Micah 1 - 2 - Legacy Standard Bible

Micah 1 - 2

Calamity in Israel and Judah

The word of Yahweh which came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he beheld concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. 2

Hear, O peoples, all of you;

Give heed, O earth, as well as its fullness,

And let Lord Yahweh be a witness against you,

The Lord from His holy temple.

For behold, Yahweh is going forth from His place.

He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.

The mountains will melt under Him,

And the valleys will be split,

Like wax before the fire,

Like water poured down a steep place.

All this is for the transgression of Jacob

And for the sins of the house of Israel.

What is the transgression of Jacob?

Is it not Samaria?

What is the high place of Judah?

Is it not Jerusalem?

So I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the field,

Planting places for a vineyard.

And I will pour her stones down into the valley

And will lay bare her foundations.

And all of her graven images will be smashed,

And all of her earnings will be burned with fire

And all of her idols I will make desolate,

For she collected them from a harlot’s earnings,

And to the earnings of a harlot they will return.

Because of this I must lament and wail;

I must go barefoot and naked;

I must make a lament like the jackals

And a mourning like the ostriches.

For her wound is incurable,

For it has come to Judah;

It has reached the gate of my people,

Even to Jerusalem.

Tell it not in Gath,

Weep not at all.

At Beth‑le‑aphrah roll yourself in the dust.

Pass on by, inhabitant of Shaphir, in shameful nakedness.

The inhabitant of Zaanan does not go out.

The lamentation of Beth‑ezel: “He will take from you its support.”

For the inhabitant of Maroth

Writhes in waiting for good

Because a calamity has come down from Yahweh

To the gate of Jerusalem.

Harness the chariot to the team of horses,

O inhabitant of Lachish—

She was the beginning of sin

To the daughter of Zion—

Because in you were found

The transgressions of Israel.

Therefore you will give parting gifts

On behalf of Moresheth‑gath;

The houses of Achzib will become a deception

To the kings of Israel.

Moreover, I will bring on you

The one who takes possession,

O inhabitant of Mareshah.

The glory of Israel will enter Adullam.

Make yourself bald and cut off your hair,

Because of the children of your delight;

Extend your baldness like the eagle,

For they will go from you into exile.

An Evil Time

Woe to those who devise wickedness,

Who work out evil on their beds!

When the light of the morning comes, they do it,

For it is in the power of their hands.

And they covet fields and then tear them away,

And houses, and take them away.

And they oppress a man and his house,

A man and his inheritance.

3 Therefore thus says Yahweh,

“Behold, I am devising against this family an evil demise

From which you cannot remove your necks;

And you will not walk haughtily,

For it will be an evil time.

On that day they will take up against you a taunt

And utter a bitter wailing and say,

‘We are completely devastated!

He exchanges the portion of my people;

How He removes it from me!

To the faithless one, He apportions our fields.’

Therefore you will have no one stretching a measuring line

For you by lot in the assembly of Yahweh.

‘Do not speak, dripping out words,’ they say while dripping out words.

But if they do not drip out words concerning these things,

Dishonor will not be turned back.

Is it being said, O house of Jacob:

‘Is the Spirit of Yahweh impatient?

Are these His deeds?’

Do not My words do good

To the one walking uprightly?

And recently My people have arisen as an enemy—

You strip the robe off the garment

From unsuspecting passers‑by,

From those returned from war.

The women of My people you drive out,

Each one from her pleasant house.

From her infants you take My splendor forever.

Arise and go,

For this is no place of rest

Because of the uncleanness that wreaks destruction,

A painful destruction.

If a man walking after wind and lying

Had acted falsely and said,

‘I will speak, dripping out words to you concerning wine and liquor,’

He would be one who drips out words as a spokesman to this people.

“I will surely assemble all of you, Jacob;

I will surely gather the remnant of Israel.

I will put them together like sheep in the fold;

Like a flock in the midst of its pasture

They will be noisy with men.

The breaker goes up before them;

They break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it.

So their king goes on before them,

And Yahweh at their head.”

