1 1 Suppose a prophet or one who foretells by dreams should appear among you and show you a sign or wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder should come to pass concerning what he said to you, namely, “Let us follow other gods”—gods whom you have not previously known—“and let us serve them.” 3 You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him with all your mind and being. 4 You must follow the Lord your God and revere only him; and you must observe his commandments, obey him, serve him, and remain loyal to him. 5 As for that prophet or dreamer, he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge evil from among you.
6 Suppose your own full brother, your son, your daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend should seduce you secretly and encourage you to go and serve other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have previously known, 7 the gods of the surrounding people (whether near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other). 8 You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him. 9 Instead, you must kill him without fail! Your own hand must be the first to strike him, and then the hands of the whole community. 10 You must stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. 11 Thus all Israel will hear and be afraid; no longer will they continue to do evil like this among you.
12 Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that 13 some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods” (whom you have not known before). 14 You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you, 15 you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock. 16 You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever—it must never be rebuilt again. 17 You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors. 18 Thus you must obey the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am giving you today and doing what is right before him.
1 You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead. 2 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth.
3 You must not eat any forbidden thing. 4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the ibex, the gazelle, the deer, the wild goat, the antelope, the wild oryx, and the mountain sheep. 6 You may eat any animal that has hooves divided into two parts and that chews the cud. 7 However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you.) 8 Also, the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains.
9 These you may eat from among water creatures: anything with fins and scales you may eat, 10 but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you.
11 All ritually clean birds you may eat. 12 These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 13 the kite, the black kite, the dayyah after its species, 14 every raven after its species, 15 the ostrich, the owl, the seagull, the falcon after its species, 16 the little owl, the long-eared owl, the white owl, 17 the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, 18 the stork, the heron after its species, the hoopoe, and the bat.
19 And any swarming winged thing is impure to you—they may not be eaten. 20 You may eat any winged creature that is clean. 21 You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
22 You must be certain to tithe all the produce of your seed that comes from the field year after year. 23 In the presence of the Lord your God, in the place he chooses to locate his name, you must eat from the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. 24 When he blesses you, if the place where he chooses to locate his name is distant, 25 you may convert the tithe into money, secure the money, and travel to the place the Lord your God chooses for himself. 26 Then you may spend the money however you wish for cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever you desire. You and your household may eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and enjoy it. 27 As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you. 28 At the end of every three years you must bring all the tithe of your produce, in that very year, and you must store it up in your villages. 29 Then the Levites (because they have no allotment or inheritance with you), the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows of your villages may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work you do.
1 The Lord reigns!
The nations tremble.
He sits enthroned above the cherubim;
the earth shakes.
2 The Lord is elevated in Zion;
he is exalted over all the nations.
3 Let them praise your great and awesome name.
He is holy!
4 The king is strong;
he loves justice.
You ensure that legal decisions will be made fairly;
you promote justice and equity in Jacob.
5 Praise the Lord our God.
Worship before his footstool.
He is holy!
6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests;
Samuel was one of those who prayed to him.
They prayed to the Lord and he answered them.
7 He spoke to them from a pillar of cloud;
they obeyed his regulations and the ordinance he gave them.
8 O Lord our God, you answered them.
They found you to be a forgiving God,
but also one who punished their sinful deeds.
9 Praise the Lord our God!
Worship on his holy hill,
for the Lord our God is holy.
1 Shout out praises to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Worship the Lord with joy.
Enter his presence with joyful singing.
3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God.
He made us and we belong to him,
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise.
Give him thanks.
Praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good.
His loyal love endures,
and he is faithful through all generations.
1 I will sing about loyalty and justice.
To you, O Lord, I will sing praises.
2 I will walk in the way of integrity.
When will you come to me?
I will conduct my business with integrity in the midst of my palace.
3 I will not even consider doing what is dishonest.
I hate doing evil;
I will have no part of it.
4 I will have nothing to do with a perverse person;
I will not permit evil.
5 I will destroy anyone who slanders his neighbor in secret.
I will not tolerate anyone who has a haughty demeanor and an arrogant attitude.
6 I will favor the honest people of the land,
and allow them to live with me.
Those who walk in the way of integrity will attend me.
7 Deceitful people will not live in my palace.
Liars will not be welcome in my presence.
8 Each morning I will destroy all the wicked people in the land,
and remove all evildoers from the city of the Lord.
1 “Listen to me in silence, you coastlands!
Let the nations find renewed strength!
Let them approach and then speak;
let us come together for debate.
2 Who stirs up this one from the east?
Who officially commissions him for service?
He hands nations over to him,
and enables him to subdue kings.
He makes them like dust with his sword,
like windblown straw with his bow.
3 He pursues them and passes by unharmed;
he advances with great speed.
4 Who acts and carries out decrees?
Who summons the successive generations from the beginning?
I, the Lord, am present at the very beginning,
and at the very end—I am the one.
