Old/New Testament
Love
1 This is Solomon's most beautiful song.
The young woman:
2 Please kiss me with your lips!
Your love makes me happier than wine does.
3 You have put perfume on your body.
It has a lovely smell.
The sound of your name causes pleasure everywhere,
like sweet perfume.
All the young women love you!
4 Take me away with you. Come quickly.
I want the king to take me into his rooms.[a]
The woman's friends:[b]
We are very happy!
You make us happy.
We praise your love,
because it is better than wine.
The young woman:
I agree! The young women are right to praise you like that.
5 Young women of Jerusalem, my skin is dark but I am beautiful.[c]
My skin is dark, like the tents of Kedar.
It is beautiful, like the curtains of King Solomon's tent.
6 The sun has caused my skin to become dark.
Please do not look at me as if I am strange.
My brothers were angry with me.
They caused me to work outside in the sun.
I took care of the vineyards,
and I could not take care of my own vineyard, my body.
7 I love you, my dear one.[d]
Tell me where you take your sheep to eat grass.
Where will you take them to rest at midday?
I do not want to look for you everywhere
among the sheep of your friends.
They might not understand what I am doing.
The man and the woman praise each other
The young man:
8 You are the most beautiful woman of all.
If you do not know where to find me,
follow the marks from the feet of my sheep.
Take your young goats to eat grass
among the tents of the shepherds.
9 My dear friend, you are very beautiful.
You seem to me like a beautiful horse that pulls one of Pharaoh's chariots.
10 Your face is beautiful with jewels.
A necklace makes your neck beautiful too.
11 We will use gold to make ear rings for you,
and we will add pieces of silver.
The young woman:[e]
12 While the king was eating a meal,
the sweet smell of my perfume was in the air.
13 My lover is like a bag of myrrh
that lies between my breasts.
14 He is like a group of henna flowers
that grow in the vineyards at En Gedi.[f]
The young man:
15 My dear friend, I see that you are very beautiful!
Yes, you are beautiful
and your eyes are like doves.
The young woman:
16 My lover, I see that you are very handsome!
Yes, you are lovely!
This field of fresh, green grass is our comfortable bed.
17 The cedar trees above us are the beams of our bedroom.[g]
The pine trees cover us like a roof.
The young woman:
2 I am a wild flower of Sharon.
I am a lily from the valleys.[h]
The young man:
2 Among the other young women,
my dear friend is like a lily
that grows among thorn bushes.[i]
The young woman:[j]
3 Among the other young men,
my lover is like an apple tree
that grows among the trees of the forest.[k]
I love to sit in his shade.
His fruit is sweet when I taste it.
4 He has taken me to the room for feasts.
Everyone can see that he loves me.
5 I am weak with love.
So give me raisins to make me strong.
Give me apples to me to keep me awake.
6 His left hand is under my head.
His right hand brings me near to him.
7 Promise this to me, young women of Jerusalem:
Do not cause our love to wake up.
Do not cause it to become too strong
until the time is right.
The gazelles and the wild deer will know about your promise.
8 Listen! I hear the voice of my lover!
Look! He is coming!
He moves quickly across the mountains.
He runs across the hills.
9 My lover is like a gazelle or a young male deer.
Look! There he is!
He is standing behind our wall.
He is looking through the window.
He wants to see into the room.
10 My lover said this to me:
‘My beautiful friend, I love you.
Get up now and come with me.
11 Look! The winter time has finished.
The heavy rains have stopped.
12 Flowers are appearing everywhere.
It is now the season to sing happy songs.
We can hear the voices of doves around us.
13 New fruit is growing on the fig trees.
There are flowers on the vines,
and their sweet smell is in the air.
I love you, my beautiful friend.
Please get up now and come with me!’
The young man:
14 My dear friend, you are like a dove that is hiding among the rocks.
You hide from me in the mountains.
Show your face to me
because it is lovely.
Let me hear your voice
because it has a sweet sound.
15 Catch the foxes for us!
Our vines now have flowers
and they will soon give us fruit.
So catch the little foxes before they destroy our vineyards.[l]
The young woman:
16 My lover belongs to me,
and I belong to him.
He moves among the lilies with his sheep.
17 Turn back to me, my lover.
Stay until dawn comes and the shadows have gone,
Be like a gazelle or a young male deer
that plays among the mountains' rocks.
A young woman's dream
The young woman:[m]
3 All night I lay on my bed.
I wanted my lover to come to me.
I looked for him but he did not appear.
2 I thought, ‘I will get up now and I will go into the city.
I will look everywhere for my lover.
I will look in all the streets.
I will look in all the market places.’
So I looked for him,
but I did not find him.
3 The city guards found me
as they walked in the streets of the city.
I asked them,
‘Have you seen the man that I love?’
4 Just then, as I left them, I found my lover!
I hugged him and I would not let him go.
I took him to my mother's house.
I took him into my mother's bedroom.
That is where my life started, inside my mother's body.
