Old/New Testament
Chapter 17
Hoshea of Israel. 1 Hoshea, the son of Elah, began to reign over Israel in Samaria during the twelfth year of the reign of Ahaz, the king of Judah. 2 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel who preceded him.
3 Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, attacked him, and Hoshea became his vassal and gave him tribute. 4 The king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was involved in a conspiracy, for he had sent messengers to the king of Egypt, and he had not given tribute to the king of Assyria as he had in previous years. The king of Assyria therefore shut him up, throwing him in prison. 5 [a]The king of Assyria occupied the entire land, and he went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years.
6 The king of Assyria captured Samaria in the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea. He carried Israel away into Assyria, settling them in Halah, near Habor, on the River Gozan, in the cities of the Medes. 7 This happened because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had revered other gods 8 and they had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before them and that the kings of Israel had introduced.
9 The people of Israel secretly did what was wrong against the Lord, their God. They built high places for themselves in all of their cities, whether it be a simple watchtower or fortified city. 10 They set up pillars and Asherahs for themselves on every high hill and under every green tree. 11 They burned incense on all of the high places like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the anger of the Lord. 12 They served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You are not to do this thing.”
13 The Lord had testified against Israel and against Judah through every prophet and every seer saying, “Turn from your evil ways. Keep my commandments and my statutes according to the law that I gave your fathers and which I sent you by my servants, the prophets.” 14 But they would not listen. They hardened their necks to make them just like the necks of their fathers who had not believed in the Lord, their God. 15 They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their fathers and the warnings by which he bore witness against them. They followed after vain idols, becoming foolish. They also followed after the nations that surrounded them, the ones of whom the Lord had told them that they should not do what they did. 16 They abandoned the commandments of the Lord, their God, and they made molten images of two calves for themselves. They made Asherah, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served the Baals.[b] 17 They burned their sons and their daughters in fire, and they practiced divination and sorcery. They sold themselves to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord and to provoke him to anger.
18 The Lord was thus very angry with Israel. He removed them from out of his sight, so that there were none of them left except for the tribe of Judah.
19 Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord, their God, but they walked in the practices that Israel had introduced. 20 The Lord rejected all of the descendants of Israel, punishing them and delivering them into the hands of those who plundered them until he had cast them out of his sight.
21 When he tore Israel away from the house of David, they made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, their king. Jeroboam misled Israel, causing them to turn away from following the Lord, making them commit a great sin. 22 The Israelites walked in all of the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not turn away from them 23 until the Lord had removed them from out of his sight as he had predicted through all of his servants, the prophets. Israel was exiled out of their own land into Assyria where they are up until the present.
24 Foreigners Deported to Samaria.[c] The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and he settled them in the cities of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities.
25 When they first began to dwell there, they did not fear the Lord, so the Lord sent lions among them which killed some of them. 26 The king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the God of the land. This is why he sent lions among them to kill them, because they did not know the law of the God of the land.”
27 The king of Assyria commanded, “Carry one of the priests there whom you deported. Let him go and dwell there to teach them the law of the God of the land.”
28 One of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria went and dwelt in Bethel. He taught them how to fear the Lord. 29 But all the nations still made their own gods, and they placed their shrines on the high places which the Samaritans had made, each nation in their own cities where they dwelt. 30 The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, 31 and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak. The Sepharvites burned their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of the Sepharvaim.
32 They also feared the Lord, and they appointed priests for the high places from their lowliest classes. They performed sacrifices for them in the shrines on the high places. 33 So they feared the Lord but they also served their own gods in the tradition of the nations from which they had been carried away. 34 Up to the present they still follow their previous traditions. They do not fear the Lord, and they do not observe the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment that the Lord had given to the children of Jacob to whom he gave the name Israel.
35 The Lord made a covenant with them and ordered them, “You shall not fear other gods,[d] nor shall you bow yourselves down to them, nor shall you serve them, nor shall you offer sacrifices to them. 36 You shall fear the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and an outstretched arm. You are to fear him, and you are to worship him, and you are to offer sacrifice to him. 37 You will always carefully observe the statutes, the ordinances, the laws, and the commandments that he wrote for you. You are not to fear other gods. 38 You will not forget the covenant that I made with you, and you are not to fear other gods. 39 You will fear the Lord, your God. He will deliver you out of the hands of all of your enemies.”
40 However, they would not listen; they practiced their previous traditions. 41 The nations thus feared the Lord, but they also served their graven images. Their children and their grandchildren did what their fathers had done, up to the present day.
Kingdom of Judah after 721 B.C.
Chapter 18
Hezekiah.[e] 1 Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, the king of Judah began to reign during the third year of the reign of Hoshea, the son of Elah, the king of Israel. 2 He began to reign when he was twenty-five years old, and he reigned for twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi, and she was the daughter of Zechariah.
3 He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his father David had done. 4 He eliminated the high places and he broke down the pillars. He cut down the Asherah and he broke into pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for up to those days the Israelites had burned incense to it and they called it Nehushtan. 5 He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so much that there was no one like him among all of the kings of Judah who followed him or who preceded him. 6 He held fast to the Lord, and he did not depart from following after him. He kept the commandments that the Lord had given to Moses. 7 The Lord was with him whenever he went forth and he prospered.
