Old/New Testament
The Lord Will Punish the Women of Samaria
4 Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan who live on Mount Samaria.
You women oppress the poor and abuse the needy.
You say to your husbands, “Get some wine! Let’s drink!”
2 Adonay Yahweh has taken an oath on his holiness:
Surely, the time is going to come
when you will be taken away on hooks,
and the rest of you on fishhooks.
3 Each of you will leave the city
through breaks in the wall, one woman ahead of another.
You will be thrown into a garbage dump.
Yahweh declares this.
4 Go to Bethel and sin.
Go to Gilgal and sin even more.
Bring your sacrifices every morning.
Bring a tenth of your income every three days.
5 Burn bread as a thank offering.
Brag and boast about your freewill offerings.
This is what you people of Israel love to do.
Adonay Yahweh declares this.
6 I left you with nothing to eat in any of your cities.
I left you with no food in your entire land.
And you still didn’t return to me, declares Yahweh.
7 I stopped the rain from falling
three months before the harvest.
I sent rain on one city and not on another.
One field had rain.
Another field had none and dried up.
8 So people from two or three cities staggered
as they walked to another city in order to get a drink of water.
But they couldn’t get enough.
And you still didn’t return to me, declares Yahweh.
9 I struck your crops with blight and mildew.
Locusts repeatedly devoured your gardens, vineyards,
fig trees, and olive trees.
And you still didn’t return to me, declares Yahweh.
10 I sent plagues on you as I did to Egypt.
With swords I killed your best young men along with your captured horses.
I made the stench from your camps fill your noses.
And you still didn’t return to me, declares Yahweh.
11 I destroyed some of you as Elohim destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a burning log snatched from a fire.
And you still didn’t return to me, declares Yahweh.
12 This is what I will do to you, Israel.
Prepare to meet your Elohim.
This is what I will do to you, Israel!
13 Elohim forms the mountains and creates the wind.
He reveals his thoughts to humans.
He makes dawn and dusk appear.
He walks on the high places of the earth.
His name is Yahweh Elohe Tsebaoth.
A Funeral Song about Israel
5 Listen to this message, this funeral song that I sing about you, nation of Israel:
2 The people of Israel have fallen,
never to rise again.
They lie abandoned in their own land.
There is no one to help them.
3 This is what Adonay Yahweh says:
The city that sends 1,000 troops off to war
will have only 100 left.
The one that sends 100 troops off to war
will have only 10 left for the nation of Israel.
A Threefold Call to Turn Away from Sin
4 This is what Yahweh says to the nation of Israel:
Search for me and live!
5 But don’t search for me at Bethel.
Don’t go to Gilgal.
Don’t travel to Beersheba.
Gilgal will certainly go into exile.
Bethel will come to nothing.
6 Search for Yahweh and live!
If you don’t, he will spread like a fire through the house of Joseph
and burn it down.
Bethel will have no one to put it out.
7 You, Israel, turn justice into poison
and throw righteousness on the ground.
8 Elohim made the constellations Pleiades and Orion.
He turns deep darkness into dawn.
He turns day into night.
He calls for water from the sea
to pour it over the face of the earth.
His name is Yahweh.
9 He destroys strongholds and ruins fortresses.
10 Israel, you hate anyone who speaks out against injustice.
You are disgusted by anyone who speaks the truth.
11 You trample on the poor
and take their wheat from them for taxes.
That is why you build houses from hand-cut stones,
but you will not live in them.
You plant beautiful vineyards,
but you will not drink their wine.
12 I know that your crimes are numerous and your sins are many.
You oppress the righteous by taking bribes.
You deny the needy access to the courts.
13 That is why a wise person remains silent at such times,
because those times are so evil.
14 Search for good instead of evil so that you may live.
Then Yahweh Elohe Tsebaoth will be with you, as you have said.
15 Hate evil and love good.
Then you will be able to have justice in your courts.
Maybe Yahweh Elohe Tsebaoth
will have pity on the faithful few of Joseph.
16 This is what Adonay Yahweh Elohe Tsebaoth, says:
There will be loud crying in every city square,
and people will say in every street, “Oh, no!”
They will call on farmers to mourn
and on professional mourners to cry loudly.
17 There will be loud crying in every vineyard,
because I will pass through your land with death.
Yahweh has said this.
The Terrifying Day of the Lord
18 How horrible it will be for those who long for the day of Yahweh!
Why do you long for that day?
The day of Yahweh is one of darkness and not light.
