Old/New Testament
God has a quarrel with Israel's people
6 Now listen to what the Lord says:
‘Stand up! Explain in front of the mountains what I want to say.
Speak loud so that the hills can hear your voice.[a]
2 Listen, you mountains.
Hear this, you strong places that have always been there deep in the earth.
The Lord has a quarrel with Israel's people.
Hear the reasons why the Lord is angry with you, his people.’
3 ‘My people, what bad thing have I done to you?’ God asks.
‘How have I made you tired of me?
Answer me.
4 I brought you out of Egypt.
You were slaves in that country,
but I made you free people.
I sent Moses to lead you,
and Aaron and Miriam with him.
5 My people, please remember the bad things that King Balak of Moab tried to do.
And remember what Balaam, Beor's son, answered him.[b]
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal.[c]
Then you will remember that I, the Lord, do good things.’
What God wants from his people
6 ‘I come to meet with the Lord,’ you say.[d]
‘I must know what to bring when I come.
I bend down to worship him.
I must know what to offer when I bend down.
He is God and he is greater than everything.
Perhaps he would like it if I burn young cows one year old for him.
7 He might be happy with thousands of male sheep,
or ten thousand rivers of olive oil.
I have not obeyed God.
I might even kill and burn my oldest son, because of that.
I have done wrong things and I must pay God for that.
Perhaps, if I give my own child to him, that will be enough to pay.’
8 But God has told us what is good.[e] This is what the Lord wants from us:
‘You must be fair to other people,’ God says.
‘You must want to be kind.[f]
And you must be careful to do what I show you.’
God will punish people that are not honest
9 The Lord shouts to the people in the city of Jerusalem.
So it is good for us to listen carefully to what he says.
‘Listen to me, because I have the authority to punish you,’ God says.
10 ‘You bad people still hide valuable things that you have taken from other people.
I will not forget this.
You bad people use false weights to measure the food that you sell.
I hate that.
11 I will not excuse you people who use false weights.
You are not being honest if you weigh things like that.
12 You rich people in the city are very cruel.
Everyone there says things that are not true.
All of them speak false words.
13 So I will make you so sick that you will never get well.
I have begun to destroy you because you have done bad things.
14 You will eat, but you will still feel hungry.
You will store things and you will try to keep them safe.
But you will fail to save them.
I will cause enemies to destroy all your things in the war.
15 You will plant seeds,
but you will not bring in the harvest.
You will crush olives,
but you will not use the olive oil for yourselves.[g]
You will crush grapes,
but you will not drink the wine from them.
16 You have obeyed the rules of King Omri.
You have done what King Ahab and all his people did.[h]
You have copied their wicked ideas.
So I must destroy you and all your things completely.
Then people from other countries will not be kind or polite to you.
Instead, they will make you ashamed.’
Israel's people are very bad, but Micah still believes God
7 I am very sad!
I am like someone who comes to trees with no fruit on them.
Other people have picked the fruit already.
So I am like those people who can only pick the last grapes.
Those are the grapes that other people leave behind.
Really, there are no grapes there to eat.
There are none of the first figs that I like so much.
2 There are no longer any people here who obey God.
There are no good, honest people.
Everyone is waiting to kill someone else.
They are all like hunters, who try to catch each other.
3 They know very well how to work together to do bad things.
Rulers demand gifts and judges ask for money.[i]
Powerful bad people always get what they want.
All these people work together to do what is bad.
4 The best of them are dangerous like wild plants with thorns.[j]
The most honest of them are worse than thorn bushes.
The bad time that your prophets told you about is coming.
Soon God will punish you,
and you will be confused.
5 Do not believe anyone, even somebody that you know well.
You cannot be sure that your friend will always be honest with you.
Be careful what you say to your wife.
Be careful even when you are hugging her.
6 Sons think that their fathers are fools.
And daughters refuse to obey their mothers.
Wives quarrel with their husbands' mothers.
A man's enemies are the people who live in his own house now.
7 But as for me, I will watch for what the Lord will do.
I will wait for God, who saves me.
I know that he hears me.
Israel's enemies will be ashamed
8 My enemy, do not be happy because I am in trouble.[k]
I have fallen down, but I will get up.
I am in the dark, but the Lord will be a light to me.
9 I have not obeyed the Lord,
so he is angry with me.
He will continue to punish me,
until the time when he speaks for me.
Then he will make things right for me.
He will bring me out into the light.
He always does what is really right.
And I will see that then.
10 ‘Why does the Lord your God not help you?’ my enemies say to me.
They will see what God does for me.
Then they will be very ashamed.
