Old/New Testament
Judgment Against the Nations
34
Come near, you nations, and hear!
Listen, you peoples.
Let the earth and everything in it hear,
the world and everything that it produces.
2 The Lord is angry with all the nations,
and he is furious with all their armies.
He has condemned them to destruction.
He has handed them over for slaughter.
3 Their fallen bodies will lie unburied,
and the stench of their corpses will linger.
The mountains will flow with their blood.
4 The whole army of the heavens will fall apart.
The sky will be rolled up like a scroll,
and its whole army will waste away and fall,
like leaves withering on a vine,
like fruit that falls from a fig tree.
5 Yes, my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.
Now it will fall on Edom,
on the people I have sentenced to judgment.
6 The sword of the Lord is covered with blood.
It is coated with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
with the fat from the kidneys of rams,
for the Lord has made a sacrifice in Bozrah,
a massive slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 Wild oxen will fall along with them,
bull calves and powerful bulls.
Their land will be soaked with blood,
and their dust will be saturated with fat.
8 It will be a day of vengeance for the Lord,
a year of retribution for Zion’s sake.[a]
9 Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
its dust into sulfur,
and its land will become burning pitch,
10 which will not be extinguished night or day.
Its smoke will go up forever.
Generation after generation, it will lie in ruins.
No one will ever pass through it. Never again!
11 But the desert owl and the porcupine will live there.[b]
The screech owl and the raven will nest there.
God will stretch a measuring line for chaos over Edom,
and a plumb line for uninhabited ruins.[c]
12 There will be nothing left for its nobles to call a kingdom.
All its officials will be gone.
13 Thorns will cover its citadels.
Thistles and briers will overgrow its fortresses.
It will be a den of jackals,
a haunt for ostriches.
14 Desert animals and hyenas will gather,
and wild goats[d] will bleat to each other.
Creatures of the night[e] will settle there
and find a resting place.
15 An owl[f] will nest there.
She will lay eggs, hatch them,
and gather her young under her shade.
Falcons will gather there too,
each with its mate.
16 Search through the book of the Lord, and read.
Not one of them will be missing.
Not one will lack her mate.
For his mouth has commanded this,
and his Spirit has gathered them together.
17 He has allotted this land for these creatures.
His hand has divided it up for them with a surveying line.
They will possess it forever.
They will live there generation after generation.
The Joyful Return
35
The wilderness and the desert will be glad.
The wasteland of the Arabah will rejoice and blossom like a crocus.
2 It will bloom lavishly,
and there will be great joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it.
It will be excellent like Carmel and Sharon.
They will see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands,
and make the shaky knees steady.
4 Tell those who have a fearful heart:
Be strong.
Do not be afraid.
Look! Your God will come with vengeance.
With God’s own retribution, he will come and save you.
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened,
and the ears of the deaf will be unplugged.
6 The crippled will leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy.
Waters will flow in the wilderness,
and streams in the wasteland.
7 The burning sand will become a pool,
and in the thirsty ground there will be springs of water.
There will be grass, reeds, and rushes where the haunts
of jackals once lay.
8 A highway will be there,
a road that will be called the holy way.
The impure will not walk there.
It will be reserved for those who walk in that holy way.
Wicked fools will not wander onto it.
9 No lion will be there,
nor will any ferocious animal go up on it.
They will not be found there,
but only the redeemed will walk there.
10 Then those ransomed by the Lord will return.
They will enter Zion with a joyful shout,
and everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Happiness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Assyria Threatens Jerusalem
36 Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all of the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 2 The king of Assyria sent his herald[g] from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah. A large army was with him. He stood by the water channel from the upper pool on the road to the launderer’s[h] field. 3 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna, who was the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, who was the recorder, came out to meet him.
4 The herald told them this.
Tell Hezekiah this is what the Great King, the king of Assyria, says.
What makes you so confident? 5 Your wisdom and military strength are based on empty promises. Who do you trust, so that you now have rebelled against me? 6 Tell me! Are you really trusting in Egypt to be your staff, that splintered reed that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it? That is what happens to anyone who relies on Pharaoh king of Egypt.
7 If you say to me that you trust in the Lord your God, isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed? Didn’t Hezekiah tell Judah and Jerusalem to worship at this altar?
8 Now then, make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses, if you can find enough riders for them. 9 How can you resist even one officer from among the least of my lord’s servants? How can you put your trust in Egypt for chariots and charioteers?
10 What’s more, have I attacked this land to destroy it without the Lord’s orders? The Lord is the one who said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the herald, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it. Do not speak to us in Hebrew, because there are people on the city wall who are listening.”
12 But the herald replied, “Has my lord sent me only to you and to your lord to speak these words, and not to the men who are sitting on the wall, who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine with you?”[i]
13 Then the herald stood up and called out in a loud voice in Hebrew. He said:
Listen to the words of the Great King, the king of Assyria! 14 This is what the king says.
Do not let Hezekiah deceive you! He will not be able to deliver you. 15 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord, when he says that the Lord will save you, and that this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says. Make a peace treaty with me and surrender to me. Each one of you will eat from his own vine, from his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink water from his own cistern, 17 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land with grain and sweet wine, a land with bread and vineyards. 18 Do not let Hezekiah make you think that the Lord will deliver you!
Have any of the gods of the nations kept them from being handed over to the king of Assyria? 19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? 20 Which of the gods of these countries have delivered their country from my hand? Will the Lord really deliver Jerusalem from my hand?
21 But the officials remained silent, saying nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.”
22 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna, who was the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, who was the recorder, went to Hezekiah with their clothing torn and told him everything the herald had said.
2 Indeed, I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those in Laodicea, and for all those who have not seen me personally. 2 I am doing this so that their hearts may be encouraged as they are brought together in love, and into all the wealth of assurance that understanding brings, into the knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ.[a] 3 All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him.
4 I say this so that no one deceives you with persuasive speech that sounds reasonable. 5 For though I am absent bodily, I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your orderliness and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
The Fullness That Is Ours in Christ
6 Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7 by being rooted and built up in him, and strengthened in the faith just as you were taught, while you overflow in faith[b] with thanksgiving.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, which are in accord with human tradition, namely, the basic principles of the world, but not in accord with Christ. 9 For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ. 10 And you have been brought to fullness in him. Christ is the head over every ruler and authority. 11 You were also circumcised in him, with a circumcision not done by human hands, in the putting off of the body of flesh,[c] in the circumcision of Christ, 12 when you were buried with Christ in baptism. And in baptism you were also raised with him through the faith worked by the God who raised Christ from the dead.
13 Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. 14 God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 After disarming the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them by triumphing over them in Christ.
Paul Addresses the False Teaching
16 Therefore, do not let anyone judge you in regard to food or drink, or in regard to a festival or a New Moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were coming, but the body belongs to Christ. 18 Do not let anyone who enjoys false humility and the worship of angels tell you that you are disqualified from the prize. This person goes into detail about what he has seen.[d] He is puffed up for no reason by the attitude of his sinful flesh. 19 He does not hold on to the head, from whom the whole body grows with the growth that comes from God as it is supported and held together by its sinews and ligaments.
Human Traditions Do Not Restrain the Flesh
20 If you died with Christ to the basic principles of the world, why do you submit to its rules, as if you were still living in the world? 21 “Do not touch!” “Do not taste!” “Do not handle!” 22 All of these rules end in destruction when they are used, because they are in accord with human commands and teachings. 23 While such rules have the appearance of wisdom with self-chosen religion, which consists of humiliation and severe treatment of the body, they have no value at all in checking the self-indulgence of the sinful flesh.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.