The Daily Audio Bible

²¹ We were all waiting by the Ahava river. I told the people not to eat any food, so that we could pray to God for help. We asked him to keep us safe on the journey, with our children and all our things. ²² I was ashamed to ask the king to send his soldiers with us to keep us safe. He could have sent soldiers who rode on horses with us, or other soldiers. But we had said to the king, ‘Our God helps people who trust him and he keeps them safe. But he is very angry with people who turn away from him and he punishes them.’

²³ So we ate no food and we prayed to our God about this. He answered our prayers.

²⁴ I chose 12 of the most important priests to do an important job, as well as Sherebiah, Hashabiah and ten of their brothers. ²⁵ I told them to take care of the valuable things that we had received for the temple of our God. These were silver and gold things and other special things that the king, his helpers and his officers had given to us. Israelite people who were living in Babylonia had also given us valuable things for the temple. I weighed all these things. ²⁶ I weighed 20,000 kilograms of silver and 3,500 kilograms of things made from silver. I weighed 3,500 kilograms of gold ²⁷ and 20 gold bowls that weighed 8.5 kilograms. I also gave to them two beautiful bowls made from bronze. They shone brightly and they were as valuable as gold.

²⁸ I said to the men, ‘Like these special things, you people are also special. You all belong to the Lord. People have chosen to give the silver and gold to the Lord, the God that your ancestors served. ²⁹ So you must be careful to keep them safe until you reach Jerusalem. When you get there, you must weigh them again. Do that in front of the leaders of the priests, the Levites and the leaders of Israelite families. Then they should store them in the rooms of the temple.’

³⁰ Then they gave the silver, the gold and the other valuable things to the priests and the Levites. They would take them to the temple of our God in Jerusalem.

³¹ We began our journey from the Ahava river on the 12th day of the first month. We left there to go to Jerusalem. Our God kept us safe on the journey. No enemies attacked us and nobody robbed us on the way. ³² So we arrived safely in Jerusalem. We rested there for three days.

³³ On the fourth day, we went to the house of our God. Then we weighed the silver, the gold and the other valuable things there. We gave them to Meremoth, the son of Uriah the priest. Phinehas's son, Eleazar was with him. Jeshua's son, Jozabad, and Binnui's son, Noadiah, were also there. They were Levites. ³⁴ They weighed and counted everything carefully. They wrote everything in a list as they weighed it.

³⁵ All the people who had returned from Babylon made burnt offerings as sacrifices to Israel's God. They offered to the Lord 12 bulls on behalf of all Israel. They also offered 96 male sheep and 77 lambs. They killed 12 male goats as a sin offering. They gave all these to the Lord as burnt offerings. ³⁶ They also gave the king's letter with its commands to his officers and rulers in the region west of the Euphrates river. The king's officers helped the Israelite people and the work of God's temple.

Ezra's prayer

9 When we had done all these things, the Jewish leaders came to speak to me. They said, ‘Some of the Israelites have done disgusting things, like the people of other nations do. Some priests and Levites have done the same bad things. They live in the same way as the other people who live in this land, the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have not kept themselves separate. ² They have married some of the foreign people's daughters. They have let their sons do the same thing. In this way, God's holy people have become mixed with the foreign people who live near to them. Our own leaders and officers have led the way in these bad things.’

³ When I heard this, I was very upset. I tore my shirt and my coat. I pulled out hair from my head and my beard. I was angry and ashamed. I sat down. ⁴ Then everyone who respected the words of Israel's God came around me. They were afraid of what God might do, because the Israelites who came from Babylon had not obeyed him. I continued to sit there, until the time of the evening sacrifice. I was still very upset.

⁵ When the time came for the evening sacrifice, I stood up. I still wore my shirt and coat that I had torn because I was so sad. Then I went down on my knees. I held out my hands and I prayed to the Lord, my God. ⁶ I said,

‘My God, I am too ashamed to look up at you. Our sins are very great. They are so many that they reach far above us. We are completely guilty. ⁷ Since our ancestors were alive, we have continued to do wrong things. Because of our sins, you have given our enemies power over us, our kings and our priests. Foreign kings and their armies have killed some of our people. They have made some of us prisoners. They have robbed us and they have caused us to be ashamed. And we are still ashamed today.

