1 Then the Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “Give these instructions to the Israelites, and tell them: ‘When you enter Canaan, the land that has been assigned to you as an inheritance, the land of Canaan with its borders, 3 your southern border will extend from the wilderness of Zin along the Edomite border, and your southern border will run eastward to the extremity of the Salt Sea, 4 and then the border will turn from the south to the Scorpion Ascent, continue to Zin, and then its direction will be from the south to Kadesh Barnea. Then it will go to Hazar Addar and pass over to Azmon. 5 There the border will turn from Azmon to the Stream of Egypt, and then its direction is to the sea.
6 “‘And for a western border you will have the Great Sea. This will be your western border.
7 “‘And this will be your northern border: From the Great Sea you will draw a line to Mount Hor; 8 from Mount Hor you will draw a line to Lebo Hamath, and the direction of the border will be to Zedad. 9 The border will continue to Ziphron, and its direction will be to Hazar Enan. This will be your northern border.
10 “‘For your eastern border you will draw a line from Hazar Enan to Shepham. 11 The border will run down from Shepham to Riblah, on the east side of Ain, and the border will descend and reach the eastern side of the Sea of Kinnereth. 12 Then the border will continue down the Jordan River and its direction will be to the Salt Sea. This will be your land by its borders that surround it.’”
13 Then Moses commanded the Israelites: “This is the land that you will inherit by lot, which the Lord has commanded to be given to the nine-and-a-half tribes, 14 because the tribe of the Reubenites by their families, the tribe of the Gadites by their families, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance. 15 The two-and-a-half tribes have received their inheritance on this side of the Jordan, east of Jericho, toward the sunrise.”
16 The Lord said to Moses: 17 “These are the names of the men who are to allocate the land to you as an inheritance: Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun. 18 You must take one leader from every tribe to assist in allocating the land as an inheritance. 19 These are the names of the men: from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh; 20 from the tribe of the Simeonites, Shemuel son of Ammihud; 21 from the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad son of Kislon; 22 and from the tribe of the Danites, a leader, Bukki son of Jogli. 23 From the Josephites, Hanniel son of Ephod, a leader from the tribe of Manasseh; 24 from the tribe of the Ephraimites, a leader, Kemuel son of Shiphtan; 25 from the tribe of the Zebulunites, a leader, Elizaphan son of Parnach; 26 from the tribe of the Issacharites, a leader, Paltiel son of Azzan; 27 from the tribe of the Asherites, a leader, Ahihud son of Shelomi; 28 and from the tribe of the Naphtalites, a leader, Pedahel son of Ammihud.” 29 These are the ones whom the Lord commanded to divide up the inheritance among the Israelites in the land of Canaan.
38 Yet he is compassionate.
He forgives sin and does not destroy.
He often holds back his anger,
and does not stir up his fury.
39 He remembered that they were made of flesh,
and were like a wind that blows past and does not return.
40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness,
and insulted him in the wastelands.
41 They again challenged God,
and offended the Holy One of Israel.
42 They did not remember what he had done,
how he delivered them from the enemy,
43 when he performed his awesome deeds in Egypt,
and his acts of judgment in the region of Zoan.
44 He turned their rivers into blood,
and they could not drink from their streams.
45 He sent swarms of biting insects against them,
as well as frogs that overran their land.
46 He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
the fruit of their labor to the locust.
47 He destroyed their vines with hail,
and their sycamore-fig trees with driving rain.
48 He rained hail down on their cattle,
and hurled lightning bolts down on their livestock.
49 His raging anger lashed out against them.
He sent fury, rage, and trouble
as messengers who bring disaster.
50 He sent his anger in full force.
He did not spare them from death;
he handed their lives over to destruction.
51 He struck down all the firstborn in Egypt,
the firstfruits of their reproductive power in the tents of Ham.
52 Yet he brought out his people like sheep;
he led them through the wilderness like a flock.
53 He guided them safely along, and they were not afraid;
but the sea covered their enemies.
54 He brought them to the border of his holy land,
to this mountainous land that his right hand acquired.
