The Wilderness Years

¹“Then we turned and journeyed into the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea, eas the Lord told me. And for many days we traveled around Mount Seir. ²Then the Lord said to me, ³‘You have been traveling around this mountain country flong enough. Turn northward ⁴and command the people, “You are about to pass through the territory of gyour brothers, the people of Esau, hwho live in Seir; and ithey will be afraid of you. So be very careful. ⁵Do not contend with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on, because hI have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. ⁶jYou shall purchase food from them with money, that you may eat, and you shall also buy water from them with money, that you may drink. ⁷For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. kHe knows your going through this great wilderness. lThese forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.”’ ⁸So mwe went on, away from our brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir, away from nthe Arabah road from oElath and pEzion-geber.

“And we turned and went in the direction of the wilderness of Moab. ⁹And the Lord said to me, q‘Do not harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given rAr to sthe people of Lot for a possession.’ ¹⁰(tThe Emim formerly lived there, ua people great and many, and tall vas the Anakim. ¹¹Like the Anakim they are also counted as wRephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim. ¹²xThe Horites also lived in Seir formerly, but the people of Esau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and settled in their place, yas Israel did to the land of their possession, which the Lord gave to them.) ¹³‘Now rise up and go over zthe brook Zered.’ So we went over zthe brook Zered. ¹⁴And the time from our leaving aKadesh-barnea until we crossed bthe brook Zered was thirty-eight years, cuntil the entire generation, that is, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them. ¹⁵For indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, to destroy them from the camp, until they had perished.

¹⁶“So as soon as all the men of war had perished and were dead from among the people, ¹⁷the Lord said to me, ¹⁸‘Today you are to cross the border of Moab at Ar. ¹⁹And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, ddo not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to ethe sons of Lot for a possession.’ ²⁰(It is also counted as a land of fRephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— ²¹ga people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the Lord destroyed them before the Ammonites,1 and they dispossessed them and settled in their place, ²²as he did for the people of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed hthe Horites before them and they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day. ²³As for ithe Avvim, who lived in villages as far as jGaza, kthe Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and settled in their place.) ²⁴‘Rise up, set out on your journey and lgo over the Valley of the Arnon. Behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of mHeshbon, and his land. Begin to take possession, and ncontend with him in battle. ²⁵This day I will begin to put othe dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.’

The Defeat of King Sihon

²⁶“So I sent messengers from the wilderness of pKedemoth to Sihon the king of mHeshbon, qwith words of peace, saying, ²⁷r‘Let me pass through your land. I will go only by the road; I will turn aside neither to the right nor to the left. ²⁸sYou shall sell me food for money, that I may eat, and give me water for money, that I may drink. Only let me pass through on foot, ²⁹tas the sons of Esau who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me, until I go over the Jordan into the land that the Lord our God is giving to us.’ ³⁰But uSihon the king of mHeshbon would not let us pass by him, for the Lord your God vhardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day. ³¹And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin to take possession, that you may occupy his land.’ ³²Then wSihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz. ³³And xthe Lord our God gave him over to us, and ywe defeated him and his sons and all his people. ³⁴And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction2 every zcity, men, women, and children. We left no survivors. ³⁵Only the livestock we took as spoil for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities that we captured. ³⁶aFrom Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and from bthe city that is in the valley, as far as Gilead, there was not a city too high for us. cThe Lord our God gave all into our hands. ³⁷Only to the land of the sons of Ammon you did not draw near, that is, to all the banks of the river dJabbok and the cities of the hill country, whatever the Lord our God had forbidden us.

Psalm 83

O God, Do Not Keep Silence

A Song. A Psalm of gAsaph.

¹O God, do not keep silence;

hdo not hold your peace or be still, O God!

²For behold, your enemies imake an uproar;

those who hate you have jraised their heads.

³They lay kcrafty plans against your people;

they consult together against your ltreasured ones.

