1 Balaam said, “Build me seven altars here, and then prepare seven bulls and seven rams.”
2 Balak did it. Then Balaam and Balak sacrificed a bull and a ram on each of the altars.
3 Balaam instructed Balak: “Stand watch here beside your Whole-Burnt-Offering while I go off by myself. Maybe God will come and meet with me. Whatever he shows or tells me, I’ll report to you.” Then he went off by himself.
4 God did meet with Balaam. Balaam said, “I’ve set up seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.”
5 Then God gave Balaam a message: “Return to Balak and give him this message.”
6-10 He went back and found him stationed beside his Whole-Burnt-Offering and with him all the nobles of Moab. Then Balaam spoke his message-oracle:
Balak led me here from Aram,
the king of Moab all the way from the eastern mountains.
“Go, curse Jacob for me;
go, damn Israel.”
How can I curse whom God has not cursed?
How can I damn whom God has not damned?
From rock pinnacles I see them,
from hilltops I survey them:
Look! a people camping off by themselves,
thinking themselves outsiders among nations.
But who could ever count the dust of Jacob
or take a census of cloud-of-dust Israel?
I want to die like these right-living people!
I want an end just like theirs!
11 Balak said to Balaam, “What’s this? I brought you here to curse my enemies, and all you’ve done is bless them.”
12 Balaam answered, “Don’t I have to be careful to say what God gives me to say?”
* * *
13 Balak said to him, “Go with me to another place from which you can only see the outskirts of their camp—you won’t be able to see the whole camp. From there, curse them for my sake.”
14 So he took him to Watchmen’s Meadow at the top of Pisgah. He built seven altars there and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.
15 Balaam said to Balak, “Take up your station here beside your Whole-Burnt-Offering while I meet with him over there.”
16 God met with Balaam and gave him a message. He said, “Return to Balak and give him the message.”
17-24 Balaam returned and found him stationed beside his Whole-Burnt-Offering and the nobles of Moab with him. Balak said to him, “What did God say?” Then Balaam spoke his message-oracle:
On your feet, Balak. Listen,
listen carefully son of Zippor:
God is not man, one given to lies,
and not a son of man changing his mind.
Does he speak and not do what he says?
Does he promise and not come through?
I was brought here to bless;
and now he’s blessed—how can I change that?
He has no bone to pick with Jacob,
he sees nothing wrong with Israel.
God is with them,
and they’re with him, shouting praises to their King.
God brought them out of Egypt,
rampaging like a wild ox.
No magic spells can bind Jacob,
no incantations can hold back Israel.
People will look at Jacob and Israel and say,
“What a great thing has God done!”
Look, a people rising to its feet, stretching like a lion,
a king-of-the-beasts, aroused,
Unsleeping, unresting until its hunt is over
and it’s eaten and drunk its fill.
25 Balak said to Balaam, “Well, if you can’t curse them, at least don’t bless them.”
26 Balaam replied to Balak, “Didn’t I tell you earlier: ‘All God speaks, and only what he speaks, I speak’?”
* * *
27-28 Balak said to Balaam, “Please, let me take you to another place; maybe we can find the right place in God’s eyes where you’ll be able to curse them for me.” So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, with a vista over the Jeshimon (Wasteland).
29 Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for sacrifice.”
30 Balak did it and presented an offering of a bull and a ram on each of the altars.
1 Listen and help, O God.
I’m reduced to a whine
And a whimper, obsessed
with feelings of doomsday.
2-6 Don’t let them find me—
the conspirators out to get me,
Using their tongues as weapons,
flinging poison words,
poison-tipped arrow-words.
They shoot from ambush,
shoot without warning,
not caring who they hit.
They keep fit doing calisthenics
of evil purpose,
They keep lists of the traps
they’ve secretly set.
They say to each other,
“No one can catch us,
no one can detect our perfect crime.”
The Detective detects the mystery
in the dark of the cellar heart.
7-8 The God of the Arrow shoots!
They double up in pain,
Fall flat on their faces
in full view of the grinning crowd.
9-10 Everyone sees it. God’s
work is the talk of the town.
Be glad, good people! Fly to God!
Good-hearted people, make praise your habit.
1 1-2 Silence is praise to you,
Zion-dwelling God,
And also obedience.
You hear the prayer in it all.
2-8 We all arrive at your doorstep sooner
or later, loaded with guilt,
Our sins too much for us—
but you get rid of them once and for all.