He rebelled against the king of Assyria and he refused to serve him. 8 He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from its watchtower to its fortified city.
9 [f]In the fourth year of the reign of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea, the son of Elah, the king of Israel, Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, attacked Samaria and besieged it. 10 At the end of three years he captured it. It was in the sixth year of the reign of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea, the king of Israel, that Samaria was captured.
11 The king of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 12 This happened because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord, their God. They transgressed his covenant, everything that Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded. They would not listen nor would they obey.
13 Invasion of Sennacherib. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all of the fortified cities of Judah, and he captured them during the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah. 14 Hezekiah, the king of Judah, sent a message to the king of Assyria at Lachish saying, “I am guilty; withdraw from me and I will pay any penalty you decide.” The king of Assyria required Hezekiah, the king of Judah, to pay three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all of the silver that was to be found in the temple of the Lord and the treasury of the royal palace.
16 It was at this time that Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors to the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had overlaid. He gave it to the king of Assyria.
17 The king of Assyria sent the general, the lord chamberlain, and the commander along with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they stood by the conduit of the upper pool that is on the highway in the Fuller’s Field. 18 They called out for the king, and Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, the major-domo, Shebna, the scribe, Joah, the son of Asaph, who kept the archives, came out to them.
19 The commander said to them, “Say this to Hezekiah: ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is the source of your hope in which you trust? 20 You say (but they are only empty words), “I have counsel and strength for war!” Now, on whom do you rely that makes you willing to rebel against me? 21 Behold, you have placed your confidence upon the staff of this bruised reed, you trust in Egypt, which, if someone were to lean on it, it would pierce his hand, going through it. That is what Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him. 22 But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord, our God,” is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has eliminated, for he said to Judah and Jerusalem, “You will worship before this altar in Jerusalem.” ’
23 “Therefore, give your pledge to my lord, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to put riders on them. 24 How could you repulse the least important of my master’s servants even though you are trusting Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 25 Was it apart from the Lord I have now come up to destroy this place? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up to attack this land and destroy it.’ ”
26 Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Please do not speak to us in Hebrew when the people who are upon the wall can hear it.”[g]
27 But the commander said to them, “My master has not sent me just to you and your master to say these things, but to the men sitting on the wall who may have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine like you.”
28 The commander then stood and cried out in a loud voice in Hebrew, “Hear the word of the great king of Assyria! 29 Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you out of my hands. 30 Do not let Hezekiah convince you to trust in the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be delivered over into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me by paying tribute. Then, come out and eat from your own vines and from your own fig trees and drink water from your own cistern 32 until I take you away to a land which is like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey. Live, do not die.
“Do not listen to Hezekiah when he tries to convince you saying, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’ 33 Have the gods of any of the nations delivered their land out of the hands of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Shepharvaim, Henah, and Ivvah? Did they rescue Samaria from out of my hands?
35 “Which of the gods from any of the nations has delivered their land from out of my hands? How could the Lord deliver Jerusalem out of my hands?”
36 But the people remained silent and they did not say a word to him, for the king had commanded them, “You are not to answer him.”
37 Then Eliakim, the major-domo, Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, who kept the archives, went to Hezekiah with their torn clothes, and they told him what the commander had said.
19 “And the judgment is this:
the light has come into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light
because their deeds were evil.
20 Everyone who does evil hates the light
and avoids coming near the light
so that his misdeeds may not be exposed.
21 However, whoever lives by the truth
comes to the light
so that it may be clearly seen
that his deeds have been done
in God.”
22 Final Witness of John the Baptist.[a] After this, Jesus went with his disciples into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them and baptized. 23 John was also baptizing at Aenon[b] near Salem, because there was an abundance of water there, and people were coming to be baptized. 24 At that time, John had not yet been imprisoned.
25 Now a dispute about ceremonial washings arose between a certain Jew and the disciples of John. 26 Therefore, they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, is baptizing, and everyone is flocking to him.” 27 John replied,
“No one can receive anything
except what has been given to him from heaven.
28 You yourselves can testify that I said,
‘I am not the Christ.
I have been sent before him.’
29 “It is the bridegroom who has the bride,
but the friend of the bridegroom
who stands by and listens for him
rejoices greatly when he hears the bridegroom’s voice.
This joy of mine
is complete.
30 He must increase;
I must decrease.
He Who Comes from Above[c]
31 “The one who comes from above is above all.
The one who is of the earth is earthly
and speaks of earthly things.
The one who comes from heaven is above all.
32 He bears witness to the things he has seen and heard,
yet no one accepts his testimony.
33 “Whoever accepts his testimony
attests that God speaks the truth.
34 For the one whom God has sent
speaks the words of God,
for God gives him the Spirit without measure.[d]
35 The Father loves the Son,
and he has entrusted everything into his hand.
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life;
whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life,
but the wrath of God rests upon him.”
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