19 It is like a person who flees from a lion
only to be attacked by a bear.
It is like a person who goes home and puts his hand on the wall
only to be bitten by a snake.
20 The day of Yahweh brings darkness and not light.
It is pitch black, with no light.
The Lord Rejects Israel’s Worship
21 I hate your festivals; I despise them.
I’m not pleased with your religious assemblies.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I won’t accept them.
I won’t even look at the fellowship offerings of your choicest animals.
23 Spare me the sound of your songs.
I won’t listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice flow like a river
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
25 Did you bring me sacrifices and grain offerings
in the desert for 40 years, nation of Israel?
26 You carried along the statues of the god Sikkuth as your king
and the star Kiyyun,
the gods you made for yourselves.
27 I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,
says Yahweh, whose name is Elohe Tsebaoth.
The Fall of Samaria
6 How horrible it will be for those who are at ease in Zion,
for those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria,
and for the heads of the leading nations,
to whom the nation of Israel comes.
2 Go to Calneh and look.
Go from there to the great city of Hamath.
Then go to Gath, the city of the Philistines.
Are you better than these kingdoms?
Is their territory larger than yours?
3 How horrible it will be for those who think that a day of disaster is far away.
They bring the reign of violence closer.
4 How horrible it will be for those who sleep on ivory beds.
They sprawl out on their couches
and eat lambs from their flocks and calves from their stalls.
5 How horrible it will be for those who make up songs as they strum a harp.
Like David, they write all kinds of songs for themselves.
6 How horrible it will be for those who drink wine by the jugful.
They rub the finest oils all over themselves
and are not sorry for the ruin of the descendants of Joseph.
7 That is why they will now be the first to go into exile.
The celebrating of those sprawled around the banquet table will stop.
8 Adonay Yahweh has sworn an oath on himself.
Yahweh Elohe Tsebaoth declares:
I am disgusted with Jacob’s pride,
and I hate his palaces.
So I will hand over the city and everything in it.
9 If ten people are left in one house, they will die.
10 If a relative or a mortician
comes to take the dead bodies out of the house
and asks someone who is inside the house,
“Is there anyone else with you?”
that person will answer, “No.”
“Hush,” he will add.
“We shouldn’t mention the name of Yahweh!”
11 Yahweh is going to give the command
to level big houses and flatten little houses.
12 Do horses run on rocks?
Does a farmer plow the sea with oxen?
Yet, you have turned justice into something deadly
and what is righteous into poison.
13 How horrible it will be for those who rejoice over Lo Debar
and who say, “We were strong enough to capture Karnaim by ourselves.”
14 I am going to lead a nation to attack you, nation of Israel,
declares the Lord God of the Armies of the Nations.
They will oppress you from the border of Hamath to the valley of Arabah.
144,000 People Are Sealed
7 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth. They were holding back the four winds of the earth to keep them from blowing on the land, the sea, or any tree. 2 I saw another angel coming from the east with the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been allowed to harm the land and sea, 3 “Don’t harm the land, the sea, or the trees until we have put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
4 I heard how many were sealed: 144,000. Those who were sealed were from every tribe of the people of Israel:
5 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed,
12,000 from the tribe of Reuben,
12,000 from the tribe of Gad,
6 12,000 from the tribe of Asher,
12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,
12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh,
7 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon,
12,000 from the tribe of Levi,
12,000 from the tribe of Issachar,
8 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun,
12,000 from the tribe of Joseph,
12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.
God’s People around His Throne in Heaven
9 After these things I saw a large crowd from every nation, tribe, people, and language. No one was able to count how many people there were. They were standing in front of the throne and the lamb. They were wearing white robes, holding palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the lamb!”
11 All the angels stood around the throne with the leaders and the four living creatures. They bowed in front of the throne with their faces touching the ground, worshiped God, 12 and said,
“Amen! Praise, glory, wisdom, thanks, honor, power, and strength
be to our God forever and ever! Amen!”
13 One of the leaders asked me, “Who are these people wearing white robes, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered him, “Sir, you know.”
Then he told me,
“These are the people who are coming out of the terrible suffering.
They have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the lamb.
15 That is why they are in front of the throne of God.
They serve him day and night in his temple.
The one who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.
16 They will never be hungry or thirsty again.
Neither the sun nor any burning heat will ever overcome them.
17 The lamb in the center near the throne will be their shepherd.
He will lead them to springs filled with the water of life,
and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
The Names of God Bible (without notes) © 2011 by Baker Publishing Group.