5 The coastlands see and are afraid;
the whole earth trembles;
they approach and come.
6 They help one another;
one says to the other, ‘Be strong!’
7 The craftsman encourages the metalsmith,
the one who wields the hammer encourages the one who pounds on the anvil.
He approves the quality of the welding,
and nails it down so it won’t fall over.
8 “You, my servant Israel,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
offspring of Abraham my friend,
9 you whom I am bringing back from the earth’s extremities,
and have summoned from the remote regions—
I told you, ‘You are my servant.’
I have chosen you and not rejected you.
10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you!
Don’t be frightened, for I am your God!
I strengthen you—
yes, I help you—
yes, I uphold you with my victorious right hand!
11 Look, all who were angry at you will be ashamed and humiliated;
your adversaries will be reduced to nothing and perish.
12 When you will look for your opponents, you will not find them;
your enemies will be reduced to absolutely nothing.
13 For I am the Lord your God,
the one who takes hold of your right hand,
who says to you, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am helping you.’
14 Don’t be afraid, despised insignificant Jacob,
men of Israel.
I am helping you,” says the Lord,
your Protector, the Holy One of Israel.
15 “Look, I am making you like a sharp threshing sledge,
new and double-edged.
You will thresh the mountains and crush them;
you will make the hills like straw.
16 You will winnow them and the wind will blow them away;
the wind will scatter them.
You will rejoice in the Lord;
you will boast in the Holy One of Israel.
17 The oppressed and the poor look for water, but there is none;
their tongues are parched from thirst.
I, the Lord, will respond to their prayers;
I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them.
18 I will make streams flow down the slopes
and produce springs in the middle of the valleys.
I will turn the wilderness into a pool of water
and the arid land into springs.
19 I will make cedars, acacias, myrtles, and olive trees grow in the wilderness;
I will make evergreens, firs, and cypresses grow together in the arid rift valley.
20 I will do this so people will observe and recognize,
so they will pay attention and understand
that the Lord’s power has accomplished this,
and that the Holy One of Israel has brought it into being.
21 “Present your argument,” says the Lord.
“Produce your evidence,” says Jacob’s king.
22 “Let them produce evidence! Let them tell us what will happen!
Tell us about your earlier predictive oracles,
so we may examine them and see how they were fulfilled.
Or decree for us some future events!
23 Predict how future events will turn out,
so we might know you are gods.
Yes, do something good or something bad,
so we might be frightened and in awe.
24 Look, you are nothing, and your accomplishments are nonexistent;
the one who chooses to worship you is disgusting.
25 I have stirred up one out of the north and he advances,
one from the eastern horizon who prays in my name.
He steps on rulers as if they were clay,
like a potter treading the clay.
26 Who decreed this from the beginning, so we could know?
Who announced it ahead of time, so we could say, ‘He’s correct’?
Indeed, none of them decreed it.
Indeed, none of them announced it.
Indeed, no one heard you say anything!
27 I first decreed to Zion, ‘Look, here’s what will happen!’
I sent a herald to Jerusalem.
28 I look, but there is no one,
among them there is no one who serves as an adviser,
that I might ask questions and receive answers.
29 Look, all of them are nothing,
their accomplishments are nonexistent;
their metal images lack any real substance.
1 Then a measuring rod like a staff was given to me, and I was told, “Get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and the ones who worship there. 2 But do not measure the outer courtyard of the temple; leave it out, because it has been given to the Gentiles, and they will trample on the holy city for forty-two months. 3 And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth.” 4 (These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.) 5 If anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and completely consumes their enemies. If anyone wants to harm them, they must be killed this way. 6 These two have the power to close up the sky so that it does not rain during the time they are prophesying. They have power to turn the waters to blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague whenever they want. 7 When they have completed their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them. 8 Their corpses will lie in the street of the great city that is symbolically called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was also crucified. 9 For three and a half days those from every people, tribe, nation, and language will look at their corpses, because they will not permit them to be placed in a tomb. 10 And those who live on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate, even sending gifts to each other, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. 11 But after three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and tremendous fear seized those who were watching them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them: “Come up here!” So the two prophets went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies stared at them. 13 Just then a major earthquake took place and a tenth of the city collapsed; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.
14 The second woe has come and gone; the third is coming quickly.
15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying:
“The kingdom of the world
has become the kingdom of our Lord
and of his Christ,
and he will reign for ever and ever.”
16 Then the twenty-four elders who are seated on their thrones before God threw themselves down with their faces to the ground and worshiped God 17 with these words:
“We give you thanks, Lord God, the All-Powerful,
the one who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
18 The nations were enraged,
but your wrath has come,
and the time has come for the dead to be judged,
and the time has come to give to your servants,
the prophets, their reward,
as well as to the saints
and to those who revere your name, both small and great,
and the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.”
19 Then the temple of God in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was visible within his temple. And there were flashes of lightning, roaring, crashes of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.