The Daily Audio Bible
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19 This is God’s message concerning Egypt:
Look, the Lord is coming against Egypt, riding on a swift cloud; the idols of Egypt tremble; the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear. 2 I will set them to fighting against each other—brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, province against province. 3 Her wise counselors are all at their wits’ end to know what to do; they plead with their idols for wisdom and call upon mediums, wizards, and witches to show them what to do. 4 I will hand over Egypt to a hard, cruel master, to a vicious king, says the Lord Almighty.
5 And the waters of the Nile will fail to rise and flood the fields; the ditches will be parched and dry, 6 their channels fouled with rotting reeds. 7 All green things along the riverbank will wither and blow away. All crops will perish; everything will die. 8 The fishermen will weep for lack of work; those who fish with hooks and those who use the nets will all be unemployed. 9 The weavers will have no flax or cotton, for the crops will fail. 10 Great men and small—all will be crushed and broken.
11 What fools the counselors of Zoan are! Their best counsel to the king of Egypt is utterly stupid and wrong. Will they still boast of their wisdom? Will they dare tell Pharaoh about the long line of wise men they have come from? 12 What has happened to your “wise counselors,” O Pharaoh? Where has their wisdom gone? If they are wise, let them tell you what the Lord is going to do to Egypt. 13 The “wise men” from Zoan are also fools, and those from Memphis are utterly deluded. They are the best you can find, but they have ruined Egypt with their foolish counsel. 14 The Lord has sent a spirit of foolishness on them, so that all their suggestions are wrong; they make Egypt stagger like a sick drunkard. 15 Egypt cannot be saved by anything or anybody—no one can show her the way.
16 In that day the Egyptians will be as weak as women, cowering in fear beneath the upraised fist of God. 17 Just to speak the name of Israel will strike deep terror in their hearts, for the Lord Almighty has laid his plans against them.
18 At that time five of the cities of Egypt will follow the Lord Almighty and will begin to speak the Hebrew language.[a] One of these will be Heliopolis, “The City of the Sun.” 19 And there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt in those days and a monument to the Lord at its border. 20 This will be for a sign of loyalty to the Lord Almighty; then when they cry to the Lord for help against those who oppress them, he will send them a savior—and he shall deliver them.
21 In that day the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians. Yes, they will know the Lord and give their sacrifices and offerings to him; they will make promises to God and keep them. 22 The Lord will smite Egypt and then restore her! For the Egyptians will turn to the Lord and he will listen to their plea and heal them.
23 In that day Egypt and Iraq[b] will be connected by a highway, and the Egyptians and the Iraqis will move freely back and forth between their lands, and they shall worship the same God. 24 And Israel will be their ally; the three will be together, and Israel will be a blessing to them. 25 For the Lord will bless Egypt and Iraq because of their friendship[c] with Israel. He will say, “Blessed be Egypt, my people; blessed be Iraq, the land I have made; blessed be Israel, my inheritance!”
20 In the year when Sargon, king of Assyria, sent the commander-in-chief of his army against the Philistine city of Ashdod and captured it, 2 the Lord told Isaiah, the son of Amoz, to take off his clothing, including his shoes, and to walk around naked and barefoot. And Isaiah did as he was told.
3 Then the Lord said, My servant Isaiah, who has been walking naked and barefoot for the last three years, is a symbol of the terrible troubles I will bring upon Egypt and Ethiopia. 4 For the king of Assyria will take away the Egyptians and Ethiopians as prisoners, making them walk naked and barefoot, both young and old, their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. 5-6 Then how dismayed the Philistines[d] will be, who counted on “Ethiopia’s power” and their “glorious ally,” Egypt! And they will say, “If this can happen to Egypt, what chance have we?”
21 This is God’s message concerning Babylon:[e]
Disaster is roaring down upon you from the terrible desert, like a whirlwind sweeping from the Negeb. 2 I see an awesome vision: oh, the horror of it all! God is telling me what he is going to do. I see you plundered and destroyed. Elamites and Medes will take part in the siege. Babylon will fall, and the groaning of all the nations she enslaved will end. 3 My stomach constricts and burns with pain; sharp pangs of horror are upon me, like the pangs of a woman giving birth to a child. I faint when I hear what God is planning; I am terrified, blinded with dismay. 4 My mind reels; my heart races; I am gripped by awful fear. All rest at night—so pleasant once—is gone; I lie awake, trembling.
