Old/New Testament
Moses Talks to the Israelites
1 This is the message Moses gave the people of Israel. They were in the desert east of the Jordan River. They were in the Jordan Valley near Suph, between Paran and the towns of Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab.
2 (The trip from Mount Sinai to Kadesh Barnea on the Mount Edom road takes 11 days.) 3 But it was now 40 years after the Israelites had left Egypt. On the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people. He told them everything the Lord had commanded him to tell them. 4 This was after the Lord had defeated Sihon and Og. Sihon was king of the Amorite people and lived in Heshbon. Og was king of Bashan and lived in Ashteroth and Edrei.
5 Now the Israelites were east of the Jordan River in the land of Moab. There Moses began to explain what God had commanded. Moses said:
6 The Lord our God spoke to us at Mount Sinai. He said, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Get ready. Go to the mountain country of the Amorites. Go to all the places around there—the Jordan Valley, the mountains, the western slopes, the southern area, the seacoast, the land of Canaan and Lebanon. Go as far as the great river, the Euphrates. 8 See, I have given you this land. Go in and take it for yourselves. The Lord promised it to your ancestors—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants.”
Moses Appoints Leaders
9 At that time I said, “I am not able to take care of you by myself. 10 The Lord your God has made you grow in number. There are as many of you as there are stars in the sky. 11 I pray that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, will give you a thousand times more people. That’s what he promised. 12 But I cannot take care of your problems, your troubles and your arguments by myself. 13 So choose some men from each tribe. Choose wise men who have understanding and experience. I will make them leaders over you.”
14 And you said, “That’s a good thing to do.”
15 So I took the wise and experienced leaders of your tribes. And I made them your leaders. I appointed commanders over 1,000 people, over 100 people, over 50 people and over 10 people. I made them officers over your tribes. 16 Then I told your judges, “Listen to the arguments between your people. Judge fairly between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner. 17 When you judge, be fair to everyone. Don’t act as if one person is more important than another. Don’t be afraid of anyone, because your decision comes from God. Bring the hard cases to me. I will judge them.” 18 At that time I told you everything you must do.
Spies Enter the Land
19 Then, as the Lord our God commanded us, we left Mount Sinai. We went toward the mountain country of the Amorite people. We went through that large and terrible desert you saw. Then we came to Kadesh Barnea. 20 Then I said to you, “You have now come to the mountain country of the Amorites. The Lord our God will give us this land. 21 Look, there it is! Go up. Take it. The Lord, the God of your ancestors, told you to do this. So don’t be afraid. Don’t worry.”
22 Then all of you came to me. You said, “Let’s send men before us to spy out the land. They can come back and tell us the way we should go. They can tell us about the cities we will find.”
23 I thought that was a good idea. So I chose 12 of your men, 1 for each tribe. 24 They left and went up to the mountains. They came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it. 25 They took some of the fruit from that land. And they brought it down to us. They said, “It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.”
Israel Refuses to Enter
26 But you refused to go. You would not obey the command of the Lord your God. 27 You grumbled in your tents. You said, “The Lord hates us. He brought us out of Egypt just to give us to the Amorites. They will destroy us. 28 Where can we go now? The spies we sent have made us afraid. They said, ‘The people there are bigger and taller than we are. The cities are big. They have walls up to the sky. And we saw the Anakites there!’”
29 Then I said to you, “Don’t be frightened. Don’t be afraid of those people. 30 The Lord your God will go ahead of you. He will fight for you as he did in Egypt. You saw him do it. 31 And in the desert you saw how the Lord your God carried you. He was like a man carrying his son. And he has brought you safely all the way to this place.”
32 But you still did not trust the Lord your God. 33 As you moved, he went before you. He found places for you to camp. He went before you in a fire at night and in a cloud during the day. He showed you which way to go.
34 When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry. He made a promise. He said, 35 “I promised a good land to your ancestors. But none of you evil people will see it. 36 Only Caleb son of Jephunneh will see it. I will give him and his descendants the land he walked on. I will do this because he followed me completely.”
37 Because of you, the Lord was also angry with me. He said to me, “You won’t enter the land either. 38 But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will go there. Encourage Joshua, because he will lead Israel to take the land for their own.”
39 The Lord said to us, “You said your babies would be captured. But they will go into the land. They are too young to know right from wrong. So I will give the land to them. And they will take it for their own. 40 But you must turn around. Follow the desert road toward the Gulf of Aqaba.”
41 Then you said to me, “We have sinned against the Lord. But now we will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.” Then all of you put on weapons. You thought it would be easy to go into the mountains.
42 But the Lord said to me, “Tell them not to go up there and fight. I will not be with them. Their enemies will defeat them.”
43 So I told you, but you would not listen. You would not obey the Lord’s command. You were proud. So you went on up into the mountains. 44 The Amorites who lived there came out and fought you. They chased you like bees. They defeated you from Edom to Hormah. 45 So you came back and cried to the Lord. But the Lord did not hear you. He refused to listen to you. 46 So you stayed in Kadesh a long time.
