The Daily Audio Bible
Today's audio is from the CEV. Switch to the CEV to read along with the audio.
Jeremiah Advises Survivors Not to Migrate
42 Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached(A) 2 the prophet Jeremiah and said, “Be good enough to listen to our plea, and pray to the Lord your God for us—for all this remnant. For there are only a few of us left out of many, as your eyes can see.(B) 3 Let the Lord your God show us where we should go and what we should do.”(C) 4 The prophet Jeremiah said to them, “Very well: I am going to pray to the Lord your God as you request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you; I will keep nothing back from you.”(D) 5 They in their turn said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to everything that the Lord your God sends us through you. 6 Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.”(E)
7 At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. 8 Then he summoned Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces who were with him and all the people from the least to the greatest 9 and said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea before him: 10 If you will only remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you and not pluck you up, for I am sorry for the disaster that I have brought upon you.(F) 11 Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, as you have been; do not be afraid of him, says the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to rescue you from his hand.(G) 12 I will grant you mercy, and he will have mercy on you and restore you to your native soil. 13 But if you continue to say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ thus disobeying the voice of the Lord your God(H) 14 and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of the trumpet or be hungry for bread, and there we will stay,’(I) 15 then hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you are determined to enter Egypt and go to settle there,(J) 16 then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there, in the land of Egypt, and the famine that you dread shall follow close after you into Egypt, and there you shall die. 17 All the people who have determined to go to Egypt to settle there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; they shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I am bringing upon them.(K)
18 “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Just as my anger and my wrath were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You shall become an object of execration and horror, of cursing and ridicule. You shall see this place no more.(L) 19 The Lord has said to you, ‘O remnant of Judah, Do not go to Egypt.’ Be well aware that I have warned you today(M) 20 that you have made a fatal mistake. For you yourselves sent me to the Lord your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God, and whatever the Lord our God says, tell us, and we will do it.’ 21 So I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God in anything that he sent me to tell you.(N) 22 Be well aware, then, that you shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go and settle.”(O)
Taken to Egypt, Jeremiah Warns of Judgment
43 When Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all the words of the Lord their God, with which the Lord their God had sent him to them, all these words,(P) 2 Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The Lord our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to settle there,’(Q) 3 but Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us, to hand us over to the Chaldeans, in order that they may kill us or take us into exile in Babylon.”(R) 4 So Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the Lord to stay in the land of Judah.(S) 5 But Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to settle in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven— 6 the men, the women, the children, the princesses, and everyone whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, also the prophet Jeremiah and Baruch son of Neriah.(T) 7 And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the Lord. And they arrived at Tahpanhes.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes:(U) 9 Take some large stones in your hands, and bury them in the clay pavement[a] that is at the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes. Let the Judeans see you do it, 10 and say to them, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to send and take my servant King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, and I will set his throne above these stones that I have buried, and he will spread his royal canopy over them.(V) 11 He shall come and ravage the land of Egypt, giving
those who are destined for pestilence, to pestilence,
and those who are destined for captivity, to captivity,
and those who are destined for the sword, to the sword.(W)
12 “I shall kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall pick clean the land of Egypt as a shepherd picks his cloak clean of vermin, and he shall depart from there safely.(X) 13 He shall break the obelisks of Heliopolis, which is in the land of Egypt, and the temples of the gods of Egypt he shall burn with fire.”
Denunciation of Persistent Idolatry
44 The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Judeans living in the land of Egypt, at Migdol, at Tahpanhes, at Memphis, and in the land of Pathros:(Y) 2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You yourselves have seen all the disaster that I have brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Look at them; today they are a desolation, without an inhabitant in them,(Z) 3 because of the wickedness that they committed, provoking me to anger, in that they went to make offerings to and serve other gods that they had not known, neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors.(AA) 4 Yet I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, “I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!”(AB) 5 But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their wickedness and make no offerings to other gods. 6 So my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, and they became a waste and a desolation, as they still are today.(AC) 7 And now thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why are you doing such great harm to yourselves, to cut off man and woman, child and infant, from the midst of Judah, leaving yourselves without a remnant?(AD) 8 Why do you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, making offerings to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you have come to settle? Will you be cut off and become an object of cursing and ridicule among all the nations of the earth?(AE) 9 Have you forgotten the crimes of your ancestors, of the kings of Judah, of their[b] wives, your own crimes and those of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?(AF) 10 They have shown no contrition or fear to this day, nor have they walked in my law and my statutes that I set before you and before your ancestors.(AG)
11 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am determined to bring disaster on you, to bring all Judah to an end.(AH) 12 I will take the remnant of Judah who are determined to come to the land of Egypt to settle, and they shall perish, everyone; in the land of Egypt they shall fall; by the sword and by famine they shall perish; from the least to the greatest, they shall die by the sword and by famine; and they shall become an object of execration and horror, of cursing and ridicule.(AI) 13 I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, 14 so that none of the remnant of Judah who have come to settle in the land of Egypt shall escape or survive or return to the land of Judah. Although they long to go back to live there, they shall not go back, except some fugitives.(AJ)
15 Then all the men who were aware that their wives had been making offerings to other gods and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah:(AK) 16 “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.(AL) 17 Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food and prospered and saw no misfortune.(AM) 18 But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine.”(AN) 19 And the women said,[c] “Indeed we will go on making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her; do you think that we made cakes for her, marked with her image, and poured out libations to her without our husbands’ being involved?”(AO)
20 Then Jeremiah said to all the people, men and women, all the people who were giving him this answer: 21 “As for the offerings that you made in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials, and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them? Did it not come into his mind?(AP) 22 The Lord could no longer bear the sight of your evil doings, the abominations that you committed; therefore your land became a desolation and a waste and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is to this day.(AQ) 23 It is because you burned offerings and because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey the voice of the Lord or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his decrees that this disaster has befallen you, as is still evident today.”(AR)
A Good Soldier of Christ Jesus
2 You then, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.(A) 3 Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. 5 And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules.(B) 6 It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops. 7 Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, 9 for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.(C) 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.(D) 11 The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;(E)
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
he[a] cannot deny himself.(F)
A Worker Approved by God
14 Remind them of this, and warn them before the Lord[b] that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.(G) 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. 16 Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people[c] into more and more impiety,(H) 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,(I) 18 who have swerved from the truth, saying resurrection[d] has already occurred. They are upsetting the faith of some.(J) 19 But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.”(K)
20 In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for special[e] use, some for ordinary.[f](L) 21 All who cleanse themselves of the things I have mentioned[g] will become special[h] utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work.(M)
Psalm 92
Thanksgiving for Vindication
A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.
1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High,(A)
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning
and your faithfulness by night,(B)
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.(C)
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
5 How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep!(D)
6 The dullard cannot know;
the stupid cannot understand this:
7 though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever,(E)
8 but you, O Lord, are on high forever.(F)
9 For your enemies, O Lord,
for your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered.(G)
10 But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;
you have anointed me with fresh oil.
11 My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.(H)
12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.(I)
13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
14 In old age they still produce fruit;
they are always green and full of sap,(J)
15 showing that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.(K)
Psalm 93
The Majesty of God’s Rule
1 The Lord is king; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he is girded with strength.
He has established the world; it shall never be moved;(L)
2 your throne is established from of old;
you are from everlasting.(M)
3 The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
4 More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves[a] of the sea,
majestic on high is the Lord!(N)
5 Your decrees are very sure;
holiness befits your house,
O Lord, forevermore.(O)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.