The Daily Audio Bible

8: Locusts

10 Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to see Pharaoh. I have caused his mind to become hard. I have also caused his officers' minds to become hard. I have done this so that I can do miracles to show him my power. ² In the future, you can tell your children and your children's children how I punished the Egyptians. You can tell them about the miracles that I did among the Egyptians. In this way, you will know that I am the Lord.’

³ So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh. They said to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Israelites says this: “You are still too proud to obey me. Let my people go so that they may worship me. ⁴ If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. ⁵ They will cover the whole country. Nobody will be able to see the ground. They will eat everything that the hail did not destroy. They will eat any crops that you still have. That will include every tree that is growing in your fields. ⁶ They will fill your houses, and your officers' houses. They will fill all the houses in Egypt! It will be worse than anything that your fathers or your grandfathers have ever seen. Nothing like this has ever happened in Egypt before now.” ’ Then Moses turned away and left Pharaoh.

⁷ Pharaoh's officers said to him, ‘Will you let this man bring trouble to us for ever? Allow the people to go. Then they can worship the Lord their God. Surely you understand by now that this man has destroyed Egypt!’

⁸ So Pharaoh's officers took Moses and Aaron back to him. Pharaoh said to them, ‘Go and worship the Lord your God. But tell me, who will go?’

⁹ Moses said, ‘We will all go, both young people and old people. We will take our sons and daughters. We will also take our animals, because we must have a feast to worship the Lord.’

¹⁰ Pharaoh said to them, ‘No! If I let you go with your families like that, you will need the Lord to take care of you! I can see that you want to make trouble. ¹¹ No! If you really want to go and worship the Lord, only the men can go.’ Pharaoh was angry and he told Moses and Aaron to go away.^[a]

¹² Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Lift up your hand over the country of Egypt. Then locusts will fly all over the land. They will eat every plant that grows in the ground. They will eat everything that the hail has not destroyed.’

¹³ So Moses lifted up his stick over the country of Egypt. Then the Lord caused an east wind to blow across the land, for the whole day and the whole night. In the morning, the east wind had brought the locusts. ¹⁴ The locusts flew into every part of the country of Egypt. Thousands of locusts sat on everything. There had never been so many locusts in Egypt before. And it will never happen again. ¹⁵ The locusts covered all the ground, until the ground became black with locusts. They ate all the plants that grew in the ground, and all the fruit of the trees. They ate everything that the hail had not destroyed. Not one green thing remained on any tree or plant, in all the country of Egypt.

¹⁶ Then Pharaoh quickly called Moses and Aaron to come to him. He said, ‘I have done bad things against the Lord your God and against you. ¹⁷ Please forgive my sins just one more time. Ask the Lord your God to remove this punishment of death from me.’

¹⁸ Moses left Pharaoh and he prayed to the Lord. ¹⁹ Then the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind. This wind lifted the locusts up and it blew them away into the Red Sea.^[b] Not one locust remained in all the country of Egypt. ²⁰ But the Lord caused Pharaoh's mind to become hard again. Pharaoh would not let the Israelites go.

9: Darkness

²¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Lift up your hand towards the sky. Then it will become dark over the whole country of Egypt. It will be so dark that people will be able to feel it.’ ²² So Moses lifted up his hand towards the sky and it became completely dark. It was dark through the whole country of Egypt for three days. ²³ People could not see each other. Nobody could move anywhere for three days. But the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

²⁴ Then Pharaoh called Moses to come to him. He said, ‘Go and worship the Lord. Even your families may go with you. Only your animals must remain in Egypt.’

²⁵ But Moses said, ‘Then you will have to give us animals for our sacrifices and burnt offerings. We need our animals to offer to the Lord our God.^{[c] 26} So we must take our animals with us. Not one animal can remain behind. We must take them to worship the Lord our God. Until we arrive in the desert, we will not know which animals to use as sacrifices.’

