Old/New Testament
5 Now I will sing a song about his vineyard to the one I love. My Beloved has a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He plowed it and took out all the rocks and planted his vineyard with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower and cut a winepress in the rocks. Then he waited for the harvest, but the grapes that grew were wild and sour and not at all the sweet ones he expected.
3 Now, men of Jerusalem and Judah, you have heard the case! You be the judges! 4 What more could I have done? Why did my vineyard give me wild grapes instead of sweet? 5 I will tear down the fences and let my vineyard go to pasture to be trampled by cattle and sheep. 6 I won’t prune it or hoe it, but let it be overgrown with briars and thorns. I will command the clouds not to rain on it anymore.
7 I have given you the story of God’s people. They are the vineyard that I spoke about. Israel and Judah are his pleasant acreage! He expected them to yield a crop of justice, but found bloodshed instead. He expected righteousness, but the cries of deep oppression met his ears.[a] 8 You buy up property so others have no place to live. Your homes are built on great estates so you can be alone in the midst of the earth! 9 But the Lord Almighty has sworn your awful fate—with my own ears I heard him say, “Many a beautiful home will lie deserted, their owners killed or gone. 10 An acre of vineyard will not produce a gallon of juice! Ten bushels of seed will yield a one-bushel crop!”
11 Woe to you who get up early in the morning to go on long drinking bouts that last till late at night—woe to you drunken bums. 12 You furnish lovely music at your grand parties; the orchestras are superb! But for the Lord you have no thought or care. 13 Therefore I will send you into exile far away because you neither know nor care that I have done so much for you. Your great and honored men will starve, and the common people will die of thirst.
14 Hell is licking its chops in anticipation of this delicious morsel, Jerusalem. Her great and small shall be swallowed up, and all her drunken throngs. 15 In that day the haughty shall be brought down to the dust; the proud shall be humbled; 16 but the Lord Almighty is exalted above all, for he alone is holy, just, and good. 17 In those days flocks will feed among the ruins. Lambs and calves and kids will pasture there!
18 Woe to those who drag their sins behind them like a bullock on a rope.[b] 19 They even mock the Holy One of Israel and dare the Lord to punish them.[c] “Hurry up and punish us, O Lord,” they say. “We want to see what you can do!” 20 They say that what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right; that black is white and white is black; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.
21 Woe to those who are wise and shrewd in their own eyes! 22 Woe to those who are “heroes” when it comes to drinking and boast about the liquor they can hold. 23 They take bribes to pervert justice, letting the wicked go free and putting innocent men in jail. 24 Therefore God will deal with them and burn them. They will disappear like straw on fire. Their roots will rot and their flowers wither, for they have thrown away the laws of God and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25 That is why the anger of the Lord is hot against his people; that is why he has reached out his hand to smash them. The hills will tremble, and the rotting bodies of his people will be thrown as refuse in the streets. But even so, his anger is not ended; his hand is heavy on them still.
26 He will send a signal to the nations far away, whistling to those at the ends of the earth, and they will come racing toward Jerusalem. 27 They never weary, never stumble, never stop; their belts are tight, their bootstraps strong; they run without stopping for rest or for sleep. 28 Their arrows are sharp; their bows are bent; sparks fly from their horses’ hoofs, and the wheels of their chariots spin like the wind. 29 They roar like lions and pounce upon the prey. They seize my people and carry them off into captivity with none to rescue them. 30 They growl over their victims like the roaring of the sea. Over all Israel lies a pall of darkness and sorrow, and the heavens are black.
6 The year King Uzziah died I saw the Lord! He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the Temple was filled with his glory. 2 Hovering about him were mighty, six-winged angels of fire. With two of their wings they covered their faces, with two others they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 In a great antiphonal chorus they sang, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is filled with his glory.” 4 Such singing it was! It shook the Temple to its foundations, and suddenly the entire sanctuary was filled with smoke.
5 Then I said, “My doom is sealed, for I am a foul-mouthed sinner, a member of a sinful, foul-mouthed race; and I have looked upon the King, the Lord of heaven’s armies.”
6 Then one of the mighty angels flew over to the altar and with a pair of tongs picked out a burning coal. 7 He touched my lips with it and said, “Now you are pronounced ‘not guilty’ because this coal has touched your lips. Your sins are all forgiven.”
8 Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom shall I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go?”
And I said, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”
9 And he said, “Yes, go. But tell my people this: ‘Though you hear my words repeatedly, you won’t understand them. Though you watch and watch as I perform my miracles, still you won’t know what they mean.’ 10 Dull their understanding, close their ears, and shut their eyes. I don’t want them to see or to hear or to understand, or to turn to me to heal them.”[d]
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long will it be before they are ready to listen?”
And he replied, “Not until their cities are destroyed—without a person left—and the whole country is an utter wasteland, 12 and they are all taken away as slaves to other countries far away, and all the land of Israel lies deserted! 13 Yet a tenth—a remnant—will survive; and though Israel is invaded again and again and destroyed, yet Israel will be like a tree cut down, whose stump still lives to grow again.”
1 Dear Christian friends at Ephesus, ever loyal to the Lord: This is Paul writing to you, chosen by God to be Jesus Christ’s messenger. 2 May his blessings and peace be yours, sent to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in heaven because we belong to Christ.
4 Long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own through what Christ would do for us; he decided then to make us holy in his eyes, without a single fault—we who stand before him covered with his love. 5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us. And he did this because he wanted to!
6 Now all praise to God for his wonderful kindness to us and his favor that he has poured out upon us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. 7 So overflowing is his kindness toward us that he took away all our sins through the blood of his Son, by whom we are saved; 8 and he has showered down upon us the richness of his grace—for how well he understands us and knows what is best for us at all times.
9 God has told us his secret reason for sending Christ, a plan he decided on in mercy long ago; 10 and this was his purpose: that when the time is ripe he will gather us all together from wherever we are—in heaven or on earth—to be with him in Christ forever. 11 Moreover, because of what Christ has done, we have become gifts to God that he delights in, for as part of God’s sovereign plan we were chosen from the beginning to be his, and all things happen just as he decided long ago. 12 God’s purpose in this was that we should praise God and give glory to him for doing these mighty things for us, who were the first to trust in Christ.
13 And because of what Christ did, all you others too, who heard the Good News about how to be saved, and trusted Christ, were marked as belonging to Christ by the Holy Spirit, who long ago had been promised to all of us Christians. 14 His presence within us is God’s guarantee that he really will give us all that he promised; and the Spirit’s seal upon us means that God has already purchased us and that he guarantees to bring us to himself. This is just one more reason for us to praise our glorious God.
15 That is why, ever since I heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and of the love you have for Christians everywhere, 16-17 I have never stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you wisdom to see clearly and really understand who Christ is and all that he has done for you. 18 I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can see something of the future he has called you to share. I want you to realize that God has been made rich because we who are Christ’s have been given to him! 19 I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great his power is to help those who believe him. It is that same mighty power 20 that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in heaven, 21 far, far above any other king or ruler or dictator or leader. Yes, his honor is far more glorious than that of anyone else either in this world or in the world to come. 22 And God has put all things under his feet and made him the supreme Head of the Church— 23 which is his body, filled with himself, the Author and Giver of everything everywhere.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.