did from the Judeans who ¹⁵ both killed the Lord Yeshua and the prophets, and chased us out too. They are displeasing God and opposing all mankind ¹⁶ by trying to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles, so that they may be delivered. Their object seems to be always to make their sins as bad as possible! But God’s fury will catch up with them in the end.

¹⁷ And as for us, brothers, when we were deprived of your company for a short time — in person, but not in thought — we missed you and tried hard to come and see you. ¹⁸ We wanted so much to come to you — I, Sha’ul, tried more than once — but the Adversary stopped us. ¹⁹ For when our Lord Yeshua returns, what will be our hope, our joy, our crown to boast about? Won’t it be you? ²⁰ Yes, you are our glory and our joy!

3 So when we could no longer stand it, we agreed to be left in Athens alone ² and sent Timothy, our brother and God’s fellow worker for the Good News of the Messiah, to make you solid and encourage you in your trust; ³ so that none of you would let these persecutions unsettle him. For you yourselves know that these are bound to come to us; ⁴ even when we were with you, we kept telling you in advance that we were about to be persecuted; and indeed it has happened, as you know. ⁵ That is the reason why, after I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your trust. I was afraid that somehow the Tempter had tempted you, and our hard work had been wasted.

⁶ But now Timothy has come to us from you, bringing good news about your trust and love, and telling us that you remember us well and are always longing to see us, just as we long to see you. ⁷ Because of this, brothers, in spite of all our trouble and distress, we were comforted over you — because of your trust; ⁸ so that now we are alive; since you continue to stand fast, united with the Lord.

⁹ Indeed, how can we thank God enough for you or express to our God all the joy we feel because of you? ¹⁰ Night and day we pray as hard as we can that we will be able to see you face to face and supply whatever shortcomings there may be in your trust. ¹¹ May God our Father and our Lord Yeshua direct our way to you.

¹² And as for you, may the Lord make you increase and overflow in love toward each other, indeed, toward everyone, just as we do toward you; ¹³ so that he may give you the inner strength to be blameless, by reason of your holiness, when you stand before God our Father at the coming of our Lord Yeshua with all his angels.