And I will see the bad things that happen to them.
Soon other people will crush them and beat them.
Then they will be like wet ground in the streets under people's feet.
Jerusalem will be great again
11 But the time will come for you to build the walls of your cities again.
You will make the borders of your country much wider then.
12 At that time many of Assyria's people and Egypt's people will come to you.
People will come to you from the countries between Egypt and the River Euphrates.
They will come to you from all over the earth,
from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
13 The other parts of the earth will become sad places where nobody lives.
God will destroy them because of the people who live there.
Those people have done what is bad.
Micah talks to God
14 Rule us and lead us, Lord.
You are like a man who leads his sheep.
He uses a strong stick to lead them.
We are your own special people.
We are like a group of sheep that lives by itself in a forest.
There is good grass all round them.
Let your sheep eat grass in Bashan and Gilead,
as they did a long time ago.[l]
15 Lord, you did great things long ago,
when you brought us out of the land of Egypt.
Do great things like that again.
16 The people in other countries will see what you do.
They will understand that they are not really powerful.
So then they will be ashamed.
They will be like deaf people and dumb people.
17 They will be like snakes that move along the ground.
They will be afraid and they will eat dust like snakes.[m]
They will come carefully out of their safe places,
because they are afraid of you, the Lord our God.
18 No other god is like you.
You chose us to be your people.
And you decide not to remember what we have done wrong.
Not many of your people remain and we have done bad things.
But you choose to forget those bad things.
You will not always be angry,
because you want very much to be kind.
19 You like to be kind because you love us.
You will remove everything that we have done wrong.
You will crush those bad things.
You will throw all of them into the deep sea.
20 You will continue to be kind to us,
because we are Jacob's and Abraham's people.[n]
That is what you promised to our grandfathers a long time ago.
The wild animal from the sea
13 Then I saw a wild animal that was coming up out of the sea.[a] It had ten horns and there was a crown on each horn. The animal also had seven heads. On each head there was a bad name that insulted God. 2 The wild animal that I saw was like a leopard. But its feet were like a bear's feet and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. The dragon gave his own power and great authority to the wild animal so that it could rule as king.
3 Someone had hurt one of the wild animal's heads with a bad wound. It seemed that it would soon die. But the wound in the animal's head had become well again. This surprised all the people who were living on the earth. As a result, they were ready to obey what the wild animal said. 4 People worshipped the dragon because he had given his authority to the wild animal. They also worshipped the wild animal. They said, ‘Nobody is like this animal! Nobody is strong enough to fight against him!’
5 The wild animal received authority to rule people for 42 months. It could speak proud words and insult God. 6 So it started to speak against God. It insulted God's name and the place where he lives, as well as the people who live there in heaven. 7 It received power to fight a war against God's own people and to win against them. It received authority to rule over people from every nation, people from every tribe and people from every language. 8 Nearly all the people who live on the earth will worship the wild animal. But those people whose names are in the Lamb's book of life will not worship it.[b] The Lamb wrote the names of these believers in his book from the beginning of the world. He is the Lamb that people killed as a sacrifice.
9 Everyone who can understand should listen carefully to these words:
10 ‘If it is right for someone's enemy to catch him, that is what will happen.
If it is right for someone's enemy to kill him with a sword, that is what will happen.’
This means that God's people must be patient and strong. They must continue to trust God.[c]
The wild animal from the land
11 Then I saw a second wild animal. This one was coming up out of the ground.[d] It had two horns like a lamb's horns. But it spoke like a dragon. 12 It worked for the first wild animal and it used the authority of the first wild animal. It made all the people on earth worship the first wild animal. That first animal was the one that someone had hurt very much. It seemed that it would soon die but it had become well again.
13 The second wild animal did great miracles. It even caused fire to come down from heaven to the earth, while people watched. 14 It used the authority of the first wild animal to do many miracles. In that way, it deceived the people who lived on the earth. It told them to make an image of the first wild animal. This was the animal that was still alive after a sword had given it a bad wound. 15 The second wild animal received power to give life to the image of the first wild animal. As a result, the image could speak. It said, ‘Anyone who refuses to worship me must die!’
16 The second wild animal also caused everyone to receive a mark. Everyone received a mark on their right hand or on the front of their head. This included important people and ordinary people, rich people and poor people, free people and slaves. 17 Nobody could buy anything unless they had this mark on them. Nor could they sell anything. This mark shows the wild animal's name or the number of its name.
18 You must think carefully so that you can understand this number. Anyone who is wise should try to understand what the wild animal's number means. It is a human number. The number is 666.
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