5 Look! They are preparing a great banquet! They load the tables with food; they pull up their chairs[f] to eat. . . . Quick, quick, grab your shields and prepare for battle! You are being attacked!
6-7 Meanwhile (in my vision)[g] the Lord had told me, “Put a watchman on the city wall to shout out what he sees. When he sees riders in pairs on donkeys and camels, tell him, ‘This is it!’”
8-9 So I put the watchman on the wall, and at last he shouted, “Sir, day after day and night after night I have been here at my post. Now at last—look! Here come riders in pairs!”
Then I heard a voice shout out, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the idols of Babylon lie broken on the ground.”
10 O my people, threshed and winnowed, I have told you all that the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, has said.
11 This is God’s message to Edom:[h]
Someone from among you keeps calling, calling to me: “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? How much time is left?” 12 The watchman replies, “Your judgment day is dawning now. Turn again to God, so that I can give you better news. Seek for him, then come and ask again!”
13 This is God’s message concerning Arabia:
O caravans from Dedan, you will hide in the deserts of Arabia. 14 O people of Tema, bring food and water to these weary fugitives! 15 They have fled from drawn swords and sharp arrows and the terrors of war! 16 “But a long year from now,”[i] says the Lord, “the great power of their enemy, the mighty tribe of Kedar, will end. 17 Only a few of its stalwart archers will survive.” The Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken.
2 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along too. 2 I went there with definite orders from God to confer with the brothers there about the message I was preaching to the Gentiles. I talked privately to the leaders of the church so that they would all understand just what I had been teaching and, I hoped, agree that it was right. 3 And they did agree; they did not even demand that Titus, my companion, should be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.
4 Even that question wouldn’t have come up except for some so-called “Christians” there—false ones, really—who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. 5 But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.
6 And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their being great leaders made no difference to me, for all are the same to God.) 7-9 In fact, when Peter, James, and John, who were known as the pillars of the church, saw how greatly God had used me in winning the Gentiles, just as Peter had been blessed so greatly in his preaching to the Jews—for the same God gave us each our special gifts—they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 The only thing they did suggest was that we must always remember to help the poor, and I, too, was eager for that.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. 12 For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don’t bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws.[a] But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say; 13 and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter’s example, though they certainly knew better. 14 When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have long since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them? 15 You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners, 16 and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith—and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them.”
59 Written by David at the time King Saul set guards at his home to capture and kill him. (1 Samuel 19:11)
O my God, save me from my enemies. Protect me from these who have come to destroy me. 2 Preserve me from these criminals, these murderers. 3 They lurk in ambush for my life. Strong men are out there waiting. And not, O Lord, because I’ve done them wrong. 4 Yet they prepare to kill me. Lord, waken! See what is happening! Help me! 5 (And O Jehovah, God of heaven’s armies, God of Israel, arise and punish the heathen nations surrounding us.) Do not spare these evil, treacherous men. 6 At evening they come to spy, slinking around like dogs that prowl the city. 7 I hear them shouting insults and cursing God, for “No one will hear us,” they think. 8 Lord, laugh at them! (And scoff at these surrounding nations too.)
9 O God my Strength! I will sing your praises, for you are my place of safety. 10 My God is changeless in his love for me, and he will come and help me. He will let me see my wish come true upon my enemies. 11 Don’t kill them—for my people soon forget such lessons—but stagger them with your power and bring them to their knees. Bring them to the dust, O Lord our shield. 12-13 They are proud, cursing liars. Angrily destroy them. Wipe them out. (And let the nations find out, too, that God rules in Israel and will reign throughout the world.) 14-15 Let these evil men slink back at evening and prowl the city all night before they are satisfied, howling like dogs and searching for food.
16 But as for me, I will sing each morning about your power and mercy. For you have been my high tower of refuge, a place of safety in the day of my distress. 17 O my Strength, to you I sing my praises; for you are my high tower of safety, my God of mercy.
13-14 Don’t fail to correct your children; discipline won’t hurt them! They won’t die if you use a stick on them! Punishment will keep them out of hell.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.