The Daily Audio Bible

The Lord's message to Edom

35 The Lord gave this message to me: ² ‘Son of man, look towards Mount Seir.^[a] Then speak my message to warn it. ³ Say to it, “This is what the Almighty Lord says: Listen! I am your enemy, Mount Seir. I will attack you, so that you become like a desert. ⁴ I will destroy your towns. They will become heaps of stones where nobody lives. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

⁵ You have always hated Israel's people. Because of that, you did not help them when their enemy attacked them and killed them. They were in great trouble when I punished them for their sins.^{[b] 6} So I, the Almighty Lord, promise you this, as surely as I live. I will allow your enemies to kill you. If you run away from them, they will chase you and kill you. You were happy to see an enemy kill my people, so an enemy will kill you also. ⁷ I will make Mount Seir become like a desert where nobody lives. I will destroy anyone who travels through that place. ⁸ Dead bodies will lie all over your mountains. The bodies of men who have died in battle will lie on your hills and in your valleys. ⁹ I will make you a desert for ever and nobody will live in your towns. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

¹⁰ You said, ‘We will take these two nations for ourselves. Israel and Judah will belong to us.’ You said that when I, the Lord, was there with them. ¹¹ So I promise that I will punish you, as surely as I live. That is what the Almighty Lord says. Because you were angry and jealous, you hated my people, So I will punish you as you deserve. When I judge you, my people will know who I am. ¹² Then you will know that I, the Lord, have heard you. You have insulted the mountains of Israel. You said, ‘Those mountains have become a desert. So we can take them for ourselves.’ ¹³ You said many proud things to insult me. You thought that you were greater than me. I heard everything that you said!

¹⁴ So this is what the Almighty Lord says: I will make your land become a desert. All the people in the world will be very happy when they see this. ¹⁵ You were happy when you saw me punish Israel's people so that their land became a desert. Because you were happy, I will punish you as you deserve. Mount Seir and all the land of Edom will become an empty desert. Then Edom's people will know that I am the Lord.” ’

A prophecy to the mountains of Israel

36 The Lord said, ‘Son of man, speak my message to the mountains of Israel. Say to them: “Listen to the Lord's message, you mountains of Israel. ² This is what the Almighty Lord says: Your enemies have laughed at you. They have said, ‘The old mountains now belong to us!’ ”

³ So now prophesy to those mountains. Tell them, “This is what the Almighty Lord says: Your enemies attacked you from every side. They won against you, so that you belonged to other nations. People talked about you and they insulted you.

⁴ Because of this, mountains of Israel, listen to this message from me, the Almighty Lord. I say this to the hills, the mountains and the valleys. I say this to the empty places and the towns that have become heaps of stones where nobody lives. This has caused the nations around you to laugh at you and insult you.

⁵ So this is what the Almighty Lord says: I am very angry with those nations and I will punish them. I am even more angry with the people of Edom because they insulted my people. They were happy to take my land for themselves so that their animals could eat the grass.”

⁶ So prophesy to the hills and mountains of Israel, and to its valleys. Tell them, “This is what the Almighty Lord says: I am very angry because the nations around you have caused you to be ashamed. ⁷ So this is what I, the Almighty Lord, say: I make a strong promise that those nations will soon be ashamed themselves.

⁸ But I say this to you mountains of Israel. Trees will grow on you again and crops will provide much food for my people. My people will soon come home. ⁹ I am your friend and I will take care of you. Men will plough your ground and they will plant seeds in it. ¹⁰ I will cause more and more Israelite people to live on you, and in all the land. They will live in the towns and they will repair the broken buildings. ¹¹ I will make more and more people and animals live on you. They will give birth to many young ones, so that they grow in number. I will cause many people to live on you, as they did a long time ago. I will help you with more good things than you had when you first became a land for my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord. ¹² I will cause my people, the Israelites, to walk on you. You will belong to them as the place where they and their descendants live. You will never again cause their children to die.

¹³ This is what the Almighty Lord says: People are saying to you, Israel's land, ‘You destroy people. You take away the nation's children.’ ¹⁴ So now I, the Almighty Lord, tell you this: You will no longer destroy people or take away the nation's children. ¹⁵ People from other nations will no longer insult you or laugh at you. You will no longer cause your nation to suffer. That is what the Almighty Lord says.” ’

¹⁶ The Lord gave this message to me: ¹⁷ ‘Son of man, Israel's people made their own land unclean when they lived there. They lived in a bad way and they did bad things. It made them unclean, like a woman when she bleeds each month. ¹⁸ So I punished them with my great anger. I punished them because they murdered people on their land. And they made the land unclean with idols that they worshipped. ¹⁹ I sent them to live among people of other nations in foreign countries. I punished them as they deserved for the bad things that they did.

²⁰ But among the nations where they went, they continued to bring shame to my holy name. People said, “These are the Lord's people, but they had to leave the land that he gave to them.” ²¹ I wanted them to give honour to my holy name. Instead, Israel's people brought me shame among the nations where they went.

²² So you must say to Israel's people, “This is what the Almighty Lord says: I will help you, Israel's people. But it is not because you deserve it. I will do it so that people give honour to my holy name. You brought me shame among the nations where you went. ²³ Now I will show them that my name is great and holy. You brought shame to my name. But I will help you so that the nations can see that I am great. When I do that, they will know that I am the Lord. That is what I, the Almighty Lord, say.