Israel Wanders in the Desert
2 Then we turned around. And we traveled on the desert road toward the Gulf of Aqaba. That is what the Lord had told me to do. We traveled through the mountains of Edom for many days.
2 Then the Lord said to me, 3 “You have traveled through these mountains long enough. Turn north. 4 Tell the people this: ‘You will soon go through the land of Edom. This land belongs to your relatives, the descendants of Esau. They will be afraid of you. But be very careful. 5 Don’t go to war against them. I am not giving you any of their land—not even a foot of it. I have given the mountains of Edom to Esau as his own. 6 You must pay them in silver for any food you eat or water you drink.’”
7 The Lord your God has blessed everything you have done. He has protected you while you traveled through this large desert. The Lord your God has been with you for these 40 years. You have had everything you needed.
8 So we passed by our relatives, the people of Esau who lived in Edom. We turned off the Jordan Valley road. It comes from the towns of Elath and Ezion Geber. And we traveled along the desert road of Moab.
The Land of Ar
9 Then the Lord said to me, “Don’t bother the people of Moab. Don’t go to war against them. I am not giving you any of their land. I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot.” 10 (The Emites lived in Ar before. They were strong people, and there were many of them. They were very tall, like the Anakites. 11 The Emites were thought to be Rephaites, like the Anakites. But the Moabite people called them Emites. 12 The Horites also lived in Edom before. But the people of Esau forced them out. They destroyed the Horites and took their place. That is also what Israel did in the land the Lord gave them as their own.)
13 And the Lord said to me, “Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.” So we crossed the valley. 14 It had been 38 years since we left Kadesh Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, all the fighting men from that time had died. This is what the Lord had promised would happen. 15 The Lord had continued to destroy them until they were all gone from the camp. 16 Now the last of those fighting men had died.
17 Then the Lord said to me, 18 “Today you must go by Ar, on the border of Moab. 19 When you come near the people of Ammon, don’t bother them. Don’t go to war against them. I am not giving you their land. I have given that land to the descendants of Lot.”
20 (That land was also thought to be a land of Rephaites. Those people used to live there. But the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. 21 They were strong people, and there were many of them. They were very tall, like the Anakites. The Lord went before the Ammonites and destroyed the Zamzummites. The Ammonites forced them out of the land and took their place. 22 The Lord did the same thing for the descendants of Esau. They lived in Edom. He destroyed the Horites. The Edomites forced them out of the land and took their place. And they live there to this day. 23 The Caphtorite people came from Crete. They destroyed the Avvites. The Avvites lived in towns all the way to Gaza. But the Caphtorites destroyed them and took their place.)
Fighting the Amorites
24 The Lord said, “Get up. Cross the Arnon Ravine. See, I am giving you the power to defeat Sihon the Amorite. He is king of Heshbon. I am giving you his land. So fight against him and begin taking his land. 25 Today I will begin to make all the people in the world afraid of you. They will hear reports about you. And they will shake with fear. They will be terrified of you.”
26 I sent messengers from the desert of Kedemoth to Sihon king of Heshbon. They offered him peace. They said, 27 “Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the road. We will not turn right or left. 28 We will pay you in silver for any food we eat or water we drink. We only want to walk through your country. 29 The descendants of Esau in Edom let us go through their land. So did the Moabites in Ar. We want to cross the Jordan River into the land the Lord our God has given us.” 30 But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass. The Lord your God had made him stubborn. The Lord wanted you to defeat Sihon. And now this has happened.
31 The Lord said to me, “See, I have begun to give Sihon and his country to you. Begin taking the land as your own.”
32 Then Sihon and all his army came out. And they fought us at Jahaz. 33 But the Lord our God gave Sihon to us. We defeated him, his sons and all his army. 34 We captured all his cities. We completely destroyed them, the men, women and children. We left no one alive. 35 But we kept the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves. 36 We defeated Aroer on the edge of the Arnon Ravine. And we defeated the town in the ravine, and even Gilead. No town was too strong for us. The Lord our God gave us all of them. 37 But you did not go near the land of the Ammonites. You did not go near the shores of the Jabbok River. You did not go near the towns in the mountains. This was what the Lord our God had commanded.
The Battle at Bashan
3 Then we turned and went up the road toward Bashan. Og king of Bashan and all his army came out to fight us at Edrei. 2 The Lord said to me, “Don’t be afraid of Og. I will hand him, his whole army and his land over to you. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who ruled in Heshbon.”
3 So the Lord our God gave us Og king of Bashan and all his army. We defeated them and left no one alive. 4 Then we captured all of Og’s cities. We captured all 60 of them. We took the whole area of Argob, Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 5 All these were strong cities. They had high walls and gates with bars. And there were also many small towns with no walls. 6 We completely destroyed them. We destroyed them just like the cities of Sihon king of Heshbon. We killed all the men, women and children. 7 But we kept all the cattle and valuable things from the cities for ourselves.