²⁷ But the Lord caused Pharaoh's mind to be hard. Pharaoh would not agree to let the Israelites go. ²⁸ Pharaoh said to Moses, ‘Go away from me! Be careful not to come back! I never want to see you again! On the day that you see my face, you will die!’

²⁹ Moses replied, ‘You are right! You will never see me again.’

10: Death

11 The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will cause Pharaoh and Egypt to have one more trouble. Then Pharaoh will let you go out of Egypt. He will cause you to leave very quickly and go away from him. ² So tell the Israelite people now what they must do. Every man and every woman must ask the Egyptians that live near them for gold things and silver things.’

³ The Lord caused the Egyptians to be kind to the Israelite people. As for Moses himself, Pharaoh's officers and the Egyptian people respected him as an important man.

⁴ So Moses went to the king and he said, ‘The Lord God says this: “At about midnight, I will travel through the whole country of Egypt. ⁵ I will cause all the firstborn sons in Egypt to die. The firstborn son of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, will die. The firstborn son of the female slave who makes flour, will die. Even the firstborn of the farm animals will die.^{[d] 6} Everyone will be crying loudly in the whole country of Egypt. Nothing like that has ever happened before now, and it will never happen again. ⁷ But no trouble will happen to the Israelite people. Not even a dog will frighten them or their animals. Then you will know that I, the Lord, make a difference between Egypt and Israel.” ’

⁸ Moses continued to say to the king, ‘All your officers will come to me. They will fall down in front of me and they will say, “Now go! Leave here with all your people.” After that, I will leave.’

After he said that, Moses left Pharaoh. Moses was very angry.

⁹ The Lord had already said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. But that will give me the chance to do even greater miracles in Egypt.’

¹⁰ Moses and Aaron did all these miracles in front of Pharaoh. But the Lord caused Pharaoh's mind to be hard. So Pharaoh would not let the Israelites leave his country.

The first Passover meal

12 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the country of Egypt. ² He said, ‘This month will be the first month of each year for you. ³ Tell all the Israelite people to do this on the tenth day of this month: Each man must choose a lamb to kill as a sacrifice for his family. That will be one lamb for each home. ⁴ But the family may be too small to eat a whole lamb. Then they must share a lamb with another family that lives near. You must decide how much each person can eat and then count the number of people. ⁵ The lamb that you choose must have nothing wrong with it. It must be a male lamb that is one year old. It can be either a young sheep or a young goat.

⁶ Keep the lamb safe until the 14th day of this month. Then every Israelite family must kill their lamb in the evening. ⁷ They must take some of its blood. They must put the blood on the wood that is round the door of their house. They must put it on each side of the door and above the door. They must do this in every house where they will eat a lamb. ⁸ That night, they must cook the meat over the fire. They must eat it immediately, with bitter herbs and with bread that has no yeast in it. ⁹ You must cook the meat before you eat it. Cook it over the fire. Do not cook it in water. Cook the whole lamb, with its head, its legs and the inside parts of its body. ¹⁰ You must eat all the meat before morning arrives. If some of it still remains in the morning, then you must burn it. ¹¹ This is how you must eat the lamb: Dress yourselves so that you are ready to travel. Put your shoes on your feet. Take your stick in your hand. Then eat the food quickly. This is the Passover meal which shows that you obey me, the Lord.

¹² On the night that you eat the Passover meal, I will travel through the country of Egypt. I will kill every firstborn son and every firstborn male animal. I will punish all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. ¹³ When you put the blood round the doors of your houses, that will be a sign to show that you live there. When I see the blood on your house, I will pass over you.^[e] No trouble will hurt you, when I attack the people of Egypt.

Jesus tells a story about some workers in a field

20 Jesus said, ‘I will tell you a story to show what the kingdom of heaven is like. There was an important man who had a field where he grew grapes. He went out early in the morning. He wanted to find some people who would work in his field. ² The master agreed with the workers that he would pay them one silver coin for a day's work.^[a] Then he sent them to work in the field.

³ The master went out again about three hours later. He saw some other men standing in the market place. They had no work to do. ⁴ So the master said to these men, “You also go and work in my field. I will pay you the right amount of money.” ⁵ So the workers went to the master's field and started to work.