Acts 7

Stephen’s Defense

And the high priest said, “Are these things so?” 2 And he said, “Hear me, brothers and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’ 4 Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. 5 But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his seed after him, even when he had no child. 6 But God spoke in this way, that his seed would be sojourners in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. 7 ‘And I Myself will judge the nation to which they will be enslaved,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and serve Me in this place.’ 8 And He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham was the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs. 9 “And the patriarchs, becoming jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him, 10 and rescued him from all his afflictions, and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he appointed him governor over Egypt and all his household. 11 “Now a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan, and great affliction with it, and our fathers could find no food. 12 But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time. 13 And on the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family was disclosed to Pharaoh. 14 Then Joseph sent word and invited Jacob his father and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five persons in all. 15 And Jacob went down to Egypt and there he and our fathers died. 16 And from there they were removed to Shechem and placed in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. 17 “But as the time of the promise was drawing near which God had assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, 18 until another king arose over Egypt who did not know about Joseph. 19 It was he who deceitfully took advantage of our family and mistreated our fathers to set their infants outside so that they would not survive. 20 It was at this time that Moses was born, and he was lovely in the sight of God, and he was nurtured three months in his father’s home. 21 And after he had been set outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him away and nurtured him as her own son. 22 And Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in words and deeds. 23 But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his heart to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. 24 And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took justice for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. 25 And he supposed that his brothers understood that God was granting them salvation through him, but they did not understand. 26 On the following day he appeared to them as they were fighting together, and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers, why are you treating one another unjustly?’ 27 But the one who was treating his neighbor unjustly pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us? 28 Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 At this remark, Moses fled and became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he was the father of two sons. 30 “And after forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he was marveling at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and would not dare to look. 33 But the Lord said to him, ‘Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have surely seen the oppression of My people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to deliver them; come now, and I will send you to Egypt.’ 35 “This Moses whom they disowned, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 This man led them out, doing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. 37 This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’ 38 This is the one who, in the congregation in the wilderness, was with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers; the one who received living oracles to pass on to you. 39 Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt, 40 saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us; for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt—we do not know what has become of him.’ 41 At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands. 42 But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘Did you present Me with slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43 You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship. I also will remove you beyond Babylon.’ 44 “Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness, just as He, who spoke to Moses, directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen. 45 And having received it in their turn, our fathers brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations whom God drove out before our fathers, until the time of David. 46 David found favor in the sight of God, and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47 But Solomon built a house for Him. 48 However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says: 49

‘Heaven is My throne,

And earth is the footstool of My feet.

What kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord,

‘Or what place is there for My rest?

Was it not My hand which made all these things?’

51 “You men—stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears—are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. 52 And which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; 53 you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not observe it.”

Stephen Is Stoned to Death

54 Now when they heard this, they became furious in their hearts, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. 55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; 56 and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57 But crying out with a loud voice, they covered their ears and rushed at him with one accord. 58 And when they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 They went on stoning Stephen as he was calling out and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And having said this, he fell asleep.

Psalm 83

O God, Do Not Be Quiet

A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.

O God, do not remain at rest;

Do not be silent and, O God, do not be quiet.

For behold, Your enemies roar,

And those who hate You have lifted up their heads.

They make shrewd plans against Your people,

And conspire together against Your treasured ones.

They have said, “Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation,

That the name of Israel be remembered no more.”

For they have conspired together with one heart;

Against You they cut a covenant:

The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,

Moab and the Hagrites;

Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,

Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;

Assyria also has joined with them;

They have become the power of the children of Lot. Selah.

Do to them as to Midian,

As to Sisera, and Jabin at the river of Kishon,

Who were destroyed at En‑dor,

Who were as dung for the ground.

Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb

And all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

Who said, “Let us possess for ourselves

The pastures of God.”

O my God, make them like the whirling dust,

Like chaff before the wind.

Like fire that burns the forest

And like a flame that burns up the mountains,

So pursue them with Your tempest

And dismay them with Your storm.

Fill their faces with disgrace,

That they may seek Your name, O Yahweh.

Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever,

And let them be humiliated and perish,

That they may know that You alone—Your name is Yahweh—

Are the Most High over all the earth.