²⁴ I will take you out from the nations and all the foreign countries where you have been living. I will bring you back to your own land. ²⁵ You will become pure, as if I splash you with clean water. I will remove all the things that make you unclean. I will take away the idols that you worship. ²⁶ I will give you new thoughts. I will put a new spirit in you. You will no longer refuse to obey me. Instead, you will want to please me. ²⁷ I will put my Spirit in you, so that you obey my commands. You will be careful to obey my laws.

²⁸ At that time, you will live in the land that I gave to your ancestors. You will be my people and I will be your God. ²⁹ I will save you from all the things that made you unclean. I will cause the land to give you plenty of grain to eat. You will no longer have any famines. ³⁰ The trees will provide plenty of fruit. And crops will grow well in the fields. Other nations will no longer make you feel ashamed because you have no food to eat. ³¹ Then you will remember the evil way that you lived. You will remember the bad things that you did. You will be ashamed of yourselves because of the sins and the disgusting things that you did. ³² I want you to know that I am not doing this because you deserve it. You should be ashamed, Israel's people. You should feel sorry for the things that you have done. That is what the Almighty Lord says.

³³ This is what the Almighty Lord says: At that time, I will make you clean from all your sins. When I do that, I will send you back to live in your towns. You will build your houses again that had become heaps of stones. ³⁴ You will plough the empty land again to provide food. People who travel there will no longer think that the land is useless. ³⁵ They will say, ‘This land was like a desert, but now it is like the Garden of Eden.^[c] People now live in the cities that had become heaps of stones. The cities now have strong walls.’ ³⁶ Then the nations that still live around you will see what has happened. They will know that I, the Lord, have mended the broken cities. They will know that I have planted crops again in the fields that were empty. I, the Lord, have said this, and I will do it!”

^37-38 This is what the Almighty Lord says: I will listen to what Israel's people are asking me to do for them. I will allow them to grow in number, like a big crowd of sheep. They will be as many as the sheep that people brought to Jerusalem as offerings at a festival. I will fill the broken cities with crowds of people, as many as those sheep. Then they will know that I am the Lord.’

James says ‘Hello’

1 This letter is from me, James. I am a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.^[a]

I am writing to the 12 tribes of God's people who live in many different parts of the world. I say ‘hello’ to all of you.^[b]

What to do when you have troubles

² My Christian friends, remember to be happy, even when many kinds of trouble happen to you. Troubles can help you. ³ God wants to see if you really trust him. Your faith in God will become stronger as a result of these troubles. ⁴ So you should continue to trust God all the time. Then you will become stronger as a believer. You will become completely how you should be. You will not need anything more.

⁵ But maybe you need to know how to be wise. Then ask God to help you. He is ready to give everyone what they need. And he never says that it is wrong to ask. So God will help you to be wise. ⁶ But when you ask God for something, you must trust him completely. Do not have other ideas in your mind. People who are not sure that God will help them are like the waves in the sea. The wind blows the water one way and then it blows the water another way. ^7-8 A person who is like that never knows what to do. He has many ideas in his mind. He should not think that he will receive anything from the Lord.

⁹ The believers in your group who are poor should be happy. Why? Because God says that they are valuable to him. ¹⁰ And the believers who are rich should also be happy. Why? Because God has shown them that they are not so great. Rich people should remember that they will die, like a wild flower quickly dies. ¹¹ When the sun rises, its heat causes plants to become dry. Their flowers fall to the ground. They are no longer beautiful. In the same way, rich people will die when they are busy in their work. Then they will have nothing.

¹² Some people continue to trust God even when troubles happen. God will bless those people, if they show that they really trust him. He will give them the gift which is life with him. He has promised to give this gift to all people who love him.

¹³ When troubles happen to you, you may want to do something bad. But do not say, ‘God is causing me to do wrong things.’ Nothing can make God do anything bad. And God does not try to make anyone do a wrong thing. ¹⁴ It is our own thoughts that make us do bad things. When we want to do something wrong, our thoughts lead us in a bad way. ¹⁵ We may agree to do what our bad thoughts tell us to do. When we do that, it becomes a sin. Then, we may not stop doing those bad things. If we continue to live like that, the result of our sins is death.^[c]

¹⁶ My Christian friends, do not make a mistake. ¹⁷ Remember that every good gift comes to us from God. He only does what will help us. He is our Father in heaven. He made everything in the sky that gives us light. Those things do not give us the same light all the time. They change, but God does not change. ¹⁸ He chose to make us his children. He used his true message to do that. Because of that, we are like the first special gift that belongs to him from among everything that he has made.

God saved me from death^[a]

²³ Always take care of your sheep and your goats, as well as your cows. ²⁴ Your riches will not be there for ever. One family does not rule a kingdom for ever. ²⁵ One day you will cut the grass in your fields and then new grass will grow. You will store the grass that has grown on the hills. ²⁶ Then you will use the wool from your sheep to make clothes. You make clothes from your sheep's wool. You will sell your goats, and you will buy a field. ²⁷ You will have enough milk from your goats to feed yourself, your family and your female servants.^[a]