Old/New Testament

23 This is God’s message to Tyre:

Weep, O ships of Tyre,^[a] returning home from distant lands! Weep for your harbor, for it is gone! The rumors that you heard in Cyprus are all true. ^2-3 Deathly silence is everywhere. Stillness reigns where once your hustling port was full of ships from Sidon, bringing merchandise from far across the ocean, from Egypt and along the Nile. You were the merchandise mart of the world. ⁴ Be ashamed, O Sidon, stronghold of the sea. For you are childless now! ⁵ When Egypt hears the news, there will be great sorrow. ⁶ Flee to Tarshish, men of Tyre, weeping as you go. ⁷ This silent ruin is all that’s left of your once joyous land. What a history was yours! Think of all the colonists you sent to distant lands!

⁸ Who has brought this disaster on Tyre, empire builder and top trader of the world? ⁹ The Commander of the armies of heaven has done it to destroy your pride and show his contempt for all the greatness of mankind. ¹⁰ Sail on, O ships of Tarshish, for your harbor is gone. ¹¹ The Lord holds out his hand over the seas; he shakes the kingdoms of the earth; he has spoken out against this great merchant city, to destroy its strength.

¹² He says, “Never again, O dishonored virgin, daughter of Sidon, will you rejoice, will you be strong. Even if you flee to Cyprus, you will find no rest.”

¹³ It will be the Babylonians, not the Assyrians, who consign Tyre to the wild beasts. They will lay siege to it, raze its palaces, and make it a heap of ruins. ¹⁴ Wail, you ships that ply the oceans, for your home port is destroyed!

^15-16 For seventy years Tyre will be forgotten. Then, in the days of another king, the city will come back to life again; she will sing sweet songs as a harlot sings who, long absent from her lovers, walks the streets to look for them again and is remembered. ¹⁷ Yes, after seventy years, the Lord will revive Tyre, but she will be no different than she was before; she will return again to all her evil ways around the world. ¹⁸ Yet the distant time will come when^[b] her businesses will give their profits to the Lord! They will not be hoarded but used for good food and fine clothes for the priests of the Lord!

24 Look! The Lord is overturning the land of Judah and making it a vast wasteland of destruction. See how he is emptying out all its people and scattering them over the face of the earth. ² Priests and people, servants and masters, slave girls and mistresses, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, bankers and debtors—none will be spared. ³ The land will be completely emptied and looted. The Lord has spoken. ^4-5 The land suffers for the sins of its people. The earth languishes, the crops wither, the skies refuse their rain. The land is defiled by crime; the people have twisted the laws of God and broken his everlasting commands. ⁶ Therefore the curse of God is upon them; they are left desolate, destroyed by the drought. Few will be left alive.

⁷ All the joys of life will go: the grape harvest will fail, the wine will be gone, the merrymakers will sigh and mourn. ⁸ The melodious chords of the harp and timbrel are heard no more; the happy days are ended. ⁹ No more are the joys of wine and song; strong drink turns bitter in the mouth.

¹⁰ The city lies in chaos; every home and shop is locked up tight to keep out looters. ¹¹ Mobs form in the streets, crying for wine; joy has reached its lowest ebb; gladness has been banished from the land. ¹² The city is left in ruins; its gates are battered down. ¹³ Throughout the land^[c] the story is the same—only a remnant is left.

¹⁴ But all who are left will shout and sing for joy; those in the west will praise the majesty of God, ^15-16 and those in the east will respond with praise. Hear them singing to the Lord from the ends of the earth, singing glory to the Righteous One!

But my heart is heavy with grief, for evil still prevails and treachery is everywhere. ¹⁷ Terror and the captivity of hell are still your lot, O men of the world. ¹⁸ When you flee in terror, you will fall into a pit, and if you escape from the pit, you will step into a trap, for destruction falls from the heavens upon you; the world is shaken beneath you. ¹⁹ The earth has broken down in utter collapse; everything is lost, abandoned, and confused. ²⁰ The world staggers like a drunkard; it shakes like a tent in a storm. It falls and will not rise again, for the sins of the earth are very great.

²¹ On that day the Lord will punish the fallen angels in the heavens and the proud rulers of the nations on earth. ²² They will be rounded up like prisoners and imprisoned in a dungeon until they are tried and condemned. ²³ Then the Lord of heaven’s armies will mount his throne in Zion and rule gloriously in Jerusalem, in the sight of all the elders of his people. Such glory there will be that all the brightness of the sun and moon will seem to fade away.