5 Promise this to me, young women of Jerusalem:
Do not cause our love to wake up.
Do not cause it to become too strong
until the time is right.
The gazelles and the wild deer will know about your promise.
A royal wedding
6 Who is this who is coming from the desert?[n]
It seems that smoke is rising into the air!
There is a lovely smell of myrrh and incense.[o]
It is the smell of all the spices that a trader sells.
7 Look! They are carrying King Solomon on a throne![p]
60 soldiers are travelling with it.[q]
They are Israel's bravest soldiers.
8 All of them have swords.
They all know how to fight well.
Their swords are ready for them to use.
They are ready for any danger that comes in the night.
9 King Solomon made the throne for himself.
He used wood from Lebanon to make it.[r]
10 He used silver to make the posts for it.
He used gold to make its back.
Its seat has valuable purple cloth to cover it.
The young women of Jerusalem made it beautiful inside,
to show their love.
11 Young women of Zion,
come out to see King Solomon![s]
He is wearing his crown.
His mother put the crown on him on his wedding day.
It was the happiest day of his life!
The apostles in Jerusalem accept Paul
2 14 years later, I went to Jerusalem again. This time I went with Barnabas, and I also took Titus with me. 2 I went there because God had shown me that I should go. I talked to the Christian leaders there. I explained to them the good news that I teach to the Gentiles. But I talked only to those men who seemed to be the leaders. I wanted to be sure that they agreed with the message that I taught. I did not want my work, both in past times and now, to be worth nothing. 3 Titus was with me then. He is a Greek person and nobody had circumcised him. But the leaders in Jerusalem did not say that we must circumcise him.[a]
4 But some men did want us to obey all the Jewish rules. Those men came secretly among our group. They said that they were believers, but they were not really true believers. They wanted to see how we lived as believers. They wanted to know how Christ Jesus has made us free from the Jewish rules. They wanted to make us slaves to those rules. 5 But we did not allow them to do this to us. They wanted to spoil the true good news that you have believed. We kept the good news safe for you.
6 The church leaders in Jerusalem did not argue with me. (They were the people who seemed to be the leaders. It does not matter to me whether they were really important people or not. God does not respect some people more than others.) Those leaders did not tell me to change the message that I teach. 7 Instead they saw that God had given a special job to me. God wanted me to tell the good news about Christ to the Gentiles. In the same way, he had told Peter to tell the good news to the Jews. 8 God gave Peter the authority to be his apostle to the Jews. God also gave me the authority to be his apostle to the Gentiles.
9 James, Peter and John understood that God had given this special job to me. They are the leaders that the church in Jerusalem respects. And they were happy to accept Barnabas and me as their friends. They agreed that we should teach God's message to the Gentiles. They themselves would continue to teach the Jews. 10 They only asked us to do this: We should remember to help the poor people among their group. That is something that I myself wanted very much to do.
Paul argues with Peter
11 But later, when Peter came to Antioch, I spoke against him. I told him clearly that he had done something wrong. 12 When he first arrived in Antioch, Peter had been eating meals with the Gentile believers there. Then James sent some Jewish believers from Jerusalem to Antioch. After those men had arrived, Peter started to keep himself separate from the Gentiles. He stopped eating meals with them. He was afraid of those Jews who wanted to circumcise the Gentile believers. 13 The other Jewish believers in Antioch also did what Peter did. They became hypocrites like him. Even Barnabas agreed and he copied their example.
14 But I could see that they were wrong to do this. They were not living in a way that agrees with God's true message. So I spoke to Peter in front of all of them. I said to him, ‘You were born as a Jew, but you have been living like a Gentile. As a believer, you no longer obey all the Jewish rules. So you should not try to make Gentile believers obey those Jewish rules.’
15 We were born as Jewish people. We are not Gentiles who have never obeyed God's rules. 16 But we know that we do not become right with God because we obey his Law. A person only becomes right with God when they believe in Jesus Christ. And we, as Jewish believers, have believed in Christ Jesus. We have become right with God because we trust in what Christ has done. It is not because we obey God's Law that he accepts us. Nobody becomes right with God only because they obey the rules in God's Law.
17 So then, we Jews become right with God when we believe in Christ. That means that we no longer obey all the Jewish rules. But that does not mean that Christ causes us to do wrong things. Certainly, it does not mean that! 18 Instead, I would really be doing something wrong if I tried to obey all those rules again. I would be building again something that I had destroyed. That would really be against God's Law. 19 But God's Law showed me that I could never obey all its rules. So I became like a dead person, free from the authority of those rules. That means that I can now live to please God.[b]
20 Christ died on the cross on my behalf. It is like I died there with him. So I do not live my own life any more. Instead, Christ lives in me. The life that I live now in my body, I live because I trust what he has done for me. He has loved me so much that he died on my behalf. 21 So I do not refuse to accept the kind gift of God. If the rules of God's Law could make me right with him, then Christ would have died for no reason!
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