The One Year Bible TLB (215 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
I walked by the field of a certain lazy fellow and saw that it was overgrown with thorns; it was covered with weeds, and its walls were broken down.
32-33
Then, as I looked, I learned this lesson:
“A little extra sleep,
A little more slumber,
A little folding of the hands to rest”
34
means that poverty will break in upon you suddenly like a robber and violently like a bandit.
October 10The Lord told me again: Don’t ask me anymore to bless this people. Don’t pray for them anymore.
12
When they fast, I will not pay any attention; when they present their offerings and sacrifices to me, I will not accept them. What I will give them in return is war and famine and disease.
13
Then I said, O Lord God, their prophets are telling them that all is well—that no war or famine will come. They tell the people you will surely send them peace, that you will bless them.
14
Then the Lord said: The prophets are telling lies in my name. I didn’t send them or tell them to speak or give them any message. They prophesy of visions and revelations they have never seen nor heard; they speak foolishness concocted out of their own lying hearts.
15
Therefore, the Lord says, I will punish these lying prophets who have spoken in my name though I did not send them, who say no war shall come nor famine. By war and famine they themselves shall die!
16
And the people to whom they prophesy—their bodies shall be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and war; there shall be no one to bury them. Husbands, wives, sons, and daughters—all will be gone. For I will pour out terrible punishment upon them for their sins.
17
Therefore, tell them this: Night and day my eyes shall overflow with tears; I cannot stop my crying, for my people have been run through with a sword and lie mortally wounded on the ground.
18
If I go out in the fields, there lie the bodies of those the sword has killed; and if I walk in the streets, there lie those dead from starvation and disease. And yet the prophets and priests alike have made it their business to travel through the whole country, reassuring everyone that all is well, speaking of things they know nothing about.
19
“O Lord,” the people will cry, “have you completely rejected Judah? Do you abhor Jerusalem? Even after punishment, will there be no peace? We thought, Now at last he will heal us and bind our wounds. But no peace has come, and there is only trouble and terror everywhere.
20
O Lord, we confess our wickedness, and that of our fathers too.
21
Do not hate us, Lord, for the sake of your own name. Do not disgrace yourself and the throne of your glory by forsaking your promise to bless us!
22
What heathen god can give us rain? Who but you alone, O Lord our God, can do such things as this? Therefore we will wait for you to help us.”
15:
1
Then the Lord said to me, Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, even then I wouldn’t help them—away with them! Get them out of my sight!
2
And if they say to you, But where can we go? Tell them the Lord says: Those who are destined for death, to death; those who must die by the sword, to the sword; those doomed to starvation, to famine; and those for captivity, to captivity.
3
I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the vultures and wild animals to finish up what’s left.
4
Because of the wicked things Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem, I will punish you so severely that your fate will horrify the peoples of the world.
5
Who will feel sorry for you, Jerusalem? Who will weep for you? Who will even bother to ask how you are?
6
You have forsaken me and turned your backs upon me. Therefore, I will clench my fists against you to destroy you. I am tired of always giving you another chance.
7
I will sift you at the gates of your cities and take from you all that you hold dear, and I will destroy my own people because they refuse to turn back to me from all their evil ways.
8
There shall be countless widows; at noontime I will bring death to the young men and sorrow to their mothers. I will cause anguish and terror to fall upon them suddenly.
9
The mother of seven sickens and faints, for all her sons are dead. Her sun is gone down while it is yet day. She sits childless now, disgraced, for all her children have been killed.
10
Then Jeremiah said, “What sadness is mine, my mother; oh, that I had died at birth. For I am hated everywhere I go. I am neither a creditor soon to foreclose nor a debtor refusing to pay—yet they all curse me.
11
Well, let them curse! Lord, you know how I have pled with you on their behalf—how I have begged you to spare these enemies of mine.”
12-13
Can a man break bars of northern iron or bronze? This people’s stubborn will can’t be broken either. So, because of all your sins against me, I will deliver your wealth and treasures as loot to the enemy.
14
I will have your enemies take you as slaves to a land where you have never been before, for my anger burns like fire, and it shall consume you.
15
Then Jeremiah replied, “Lord, you know it is for your sake that I am suffering. They are persecuting me because I have proclaimed your word to them. Don’t let them kill me! Rescue me from their clutches, and give them what they deserve!
16
Your words are what sustain me; they are food to my hungry soul. They bring joy to my sorrowing heart and delight me. How proud I am to bear your name, O Lord.
17-18
I have not joined the people in their merry feasts. I sit alone beneath the hand of God. I burst with indignation at their sins. Yet you have failed me in my time of need! You have let them keep right on with all their persecutions. Will they never stop hurting me? Your help is as uncertain as a seasonal mountain brook—sometimes a flood, sometimes as dry as a bone.”
19
The Lord replied: “Stop this foolishness and talk some sense! Only if you return to trusting me will I let you continue as my spokesman. You are to influence
them,
not let them influence
you!