⁸ But now, for a short time, the Lord our God has been kind to us. He has let some of us remain alive. He has given us a safe place to live in this holy place. He has made our lives happier. He has given us rest from work as slaves. ⁹ We are still slaves, but our God has not left us alone to serve other people. Because he loves us, he has caused the kings of Persia to be kind to us. He has let us live so that we can build again the temple of our God. It had become a heap of stones, but now we have built it again. He has given us a safe place to live in Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah.

¹⁰ Our God, we can say nothing good about ourselves. We have turned away from your commands. ¹¹ Your servants the prophets told us your laws. You said, “You will go and live in a land that is unclean. The people who live there have done wicked things. The whole land has been made unclean by all the evil things that they have done. ¹² So you must not let your daughters marry their sons. And do not let your sons marry their daughters. Do not ever help them to live in peace and become strong. If you make yourselves separate from them, you will be strong yourselves. The land will give you good food to eat. After you die, the land will belong to your children, and to your descendants for ever.”

¹³ All these bad things have happened to us because we are guilty of many wicked things. But, our God, you still have not punished us as much as we deserve. You have let some of us remain alive. ¹⁴ But now we still refuse to obey your commands! Some of us have married foreign people who do disgusting things. If we continue to do that, you may destroy us all. None of us will remain alive! ¹⁵ Lord God of Israel, you are righteous. Only a few of us escaped from exile and remain as your people today. Now we stand before you as guilty people. Because of our sins, we do not deserve to come near to you.’

Send the bad person away from you

5 We have heard bad news about what is happening among you. Some of you are having sex in wrong ways. We have heard that one man is even having sex with his own father's wife! Even people who do not know God do not do things as bad as that! ² But, you are still proud of yourselves! Instead, you ought to be very sad and ashamed. You should have sent this man away from your group.

³ My body is not there with you, but my spirit is with you. It seems like I am present with you. So I have already decided about this man. This is how you should punish him for what he has done. ⁴ You have the authority of the Lord Jesus to do this. When you meet together as a group, my spirit will be with you. The power of our Lord Jesus will also be with you. ⁵ When you meet, put this man under Satan's authority. Satan will then destroy the man's body. Then God may save the man's spirit on the day when the Lord Jesus returns.

⁶ You should not be so proud of yourselves. Think about what yeast does in bread. A very small amount of yeast changes the whole loaf of bread. ⁷ The yeast in the flour is like one person who does wrong things. You must remove this old yeast from among you. Then you will be like a new loaf of bread. You are really like a loaf which has no yeast in it.^[a] You are pure, because Christ died as a sacrifice on our behalf. He is like the lamb that the Israelites killed for their Passover meal. ⁸ As a result, we can have our own Passover festival. We must remove everything that is bad from among us. That is like what the Israelites did when they removed all the old yeast from their homes. Instead we live in a way that is pure and honest. It is like we are eating bread which has no yeast in it.^[b]

⁹ I already wrote a letter to you. I told you that you must not be friends with people who have sex in wrong ways. ¹⁰ But I was not talking about people who do not know God. Those people have sex in wrong ways. They want many things to please themselves. They deceive people and they rob them. They worship idols. You could not keep away from all people like that, unless you left this world!

¹¹ Now I am telling you this: I was talking about people who say that they are believers. If they say that, but they have sex in a wrong way, do not be friends with them. It is the same if they want many things for themselves. They may worship idols. They may insult people. They may often get drunk. They may deceive people and rob them. If one of your own group does things like that, do not even agree to eat a meal with them. ^12-13 It is not right for me to decide about people who do not belong to the church group. God will judge those people. But you should decide what is right for the people who do belong to your group. Do what the Bible says:

This is a song that David wrote for the music leader.

Lord, please help me!