Old/New Testament

We have a strongly fortified city,
    with walls and ramparts established to protect us.
² Open the gates
    to allow the upright nation to enter,
    the nation that keeps faith.
³ O Lord, you grant peace to those who are steadfast
    because of their trust in you.
⁴ Trust in the Lord forever,
    for the Lord is an eternal rock.
⁵ He has brought low those in high places
    and leveled their citadel,
casting it down to the ground
    and flinging it down to the dust,
⁶ to be trampled underfoot
    by the feet of the poor and the oppressed.
⁷ The path of the righteous is smooth,
    for you make level the way of the just.
⁸ As we proceed in the path of your judgments,
    we wait for you, O Lord;
your name and your renown
    are all that our heart desires.
⁹ My soul longs for you throughout the night,
    and my spirit within me seeks your presence.
For when your judgments are revealed to the earth,
    the inhabitants of the world learn to practice justice.
¹⁰ If favor is granted to the wicked,
    they will never learn justice.
In the presence of the upright they will act perversely
    and fail to behold the majesty of the Lord.
¹¹ O Lord, your hand is raised high
    but they fail to see it.
Let them be ashamed
    when they behold your zeal for your people;
    let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.
¹² O Lord, you will grant us peace;
    everything we have accomplished you have done for us.
¹³ O Lord, our God,
    other lords besides you have ruled us,
    but we acknowledge only your name.
¹⁴ The dead will not come back to life;
    their departed spirits will not rise again.
For you have punished and destroyed them
    and eradicated all memory of them.
¹⁵ O Lord, you have enlarged the nation,
    and in enlarging it you have been glorified;
    you have extended all the frontiers of the country.
¹⁶ O Lord, in our distress we cried out to you,
    pouring forth our prayers
    as we suffered your chastisement.
¹⁷ As a woman who is pregnant
    writhes and cries out in her agony
when her time of delivery is near,
    so were we because of you, O Lord.
¹⁸ We were with child and writhed with pain,
    but we gave birth only to wind.
We have achieved no salvation for the earth,
    and no one has been born to inhabit the world.
¹⁹ But your dead will live
    and their bodies will rise again.
Awake and sing for joy,
    you who sleep in the dust.
For your dew will be radiant,
    and the earth will give birth again
    to those who have long been dead.

²⁰ Go forth, my people, enter your chambers,
    and shut your doors behind you.
Withdraw for a short while
    until the wrath has subsided.
²¹ For the Lord emerges from his dwelling place
    to punish the inhabitants of the earth
    for their wickedness.
The earth will reveal the blood shed upon it
    and will no longer hide its slain.

¹ On that day,
    the Lord will use his sword
    that is cruel and great and strong
to punish Leviathan^[a] the fleeing serpent,
    Leviathan the writhing serpent,
and he will slay that dragon
    that resides in the sea.
^2 [b]On that day,
    sing of the pleasant vineyard.
³ I, the Lord, am its keeper,
    and I water it frequently
lest any harm come to it;
    I guard it night and day.
⁴ I do not quickly succumb to anger,
    but if I were to find briars and thorns,
I would march against them in battle
    and consume them in fire.
⁵ However, if they decide to ask for my protection,
    let them make their peace with me;
    otherwise I cannot protect them.
⁶ In days to come,
    Jacob will take root,
Israel will bud and blossom,
    and the entire world will be covered with fruit.
⁷ Has the Lord struck them down
    as he struck down those who struck him?
Has he slaughtered them
    as their attackers were slaughtered?
⁸ By expelling and exiling them
    he has taken action against them,
removing them with a breath
    as fierce as the east wind.
⁹ In this way will the guilt of Jacob be expiated
    and the full fruit of renouncing his sin will occur,
when he crushes all the altar stones to pieces
    like lumps of chalk,
    and no sacred poles and incense altars
    will remain standing.
¹⁰ For the fortified city will be abandoned,
    a deserted pasture, a forsaken wilderness;
the calves will graze and lie down there,
    destroying its branches.
¹¹ When its boughs grow dry and snap off,
    women will come and use them for firewood.
For this is a people that lacks understanding;
    therefore their Maker will not have compassion for them;
    he who formed them will not show mercy toward them.
¹² On that day,
    the Lord will thresh the grain
from the streams of the Euphrates
    to the Wadi of Egypt,
and you will be gathered one by one,
    O people of Egypt.
¹³ On that day,
    a great trumpet will be sounded,
and those who were lost in the land of Assyria
    and those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt
will come to worship the Lord
    on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

⁶ Though he was in the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped.
⁷ Rather, he emptied himself,^[c]
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
Being found in appearance as a man,
⁸ he humbled himself,
and became obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
⁹ Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above all other names,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should proclaim
to the glory of God the Father:
Jesus Christ is Lord.^[d]