55 He drove the nations out from before them;
he assigned them their tribal allotments
and allowed the tribes of Israel to settle down.
56 Yet they challenged and defied God Most High,
and did not obey his commands.
57 They were unfaithful and acted as treacherously as their ancestors;
they were as unreliable as a malfunctioning bow.
58 They made him angry with their pagan shrines,
and made him jealous with their idols.
59 God heard and was angry;
he completely rejected Israel.
60 He abandoned the sanctuary at Shiloh,
the tent where he lived among men.
61 He allowed the symbol of his strong presence to be captured;
he gave the symbol of his splendor into the hand of the enemy.
62 He delivered his people over to the sword,
and was angry with his chosen nation.
63 Fire consumed their young men,
and their virgins remained unmarried.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
but their widows did not weep.
65 But then the Lord awoke from his sleep;
he was like a warrior in a drunken rage.
66 He drove his enemies back;
he made them a permanent target for insults.
67 He rejected the tent of Joseph;
he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim.
68 He chose the tribe of Judah
and Mount Zion, which he loves.
69 He made his sanctuary as enduring as the heavens above,
as secure as the earth, which he established permanently.
70 He chose David, his servant,
and took him from the sheepfolds.
71 He took him away from following the mother sheep,
and made him the shepherd of Jacob, his people,
and of Israel, his chosen nation.
72 David cared for them with pure motives;
he led them with skill.
1 At that time this song will be sung in the land of Judah:
“We have a strong city!
The Lord’s deliverance, like walls and a rampart, makes it secure.
2 Open the gates so a righteous nation can enter—
one that remains trustworthy.
3 You keep completely safe the people who maintain their faith,
for they trust in you.
4 Trust in the Lord from this time forward,
even in Yah, the Lord, an enduring protector!
5 Indeed, the Lord knocks down those who live in a high place,
he brings down an elevated town;
he brings it down to the ground,
he throws it down to the dust.
6 It is trampled underfoot
by the feet of the oppressed,
by the soles of the poor.”
7 The way of the righteous is level,
the path of the righteous that you prepare is straight.
8 Yes, as your judgments unfold,
O Lord, we wait for you.
We desire your fame and reputation to grow.
9 I look for you during the night;
my spirit within me seeks you at dawn,
for when your judgments come upon the earth,
those who live in the world learn about justice.
10 If the wicked are shown mercy,
they do not learn about justice.
Even in a land where right is rewarded, they act unjustly;
they do not see the Lord’s majesty revealed.
11 O Lord, you are ready to act,
but they don’t even notice.
They will see and be put to shame by your angry judgment against humankind;
yes, fire will consume your enemies.
12 O Lord, you make us secure,
for even all we have accomplished, you have done for us.
13 O Lord, our God,
masters other than you have ruled us,
but we praise your name alone.
14 The dead do not come back to life,
the spirits of the dead do not rise.
That is because you came in judgment and destroyed them,
you wiped out all memory of them.
15 You have made the nation larger, O Lord;
you have made the nation larger and revealed your splendor;
you have extended all the borders of the land.
16 O Lord, in distress they looked for you;
they uttered incantations because of your discipline.
17 As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver
and strains and cries out because of her labor pains,
so were we because of you, O Lord.
18 We were pregnant, we strained,
we gave birth, as it were, to wind.
We cannot produce deliverance on the earth;
no people are born to populate the world.
19 Your dead will come back to life;
your corpses will rise up.
Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground!
For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew,
and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits.
20 Go, my people! Enter your inner rooms!
Close your doors behind you!
Hide for a little while,
until his angry judgment is over.
21 For look, the Lord is coming out of the place where he lives,
to punish the sin of those who live on the earth.
The earth will display the blood shed on it;
it will no longer cover up its slain.
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that refuses to confess Jesus, that spirit is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now is already in the world.
4 You are from God, little children, and have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world’s perspective and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; the person who knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. 8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. 10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. 17 By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he loved us first.
20 If anyone says “I love God” and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.