20
They will fight against you like a besieging army against a high city wall. But they will not conquer you, for I am with you to protect and deliver you, says the Lord.
21
Yes, I will certainly deliver you from these wicked men and rescue you from their ruthless hands.”
16:
1
On yet another occasion God spoke to me, and said:
2
You must not marry and have children here.
3
For the children born in this city and their mothers and fathers
4
shall die from terrible diseases. No one shall mourn for them or bury them, but their bodies shall lie on the ground to rot and fertilize the soil. They shall die from war and famine, and their bodies shall be picked apart by vultures and wild animals.
5
Do not mourn or weep for them, for I have removed my protection and my peace from them—taken away my loving-kindness and my mercies.
6
Both great and small shall die in this land, unburied and unmourned, and their friends shall not cut themselves nor shave their heads as signs of sorrow (as is their heathen custom).
7
No one shall comfort the mourners with a meal nor send them a cup of wine expressing grief for their parents’ death.
8
As a sign to them of these sad days ahead,
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don’t you join them anymore in their feasts and parties—don’t even eat a meal with them.
9
For the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: In your own lifetime, before your very eyes, I will end all laughter in this land—the happy songs, the marriage feasts, the songs of bridegrooms and of brides.
10
And when you tell the people all these things and they ask, “Why has the Lord decreed such terrible things against us? What have we done to merit such treatment? What is our sin against the Lord our God?”
11
tell them the Lord’s reply is this: Because your fathers forsook me. They worshiped other gods and served them; they did not keep my laws,
12
and you have been worse than your fathers were!
You follow evil to your hearts’ content and refuse to listen to me.
13
Therefore, I will throw you out of this land and chase you into a foreign land where neither you nor your fathers have been before, and there you can go ahead and worship your idols all you like—and I will grant you no favors!
14-15
But there will come a glorious day, says the Lord, when the whole topic of conversation will be that God is bringing his people home from a nation in the north, and from many other lands where he had scattered them. You will look back no longer to the time when I rescued you from your slavery in Egypt. That mighty miracle will scarcely be mentioned anymore. Yes, I will bring you back again, says the Lord, to this same land I gave your fathers.
Don’t you remember, dear brothers, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled and sweated to earn enough to live on so that our expenses would not be a burden to anyone there, as we preached God’s Good News among you.
10
You yourselves are our witnesses—as is God—that we have been pure and honest and faultless toward every one of you.
11
We talked to you as a father to his own children—don’t you remember?—pleading with you, encouraging you and even demanding
12
that your daily lives should not embarrass God but bring joy to him who invited you into his Kingdom to share his glory.
13
And we will never stop thanking God for this: that when we preached to you, you didn’t think of the words we spoke as being just our own, but you accepted what we said as the very Word of God—which, of course, it was—and it changed your lives when you believed it.
14
And then, dear brothers, you suffered what the churches in Judea did, persecution from your own countrymen, just as they suffered from their own people, the Jews.
15
After they had killed their own prophets, they even executed the Lord Jesus; and now they have brutally persecuted us and driven us out. They are against both God and man,
16
trying to keep us from preaching to the Gentiles for fear some might be saved; and so their sins continue to grow. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.
17
Dear brothers, after we left you and had been away from you but a very little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried hard to come back to see you once more.
18
We wanted very much to come, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan stopped us.
19
For what is it we live for, that gives us hope and joy and is our proud reward and crown? It is you! Yes, you will bring us much joy as we stand together before our Lord Jesus Christ when he comes back again.
20
For you are our trophy and joy.
3:
1
Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I decided to stay alone in Athens
2-3
and send Timothy, our brother and fellow worker, God’s minister, to visit you to strengthen your faith and encourage you and to keep you from becoming fainthearted in all the troubles you were going through. (But of course you know that such troubles are a part of God’s plan for us Christians.
4
Even while we were still with you we warned you ahead of time that suffering would soon come—and it did.)
5
As I was saying, when I could bear the suspense no longer, I sent Timothy to find out whether your faith was still strong. I was afraid that perhaps Satan had gotten the best of you and that all our work had been useless.
6
And now Timothy has just returned and brings the welcome news that your faith and love are as strong as ever and that you remember our visit with joy and want to see us just as much as we want to see you.
7
So we are greatly comforted, dear brothers, in all of our own crushing troubles and suffering here, now that we know you are standing true to the Lord.
8
We can bear anything as long as we know that you remain strong in him.
9
How can we thank God enough for you and for the joy and delight you have given us in our praying for you?
10
For night and day we pray on and on for you, asking God to let us see you again, to fill up any little cracks there may yet be in your faith.
11
May God our Father himself and our Lord Jesus send us back to you again.
12
And may the Lord make your love to grow and overflow to each other and to everyone else, just as our love does toward you.
13
This will result in your hearts being made strong, sinless, and holy by God our Father so that you may stand before him guiltless on that day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns with all those who belong to him.
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