25 O Lord, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God; you do such wonderful things! You planned them long ago, and now you have accomplished them, just as you said! ² You turn mighty cities into heaps of ruins. The strongest forts are turned to rubble. Beautiful palaces in distant lands disappear and will never be rebuilt. ³ Therefore strong nations will shake with fear before you; ruthless nations will obey and glorify your name.

⁴ But to the poor, O Lord, you are a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, a shelter from merciless men who are like a driving rain that melts down an earthen wall. ⁵ As a hot, dry land is cooled by clouds, you will cool the pride of ruthless nations. ⁶ Here on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the Lord Almighty will spread a wondrous feast for everyone around the world—a delicious feast of good food, with clear, well-aged wine and choice beef. ⁷ At that time he will remove the cloud of gloom, the pall of death that hangs over the earth; ⁸ he will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away all tears and take away forever all insults and mockery against his land and people. The Lord has spoken—he will surely do it!

⁹ In that day the people will proclaim, “This is our God in whom we trust, for whom we waited. Now at last he is here.” What a day of rejoicing! ¹⁰ For the Lord’s good hand will rest upon Jerusalem, and Moab will be crushed as straw beneath his feet and left to rot. ¹¹ God will push them down just as a swimmer pushes down the water with his hands. He will end their pride and all their evil works. ¹² The high walls of Moab will be demolished and brought to dust.

1 From: Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ.

To: The pastors and deacons and all the Christians in the city of Philippi.

² May God bless you all. Yes, I pray that God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will give each of you his fullest blessings and his peace in your hearts and your lives.

³ All my prayers for you are full of praise to God! ⁴ When I pray for you, my heart is full of joy ⁵ because of all your wonderful help in making known the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. ⁶ And I am sure that God who began the good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in his grace until his task within you is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ returns.

⁷ How natural it is that I should feel as I do about you, for you have a very special place in my heart. We have shared together the blessings of God, both when I was in prison and when I was out, defending the truth and telling others about Christ. ⁸ Only God knows how deep is my love and longing for you—with the tenderness of Jesus Christ. ⁹ My prayer for you is that you will overflow more and more with love for others, and at the same time keep on growing in spiritual knowledge and insight, ¹⁰ for I want you always to see clearly the difference between right and wrong, and to be inwardly clean, no one being able to criticize you from now until our Lord returns. ¹¹ May you always be doing those good, kind things that show you are a child of God, for this will bring much praise and glory to the Lord.

¹² And I want you to know this, dear brothers: Everything that has happened to me here has been a great boost in getting out the Good News concerning Christ. ¹³ For everyone around here, including all the soldiers over at the barracks, knows that I am in chains simply because I am a Christian. ¹⁴ And because of my imprisonment, many of the Christians here seem to have lost their fear of chains! Somehow my patience has encouraged them, and they have become more and more bold in telling others about Christ.

¹⁵ Some, of course, are preaching the Good News because they are jealous of the way God has used me. They want reputations as fearless preachers! But others have purer motives, ^16-17 preaching because they love me, for they know that the Lord has brought me here to use me to defend the Truth. And some preach to make me jealous, thinking that their success will add to my sorrows here in jail! ¹⁸ But whatever their motive for doing it, the fact remains that the Good News about Christ is being preached, and I am glad.

¹⁹ I am going to keep on being glad, for I know that as you pray for me, and as the Holy Spirit helps me, this is all going to turn out for my good. ²⁰ For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that will cause me to be ashamed of myself but that I will always be ready to speak out boldly for Christ while I am going through all these trials here, just as I have in the past; and that I will always be an honor to Christ, whether I live or whether I must die. ²¹ For to me, living means opportunities for Christ, and dying—well, that’s better yet! ²² But if living will give me more opportunities to win people to Christ, then I really don’t know which is better, to live or die! ²³ Sometimes I want to live, and at other times I don’t, for I long to go and be with Christ. How much happier for me than being here! ²⁴ But the fact is that I can be of more help to you by staying!

²⁵ Yes, I am still needed down here, and so I feel certain I will be staying on earth a little longer, to help you grow and become happy in your faith; ²⁶ my staying will make you glad and give you reason to glorify Christ Jesus for keeping me safe when I return to visit you again.

²⁷ But whatever happens to me, remember always to live as Christians should, so that whether I ever see you again or not, I will keep on hearing good reports that you are standing side by side with one strong purpose—to tell the Good News ²⁸ fearlessly, no matter what your enemies may do. They will see this as a sign of their downfall, but for you it will be a clear sign from God that he is with you, and that he has given you eternal life with him. ²⁹ For to you has been given the privilege not only of trusting him but also of suffering for him. ³⁰ We are in this fight together. You have seen me suffer for him in the past; and I am still in the midst of a great and terrible struggle now, as you know so well.