8 So at that time we took the land east of the Jordan River. We took it from these two Amorite kings. It went from the Arnon Ravine to Mount Hermon. 9 (Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonian people. The Amorites call it Senir.) 10 We captured all the cities on the high plain and all of Gilead. We took all of Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei. These were towns in Og’s kingdom of Bashan. 11 (Only Og king of Bashan was left of the few Rephaites. His bed was made of iron. It was more than 13 feet long and 6 feet wide! It is still in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.)
The Land Is Divided
12 At that time we took this land to be our own. I gave the people of Reuben and Gad the land from Aroer by the Arnon Ravine. And I gave them half of the mountain country of Gilead and the cities in it. 13 To the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh I gave the rest of Gilead. And I gave them all of Bashan, the kingdom of Og. (The area of Argob in Bashan was called the land of the Rephaites. 14 Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole area of Argob. It went to the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites. That land was named for Jair. So even today Bashan is called the Towns of Jair.) 15 I gave Gilead to Makir. 16 I gave the Reubenites and the Gadites the land that begins at Gilead. It goes from the Arnon Ravine to the Jabbok River. (The middle of the Arnon is the border.) The Jabbok River is the Ammonite border. 17 The border on the west was the Jordan River in the Jordan Valley. It goes from Lake Galilee to the Dead Sea west of Mount Pisgah.
18 At that time I gave you this command: “The Lord your God has given you this land as your own. Now your fighting men must take their weapons. And you must lead the other Israelites across the river. 19 Your wives, your young children and your cattle may stay here. I know you have many cattle. They may stay here in the cities I have given you. 20 Some day your Israelite relatives will also have a place to rest. They will receive the land the Lord your God has given them. It is on the other side of the Jordan River. After that, you may each return to the land I have given you.”
21 Then I gave this command to Joshua: “You have seen for yourself what the Lord your God has done to these two kings. The Lord will do the same thing to all the kingdoms where you are going. 22 Don’t be afraid of them. The Lord your God will fight for you.”
Moses Cannot Enter the Land
23 Then I begged the Lord: 24 “Lord God, you have begun to show me, your servant, how great you are. You have great strength. No other god in heaven or earth can do the powerful things you do. There is no other god like you. 25 Please let me cross the Jordan River. I want to see the beautiful mountains and Lebanon.”
26 But the Lord was angry with me because of you. He would not listen to me. The Lord said to me, “That’s enough. Don’t talk to me anymore about it. 27 Climb to the top of Mount Pisgah. Look west, north, south and east. You can look at the land. But you will not cross the Jordan River. 28 Appoint Joshua. Help him be brave and strong. He will lead the people across the river. He will give them the land that they are to inherit. You can only look at it.” 29 So we stayed in the valley opposite Beth Peor.
Jesus Talks About His Own Death
32 Jesus and the people with him were on the road to Jerusalem. Jesus was leading the way. The followers were amazed, but those who followed behind them were afraid. Jesus took the 12 apostles aside and talked with them alone. He told them what would happen in Jerusalem. 33 He said, “We are going to Jerusalem. The Son of Man will be given to the leading priests and teachers of the law. They will say that he must die. They will give him to the non-Jewish people, 34 who will laugh at him and spit on him. They will beat him with whips and kill him. But on the third day after his death, he will rise to life again.”
Two Followers Ask Jesus a Favor
35 Then James and John, sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus. They said, “Teacher, we want to ask you to do something for us.”
36 Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?”
37 They answered, “You will have glory in your kingdom. Let one of us sit at your right, and let one of us sit at your left.”
38 Jesus said, “You don’t understand what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I must drink? And can you be baptized with the same kind of baptism that I must have?”[a]
39 They answered, “Yes, we can!”
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the same cup that I will drink. And you will be baptized with the same baptism that I must have. 40 But I cannot choose who will sit at my right or my left. These places are for those for whom they are prepared.”
41 The ten followers heard this. They began to be angry with James and John.
42 Jesus called all the followers together. He said, “The non-Jewish people have men they call rulers. You know that those rulers love to show their power over the people. And their important leaders love to use all their authority. 43 But it should not be that way among you. If one of you wants to become great, then he must serve you like a servant. 44 If one of you wants to become the most important, then he must serve all of you like a slave. 45 In the same way, the Son of Man did not come to be served. He came to serve. The Son of Man came to give his life to save many people.”
Jesus Heals a Blind Man
46 Then they came to the town of Jericho. As Jesus was leaving there with his followers and a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus (son of Timaeus) was sitting by the road. 47 He heard that Jesus from Nazareth was walking by. The blind man cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, please help me!”
48 Many people scolded the blind man and told him to be quiet. But he shouted more and more, “Son of David, please help me!”
49 Jesus stopped and said, “Tell the man to come here.”
So they called the blind man. They said, “Cheer up! Get to your feet. Jesus is calling you.” 50 The blind man stood up quickly. He left his coat there and went to Jesus.
51 Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man answered, “Teacher, I want to see again.”
52 Jesus said, “Go. You are healed because you believed.” At once the man was able to see again, and he followed Jesus on the road.
The Holy Bible, International Children’s Bible® Copyright© 1986, 1988, 1999, 2015 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission.