The Daily Audio Bible
Today's audio is from the CSB. Switch to the CSB to read along with the audio.
15 Here is God’s message to Moab: In one night your cities of Ar and Kir will be destroyed. 2 Your people in Dibon go mourning to their temples to weep for the fate of Nebo and Medeba; they shave their heads in sorrow and cut off their beards. 3 They wear sackcloth through the streets, and from every home comes the sound of weeping. 4 The cries from the cities of Heshbon and Elealeh are heard far away, even in Jahaz. The bravest warriors of Moab cry in utter terror.
5 My heart weeps for Moab! His people flee to Zoar and Eglath. Weeping, they climb the upward road to Luhith, and their crying will be heard all along the road to Horonaim. 6 Even Nimrim River is desolate! The grassy banks are dried up and the tender plants are gone. 7 The desperate refugees take only the possessions they can carry and flee across the Brook of Willows. 8 The whole land of Moab is a land of weeping from one end to the other. 9 The stream near Dibon will run red with blood, but I am not through with Dibon yet! Lions will hunt down the survivors, both those who escape and those who remain.
16 Moab’s refugees at Sela send lambs as a token of alliance with the king of Judah. 2 The women of Moab are left at the fords of the Arnon River like homeless birds. 3 The ambassadors, who accompany the gift to Jerusalem[a] plead for advice and help. “Give us sanctuary. Protect us. Do not turn us over to our foes. 4-5 Let our outcasts stay among you; hide them from our enemies! God will reward you for your kindness to us. If you let Moab’s fugitives settle among you, then when the terror is past, God will establish David’s throne forever, and on that throne he will place a just and righteous King.”
6 Is this proud Moab, concerning which we heard so much? His arrogance and insolence are all gone now! 7 Therefore all Moab weeps. Yes, Moab, you will mourn for stricken Kir-hareseth, 8 and for the abandoned farms of Heshbon and the vineyards at Sibmah. The enemy warlords have cut down the best of the grapevines; their armies spread out as far as Jazer in the deserts, and even down to the sea. 9 So I wail and lament for Jazer and the vineyards of Sibmah. My tears shall flow for Heshbon and Elealeh, for destruction has come upon their summer fruits and harvests. 10 Gone now is the gladness, gone the joy of harvest. The happy singing in the vineyards will be heard no more; the treading out of the grapes in the winepresses has ceased forever. I have ended all their harvest joys.
11 I will weep, weep, weep, for Moab; and my sorrow for Kir-hareseth will be very great. 12 The people of Moab will pray in anguish to their idols at the tops of the hills, but it will do no good; they will cry to their gods in their idol temples, but none will come to save them. 13-14 All this concerning Moab has been said before; but now the Lord says that within three years, without fail, the glory of Moab shall be ended, and few of all its people will be left alive.
17 This is God’s message to Damascus, capital of Syria:
Look, Damascus is gone! It is no longer a city—it has become a heap of ruins! 2 The cities of Aroer are deserted. Sheep pasture there, lying quiet and unafraid, with no one to chase them away. 3 The strength of Israel and the power of Damascus will end, and the remnant of Syria shall be destroyed. For as Israel’s glory departed, so theirs, too, will disappear, declares the Lord Almighty. 4 Yes, the glory of Israel will be very dim when poverty stalks the land. 5 Israel will be as abandoned as the harvested grain fields in the valley of Rephaim. 6 Oh, a very few of her people will be left, just as a few stray olives are left on the trees when the harvest is ended, two or three in the highest branches, four or five out on the tips of the limbs. That is how it will be in Damascus and Israel—stripped bare of people except for a few of the poor who remain.
7 Then at last they will think of God their Creator and have respect for the Holy One of Israel. 8 They will no longer ask their idols for help in that day, neither will they worship what their hands have made! They will no longer have respect for the images of Ashtaroth and the sun idols.
9 Their largest cities will be as deserted as the distant wooded hills and mountaintops and become like the abandoned cities of the Amorites, deserted when the Israelites approached (so long ago).[b] 10 Why? Because you have turned from the God who can save you—the Rock who can hide you; therefore, even though you plant a wonderful, rare crop of greatest value, 11 and though it grows so well that it will blossom on the very morning that you plant it, yet you will never harvest it—your only harvest will be a pile of grief and incurable pain.
12 Look, see the armies thundering toward God’s land. 13 But though they roar like breakers rolling upon a beach, God will silence them. They will flee, scattered like chaff by the wind, like whirling dust before a storm. 14 In the evening Israel waits in terror, but by dawn her enemies are dead. This is the just reward of those who plunder and destroy the people of God.
18 Ah, land beyond the upper reaches of the Nile,[c] where winged sailboats glide along the river! 2 Land that sends ambassadors in fast boats down the Nile! Let swift messengers return to you, O strong and supple nation feared far and wide, a conquering, destroying nation whose land the upper Nile divides.[d] And this is the message sent to you:
3 When I raise my battle flag upon the mountain, let all the world take notice! When I blow the trumpet, listen! 4 For the Lord has told me this: Let your mighty army now advance against the land of Israel.[e] God will watch quietly from his Temple in Jerusalem—serene as on a pleasant summer day or a lovely autumn morning during harvesttime. 5 But before you have begun the attack, and while your plans are ripening like grapes, he will cut you off as though with pruning shears. He will snip the spreading tendrils. 6 Your mighty army will be left dead on the field for the mountain birds and wild animals to eat; the vultures will tear bodies all summer, and the wild animals will gnaw bones all winter. 7 But the time will come when that strong and mighty nation, a terror to all both far and near, that conquering, destroying nation whose land the rivers divide, will bring gifts to the Lord Almighty in Jerusalem, where he has placed his name.
1 1-2 From: Paul the missionary and all the other Christians here.
To: The churches of Galatia.[a]
I was not called to be a missionary by any group or agency. My call is from Jesus Christ himself and from God the Father who raised him from the dead. 3 May peace and blessing be yours from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 He died for our sins just as God our Father planned, and rescued us from this evil world in which we live. 5 All glory to God through all the ages of eternity. Amen.
6 I am amazed that you are turning away so soon from God who, in his love and mercy, invited you to share the eternal life he gives through Christ; you are already following a different “way to heaven,” which really doesn’t go to heaven at all. 7 For there is no other way than the one we showed you; you are being fooled by those who twist and change the truth concerning Christ.
8 Let God’s curses fall on anyone, including myself, who preaches any other way to be saved than the one we told you about; yes, if an angel comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed. 9 I will say it again: if anyone preaches any other gospel than the one you welcomed, let God’s curse fall upon him.
10 You can see that I am not trying to please you by sweet talk and flattery; no, I am trying to please God. If I were still trying to please men I could not be Christ’s servant.
11 Dear friends, I solemnly swear that the way to heaven that I preach is not based on some mere human whim or dream. 12 For my message comes from no less a person than Jesus Christ himself, who told me what to say. No one else has taught me.
13 You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion—how I went after the Christians mercilessly, hunting them down and doing my best to get rid of them all. 14 I was one of the most religious Jews of my own age in the whole country and tried as hard as I possibly could to follow all the old, traditional rules of my religion.
15 But then something happened! For even before I was born, God had chosen me to be his and called me—what kindness and grace— 16 to reveal his Son within me so that I could go to the Gentiles and show them the Good News about Jesus.
When all this happened to me I didn’t go at once and talk it over with anyone else; 17 I didn’t go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. No, I went away into the deserts of Arabia and then came back to the city of Damascus. 18 It was not until three years later that I finally went to Jerusalem for a visit with Peter and stayed there with him for fifteen days. 19 And the only other apostle I met at that time was James, our Lord’s brother. 20 (Listen to what I am saying, for I am telling you this in the very presence of God. This is exactly what happened—I am not lying to you.) 21 Then after this visit I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22 And still the Christians in Judea didn’t even know what I looked like. 23 All they knew was what people were saying, that “our former enemy is now preaching the very faith he tried to wreck.” 24 And they gave glory to God because of me.
58 1-2 Justice? You high and mighty politicians don’t even know the meaning of the word! Fairness? Which of you has any left? Not one! All your dealings are crooked: you give “justice” in exchange for bribes.[a] 3 These men are born sinners, lying from their earliest words! 4-5 They are poisonous as deadly snakes, cobras that close their ears to the most expert of charmers.
6 O God, break off their fangs. Tear out the teeth of these young lions, Lord. 7 Let them disappear like water into thirsty ground. Make their weapons useless in their hands.[b] 8 Let them be as snails that dissolve into slime and as those who die at birth, who never see the sun. 9 God will sweep away both old and young. He will destroy them more quickly than a cooking pot can feel the blazing fire of thorns beneath it.
10 The godly shall rejoice in the triumph of right;[c] they shall walk the bloodstained fields of slaughtered, wicked men. 11 Then at last everyone will know that good is rewarded, and that there is a God who judges justly here on earth.
12 Don’t refuse to accept criticism; get all the help[a] you can.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.