⁴They say, “Come, mlet us wipe them out as a nation;

let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”

⁵For they conspire with one accord;

against you they make a covenant—

⁶the tents of nEdom and othe Ishmaelites,

pMoab and qthe Hagrites,

⁷rGebal and pAmmon and sAmalek,

tPhilistia with the inhabitants of uTyre;

⁸vAsshur also has joined them;

they are the strong arm of wthe children of Lot. Selah

⁹Do to them as you did to xMidian,

as to ySisera and Jabin at zthe river Kishon,

¹⁰who were destroyed at aEn-dor,

who became bdung for the ground.

¹¹Make their nobles like cOreb and Zeeb,

all their princes like dZebah and Zalmunna,

¹²who said, e“Let us take possession for ourselves

of the pastures of God.”

¹³O my God, make them like fwhirling dust,1

like gchaff before the wind.

¹⁴As hfire consumes the forest,

as the flame isets the mountains ablaze,

¹⁵so may you pursue them jwith your tempest

and terrify them with your hurricane!

¹⁶kFill their faces with shame,

that they may seek your name, O Lord.

¹⁷Let them be lput to shame and dismayed forever;

let them perish in disgrace,

¹⁸that they may mknow that you alone,

nwhose name is the Lord,

are othe Most High over all the earth.

Psalm 84

My Soul Longs for the Courts of the Lord

To the choirmaster: according to pThe Gittith.1 A Psalm of qthe Sons of Korah.

¹How rlovely is your sdwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!

²My soul tlongs, yes, ufaints

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and flesh sing for joy

to vthe living God.

³Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

wmy King and my God.

⁴xBlessed are those who dwell in your house,

ever ysinging your praise! Selah

⁵Blessed are those whose strength is in you,

zin whose heart are the highways to Zion.2

⁶As they go through the Valley of Baca

they make it a place of springs;

athe early rain also covers it with bpools.

⁷They go cfrom strength to strength;

each one dappears before God in Zion.

⁸O eLord God of hosts, hear my prayer;

give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah

⁹fBehold our gshield, O God;

look on the face of your anointed!

¹⁰For a day hin your courts is better

than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be ia doorkeeper in the house of my God

than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

¹¹For the Lord God is ja sun and gshield;

the Lord bestows favor and honor.

kNo good thing does he withhold

from those who lwalk uprightly.

¹²O Lord of hosts,

mblessed is the one who trusts in you!

Do Not Go Down to Egypt

¹“Ah, nstubborn children,” declares the Lord,

o“who carry out a plan, but not mine,

and who make pan alliance,1 but not of my Spirit,

that they may add sin to sin;

²qwho set out to go down to Egypt,

without asking for my direction,

to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh

and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!

³rTherefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame,

and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.

⁴For though his officials are at sZoan

and this envoys reach uHanes,

⁵everyone comes to shame

through va people that cannot profit them,

that brings neither help nor profit,

but shame and disgrace.”

⁶An woracle on xthe beasts of ythe Negeb.

Through a land of trouble and anguish,

from where come the lioness and the lion,

the adder and the zflying fiery serpent,

they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys,

and their treasures on the humps of camels,

to a people that cannot profit them.

⁷Egypt's ahelp is worthless and empty;

therefore I have called her

b“Rahab who sits still.”

A Rebellious People

⁸And now, go, cwrite it before them on a tablet

and inscribe it in a book,

that it may be for the time to come

as a witness forever.2

⁹dFor they are a rebellious people,

lying children,

children unwilling to hear

the instruction of the Lord;

¹⁰ewho say to fthe seers, “Do not see,”

and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right;

speak to us gsmooth things,

prophesy illusions,

¹¹leave the way, turn aside from the path,

let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”

¹²Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel,

“Because you despise this word

and trust in hoppression and perverseness

and rely on them,

¹³therefore this iniquity shall be to you

ilike a breach in a high wall, bulging out and about to collapse,

whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant;

¹⁴and its breaking is jlike that of a potter's vessel

that is smashed so ruthlessly

that among its fragments not a shard is found

with which to take fire from the hearth,

or to dip up water out of the cistern.”