Blessed are the chosen! Blessed the guest
at home in your place!
We expect our fill of good things
in your house, your heavenly manse.
All your salvation wonders
are on display in your trophy room.
Earth-Tamer, Ocean-Pourer,
Mountain-Maker, Hill-Dresser,
Muzzler of sea storm and wave crash,
of mobs in noisy riot—
Far and wide they’ll come to a stop,
they’ll stare in awe, in wonder.
Dawn and dusk take turns
calling, “Come and worship.”
9-13 Oh, visit the earth,
ask her to join the dance!
Deck her out in spring showers,
fill the God-River with living water.
Paint the wheat fields golden.
Creation was made for this!
Drench the plowed fields,
soak the dirt clods
With rainfall as harrow and rake
bring her to blossom and fruit.
Snow-crown the peaks with splendor,
scatter rose petals down your paths,
All through the wild meadows, rose petals.
Set the hills to dancing,
Dress the canyon walls with live sheep,
a drape of flax across the valleys.
Let them shout, and shout, and shout!
Oh, oh, let them sing!
1 The Message on Babylon. Isaiah son of Amoz saw it:
2-3 “Run up a flag on an open hill.
Yell loud. Get their attention.
Wave them into formation.
Direct them to the nerve center of power.
I’ve taken charge of my special forces,
called up my crack troops.
They’re bursting with pride and passion
to carry out my angry judgment.”
4-5 Thunder rolls off the mountains
like a mob huge and noisy—
Thunder of kingdoms in an uproar,
nations assembling for war.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling
his army into battle formation.
They come from far-off countries,
they pour in across the horizon.
It’s God on the move with the weapons of his wrath,
ready to destroy the whole country.
6-8 Wail! God’s Day of Judgment is near—
an avalanche crashing down from the Strong God!
Everyone paralyzed in the panic,
hysterical and unstrung,
Doubled up in pain
like a woman giving birth to a baby.
Horrified—everyone they see
is like a face out of a nightmare.
* * *
9-16 “Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes.
Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger,
A day to waste the earth
and clean out all the sinners.
The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations,
will be nothing but black holes.
The sun will come up as a black disk,
and the moon a blank nothing.
I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth,
terminate the dark acts of the wicked.
I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them—
and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces.
Proud humanity will disappear from the earth.
I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth.
And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake,
and the earth quake to its roots
Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
the Judgment Day of his raging anger.
Like a hunted white-tailed deer,
like lost sheep with no shepherd,
People will huddle with a few of their own kind,
run off to some makeshift shelter.
But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot,
throats cut, bellies ripped open,
Babies smashed on the rocks
while mothers and fathers watch,
Houses looted,
wives raped.
17-22 “And now watch this:
Against Babylon, I’m inciting the Medes,
A ruthless bunch indifferent to bribes,
the kind of brutality that no one can blunt.
They massacre the young,
wantonly kick and kill even babies.
And Babylon, most glorious of all kingdoms,
the pride and joy of Chaldeans,
Will end up smoking and stinking like Sodom,
and, yes, like Gomorrah, when God had finished with them.
No one will live there anymore,
generation after generation a ghost town.
Not even Bedouins will pitch tents there.
Shepherds will give it a wide berth.
But strange and wild animals will like it just fine,
filling the vacant houses with eerie night sounds.
Skunks will make it their home,
and unspeakable night hags will haunt it.
Hyenas will curdle your blood with their laughing,
and the howling of coyotes will give you the shivers.
“Babylon is doomed.
It won’t be long now.”
1 1-2 I, Peter, am an apostle on assignment by Jesus, the Messiah, writing to exiles scattered to the four winds. Not one is missing, not one forgotten. God the Father has his eye on each of you, and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours!
3-5 What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.
6-7 I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.
8-9 You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.
10-12 The prophets who told us this was coming asked a lot of questions about this gift of life God was preparing. The Messiah’s Spirit let them in on some of it—that the Messiah would experience suffering, followed by glory. They clamored to know who and when. All they were told was that they were serving you, you who by orders from heaven have now heard for yourselves—through the Holy Spirit—the Message of those prophecies fulfilled. Do you realize how fortunate you are? Angels would have given anything to be in on this!
13-16 So roll up your sleeves, get your head in the game, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”
17 You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living.
18-21 Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.
22-25 Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said,
The old life is a grass life,
its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers;
Grass dries up, flowers wilt,
God’s Word goes on and on forever.
This is the Word that conceived the new life in you.