The master went out again at noon, and he went again three hours after that. Both times he sent men to his field to work. ⁶ Two hours later, at five o'clock, he went out again. He found more men who were standing there. And they had no work to do. The master asked them, “Why are you standing here all day and you are not working?”

⁷ The men said to the master, “Nobody has asked us to work for him.”

So the master said to them, “You also go now and work in my field.”

⁸ Then the evening came. The master of the field spoke to the man who had authority over the workers. He said to him, “Tell the workers to come here. Pay them their money. Begin with the workers who started to work at the end of the day. Finish with the workers who started first.”

⁹ The workers who had come to work at five o'clock in the evening received one silver coin each. ¹⁰ The workers who had come to work first thought that they would receive more than the other workers. But each of them also received one silver coin. ¹¹ When they received their money, they were not happy. They told the master that he had not been fair to them. ¹² They said to him, “Some of these other workers came last and only worked for one hour. But you have paid them the same money as you paid us. And we have worked all day in the hot sun.”

¹³ Then the master said to one of the workers, “My friend, I am being fair to you. You agreed to work for one day and to receive one silver coin. ¹⁴ Take your money and go home. I choose to give this last man the same amount of money as I gave to you. ¹⁵ It is my money. I can choose what to do with it. I want to be kind to people and give them more than we agreed. Does that make you upset?” ’

¹⁶ Jesus then said, ‘So, one day, those people who are not important now will become the most important. Those people who are very important now will become the least important.’

Jesus talks again about how he will die

¹⁷ Jesus and his disciples were going towards Jerusalem. As they walked along, Jesus took his 12 disciples away from the other people where he could speak to them alone. ¹⁸ ‘Listen!’ he said to them. ‘We are going to Jerusalem. There, someone will deliver the Son of Man to the leaders of the priests and the teachers of God's Law. These Jewish leaders will decide that I must die. ¹⁹ Then they will take me and they will deliver me to people who are not Jews. They will laugh at me. They will hit me with whips. Then they will kill me on a cross.^[b] But after three days, I will become alive again.’

The mother of James and John asks Jesus for something

²⁰ Then the mother of James and John took them to see Jesus. (Their father was Zebedee.) She went down on her knees in front of Jesus. She asked him to do something good for her.

²¹ ‘What do you want me to do?’ Jesus asked her.

She said, ‘One day, you will be king. Then I want my two sons to rule with you. One may sit at your right side and the other one at your left side. Please will you do this?’

²² Jesus said to them, ‘You do not understand what you are asking for. I will have much pain and trouble. Are you ready to have the same pain?’

James and John replied, ‘Yes, we can do that.’

²³ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes, that is true. You will have pain and trouble like mine. But I cannot promise that you will sit at my right side or at my left side. My Father God has chosen the people who will sit there. He has prepared the places for those people.’

²⁴ When the other ten disciples heard about this, they were angry with the two brothers. ²⁵ Then Jesus told all the 12 disciples to come to him. He said to them, ‘You know the things that rulers of other countries do. They show that they have great power over their people. The leaders of those countries use great authority over their people. ²⁶ But you should not be like that. The person who wants to be great among you must become your servant. ²⁷ The person who wants to be the most important person among you must work hard for everyone else. ²⁸ Even the Son of Man himself came to earth to be a servant to other people. He did not come here to have servants who must work for him. No, he came to die so that many people can be free.’

This is a song that David wrote.

A prayer for help in trouble^[a]

⁶ Learn a lesson from the ants, you lazy person! See how hard they work. ⁷ They have no leader or ruler, ⁸ but they get their food during the summer. At the time of harvest they store food to prepare for winter.

⁹ But you, you lazy man, you lie in bed too long! Will you never get up to work? ¹⁰ You say, ‘I will have a short sleep. I will rest quietly for a while.’ ¹¹ But while you sleep you will suddenly become poor. You will have nothing, as if someone has robbed you.