¹⁵For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,

“In kreturning3 and lrest you shall be saved;

in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

But you were unwilling, ¹⁶and you said,

“No! We will flee upon mhorses”;

therefore you shall flee away;

and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”;

therefore your pursuers shall be swift.

¹⁷nA thousand shall flee at the threat of one;

at the threat of five you shall flee,

till you are left

like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain,

like a signal on a hill.

The Lord Will Be Gracious

¹⁸Therefore the Lord owaits to be gracious to you,

and therefore he pexalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the Lord is a God of justice;

qblessed are all those who wait for him.

¹⁹For a people shall dwell rin Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. ²⁰And though the Lord give you the sbread of adversity and the swater of affliction, tyet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ²¹uAnd your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is vthe way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. ²²Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. wYou will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”

²³xAnd he will give yrain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. zIn that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, ²⁴and athe oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. ²⁵And bon every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, cwhen the towers fall. ²⁶dMoreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when ethe Lord binds up fthe brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.

²⁷Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar,

burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke;4

his lips are full of fury,

and his tongue is like a devouring fire;

²⁸ghis breath is hlike an overflowing stream

that reaches up to the neck;

to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction,

and to place on the jaws of the peoples ia bridle that leads astray.

²⁹You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, jas when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to kthe mountain of the Lord, to lthe Rock of Israel. ³⁰And the Lord mwill cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger nand a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst oand storm and hailstones. ³¹The Assyrians will be terror-stricken at the voice of the Lord, pwhen he strikes with his rod. ³²And every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord lays on them qwill be to the sound of tambourines and lyres. rBattling with brandished arm, he will fight with them. ³³For sa burning place5 has long been prepared; indeed, for the king it is made ready, tits pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; uthe breath of the Lord, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.

Greeting

¹Jude, a servant1 of Jesus Christ and brother of James,

aTo those who are called, bbeloved in God the Father and ckept for2 Jesus Christ:

²May dmercy, epeace, and love be multiplied to you.

Judgment on False Teachers

³Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our fcommon salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you gto contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. ⁴For hcertain people ihave crept in unnoticed jwho long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert kthe grace of our God into sensuality and ldeny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

⁵Now I want mto remind you, although you once fully knew it, that nJesus, who saved3 a people out of the land of Egypt, oafterward destroyed those who did not believe. ⁶And pthe angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— ⁷just as qSodom and Gomorrah and rthe surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and spursued unnatural desire,4 serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

⁸Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and tblaspheme the glorious ones. ⁹But when uthe archangel vMichael, contending with the devil, was disputing wabout the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, x“The Lord rebuke you.” ¹⁰yBut these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. ¹¹Woe to them! For they walked in zthe way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain ato Balaam's error and bperished in Korah's rebellion. ¹²These are hidden reefs5 cat your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, dshepherds feeding themselves; ewaterless clouds, fswept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, guprooted; ¹³hwild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of itheir own shame; jwandering stars, kfor whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

¹⁴It was also about these that Enoch, lthe seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, m“Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, ¹⁵nto execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have ocommitted in such an ungodly way, and of all pthe harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” ¹⁶These are grumblers, malcontents, qfollowing their own sinful desires; rthey are loud-mouthed boasters, sshowing favoritism to gain advantage.

A Call to Persevere

¹⁷But you must tremember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁸They6 said to you, u“In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” ¹⁹It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, vdevoid of the Spirit. ²⁰But you, beloved, wbuilding yourselves up in your most holy faith and xpraying in the Holy Spirit, ²¹ykeep yourselves in the love of God, zwaiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. ²²And have mercy on those who doubt; ²³save others by asnatching them out of bthe fire; to others show mercy cwith fear, hating even dthe garment7 stained by the flesh.

Doxology

²⁴eNow to him who is able fto keep you from stumbling and gto present you hblameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, ²⁵to ithe only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, jbe glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time8 and now and forever. Amen.