Old/New Testament
Chapter 32
A Righteous King
1 Behold, a king will reign with righteousness
and princes will rule with justice.
2 Each of them will be like a shelter from the wind
and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in arid land,
like the shade of a great rock in a desolate area.
3 Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed,
and the ears of those who hear will listen attentively.
4 The minds of the rash will show good judgment,
and those who stutter will speak promptly and clearly.
5 No longer will a fool be called noble,
nor will a villain be considered to be honorable.
6 For the fool speaks foolishly
while his heart is planning evil.
He practices ungodliness
and spreads malicious untruths about the Lord.
He starves the hungry by withholding their food
and deprives the thirsty of anything to drink.
7 The methods of the scoundrel are wicked,
and he devises infamous schemes
to destroy the poor with his lies
even when the pleas of the needy are just.
8 But the man who is noble plans noble deeds,
and in that respect he stands firm.
The Restoration of Jerusalem
9 Listen carefully to what I have to say,
you women who are so complacent.
Pay attention to my words,
you who feel so secure.
10 In little more than a year from now
you complacent ones will be shaken.
For the vintage will fail
and there will be no harvest.
11 Tremble, you complacent women;
shudder, you who feel secure.
Strip yourselves bare,
with only a loincloth to cover you.
12 Beat your breasts in mourning
for the pleasant fields and the fruitful vines,
13 for the soil of my people
overgrown with thorns and briars,
and for all the joyful houses
in this city of revelry.
14 The citadel[a] will be abandoned
and the crowded streets will be deserted;
the hill and the watchtower will become wasteland forever,
in which wild asses may frolic and flocks may pasture,
15 until a spirit from on high
is poured out upon us,
and the wilderness becomes an orchard
and the fruitful field becomes a forest.
16 Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness will abide in the orchard.
17 The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and its result will be quiet and security forever.
18 My people will abide in a peaceful land,
in secure dwellings and peaceful resting places.
19 Even if the forest were to be totally destroyed
and the city were to be completely leveled,
20 how blessed you will be
to sow your seed beside every stream
and to have your cattle and your donkeys roam freely.
Chapter 33
Overthrow of Assyria
1 Woe to you, O destroyer,
who yourself have not been destroyed!
Woe to you, O traitor,
who yourself have not been betrayed!
When you have finished destroying,
you yourself will be destroyed;
when you have ceased betraying,
you yourself will be betrayed.
2 O Lord, be merciful to us,
for we have placed our hope in you.
Be our strength every morning,
our salvation in times of trouble.
3 At the sound of tumult, peoples flee;
nations scatter when they behold your majesty.
4 Your spoil is gathered as if by caterpillars;
like a swarm of locusts men descend upon it.
5 The Lord is exalted, for he dwells on high;
he has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
6 Her strength will derive from the Lord’s unchanging stability;
her deliverance will result from wisdom and knowledge;
her treasure is the fear of the Lord.
7 Listen to the valiant cry aloud in the streets for help;
the ambassadors who seek peace weep bitterly.
8 The highways are deserted;
no longer are there any travelers on the road.
Treaties are broken and their terms are ignored;
no one is deemed worthy of respect.
9 The land languishes in mourning;
Lebanon withers in its shame.
Sharon has become a desert;
Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.[b]
10 Now I will rise up, says the Lord.
Now I will be exalted,
now I will be lifted up.
11 You conceive chaff and give birth to stubble;
like fire my Spirit will devour you.
12 The peoples will be burned as though by lime,
like thorns that have been cut
and consumed in the fire.
13 You who are far away,
listen to what I have done,
and you who are near,
acknowledge my strength.
14 The sinners in Zion are filled with terror;
trembling has seized the godless.
“Can any of us survive the devouring fire?
Can any of us survive the everlasting flames?”
15 Those who walk righteously and speak honestly,
who refuse to enrich themselves by extortion,
who reject any bribes offered to them
and stop their ears from listening to plans for murder
and shut their eyes from looking on evil—
16 these people will dwell on the heights;
their refuge will be rocky cliffs,
where they will have an abundance of food and water.
Peace and Prosperity in Zion
17 Your eyes will behold the king in his splendor
and gaze upon a land that stretches far and wide.
18 Your mind will then meditate on the terror.
“Where is the man who did the counting?
Where is the man who weighed the tribute?
Where is the man who counted the towers?”
19 No longer will you encounter the insolent people,
those who employ an obscure speech
that you cannot understand
and who stammer in a language
that you are unable to comprehend.
20 Gaze upon Zion,
the city of our sacred feasts.
Your eyes will behold Jerusalem as a quiet abode,
as a tent that will not be moved,
whose stakes will never be pulled up
and none of whose ropes will be broken.
21 There we will behold the Lord in all his majesty,
in a place of rivers and broad streams,
upon which no enemy galleys with oars can go
or a majestic ship can sail.
22 For the Lord is our judge,
the Lord is our lawgiver.
The Lord is our king;
he is the one who will save us.
23 If the rigging of an enemy ship is loose,
unable to hold the mast in place
or to keep the sails spread out,
then abundant spoils will be divided;
even the lame will carry off the plunder.
24 No inhabitant will say, “I am sick,”
for the people who live there
will be forgiven for their sins.
Introduction
Chapter 1
Address. 1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 to the saints[a] and faithful brethren in Christ in Colossae. May God our Father grant you grace and peace.
A Community Pervaded by the Gospel.[b] 3 In all our prayers for you we always give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints 5 because of the hope that is stored up for you in heaven. You had learned of this hope through the word of truth, the gospel,[c] 6 that has come down to you.
Just as it is bearing fruit and growing throughout the entire world, so it has been bearing fruit among you, ever since the day when you heard it and came to understand the grace of God in truth. 7 You learned this from Epaphras,[d] our beloved fellow servant and a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. 8 He was also the one who made known to us your love in the Spirit.
9 That is why, ever since the day we first heard about it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we ask this so that you may live in a manner worthy of the Lord and become fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and continuing to grow in the knowledge of God.
11 May you be fortified with the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be granted patience and endurance, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.[e] 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The Supremacy of Christ
In Christ, through Him, and for Him[f]
15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation.
16 For in him were created all things
in heaven and on earth,
whether visible or invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—
all things were created through him and for him.
17 He exists before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
18 He is the head of the body,
that is, the Church.
He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that in every way
he should be supreme.
19 For in him
it pleased God
to make all fullness dwell,[g]
20 and through him
to reconcile all things for him,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through his blood of the cross.
21 Christ among the Gentiles.[h]You yourselves were once alienated and hostile in your intent because of your evil deeds. 22 But now, through Christ’s death in his body of flesh, God has reconciled you to himself so that you may stand holy, blameless, and irreproachable in his presence.
23 However, you must persevere in the faith, firmly grounded and steadfast in your belief, and never allowing yourselves to drift away from the hope of the gospel that you accepted and that has now been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, the gospel of which I, Paul, have become a servant.
24 Christ’s Suffering in His People. I find great joy at present in suffering for you, and in my own body I am completing the sufferings that still must be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.[i] 25 I was made a minister of that Church, with the commission given to me by God to make fully known to you the word of God, 26 the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and from past generations but that now has been revealed to his saints.
27 To these God chose to make known how rich is the priceless glory that this mystery brings to the Gentiles—Christ in you, your hope of glory.[j] 28 It is he whom we proclaim, admonishing and instructing everyone in all wisdom so that we may present everyone to Christ in a state of perfection. 29 For this I labor and struggle with all his energy working within me mightily.
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