Isaiah 44:8 Cross References - MSB

⁸ Do not tremble or fear. Have I not told you and declared it long ago? You are My witnesses! Is there any God but Me? There is no other Rock; I know not one.”

¹³ Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will judge the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will depart with many possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” ¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the halves of the carcasses. ¹⁸ On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates— ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

¹³ And there at the top the LORD was standing and saying, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you now lie. ¹⁴ Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and east and north and south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. ¹⁵ Look, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

³ “I am God,” He said, “the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there.

¹⁹ But his father refused. “I know, my son, I know!” he said. “He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great; nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations.”

¹ Then Jacob called for his sons and said, “Gather around so that I can tell you what will happen to you in the days to come: ² Come together and listen, O sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel. ³ Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. ⁴ Uncontrolled as the waters, you will no longer excel, because you went up to your father’s bed, onto my couch, and defiled it. ⁵ Simeon and Levi are brothers; their swords are weapons of violence. ⁶ May I never enter their council; may I never join their assembly. For they kill men in their anger, and hamstring oxen on a whim. ⁷ Cursed be their anger, for it is strong, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will disperse them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. ⁸ Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the necks of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down to you. ⁹ Judah is a young lion—my son, you return from the prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down; like a lioness, who dares to rouse him? ¹⁰ The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes and the allegiance of the nations is his. ¹¹ He ties his donkey to the vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He washes his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. ¹² His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk. ¹³ Zebulun shall dwell by the seashore and become a harbor for ships; his border shall extend to Sidon. ¹⁴ Issachar is a strong donkey, lying down between the sheepfolds. ¹⁵ He saw that his resting place was good and that his land was pleasant, so he bent his shoulder to the burden and submitted to labor as a servant. ¹⁶ Dan shall provide justice for his people as one of the tribes of Israel. ¹⁷ He will be a snake by the road, a viper in the path that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider tumbles backward. ¹⁸ I await Your salvation, O LORD. ¹⁹ Gad will be attacked by raiders, but he will attack their heels. ²⁰ Asher’s food will be rich; he shall provide royal delicacies. ²¹ Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful fawns. ²² Joseph is a fruitful vine—a fruitful vine by a spring, whose branches scale the wall. ²³ The archers attacked him with bitterness; they aimed at him in hostility. ²⁴ Yet he steadied his bow, and his strong arms were tempered by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, in the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel, ²⁵ by the God of your father who helps you, and by the Almighty who blesses you, with blessings of the heavens above, with blessings of the depths below, with blessings of the breasts and womb. ²⁶ The blessings of your father have surpassed the blessings of the ancient mountains and the bounty of the everlasting hills. May they rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince of his brothers. ²⁷ Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.” ²⁸ These are the tribes of Israel, twelve in all, and this was what their father said to them. He blessed them, and he blessed each one with a suitable blessing.

¹ “You must not make idols for yourselves or set up a carved image or sacred pillar; you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the LORD your God. ² You must keep My Sabbaths and have reverence for My sanctuary. I am the LORD. ³ If you follow My statutes and carefully keep My commandments, ⁴ I will give you rains in their season, and the land will yield its produce, and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing will continue until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have your fill of food to eat and will dwell securely in your land. ⁶ And I will give peace to the land, and you will lie down with nothing to fear. I will rid the land of dangerous animals, and no sword will pass through your land. ⁷ You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. ⁸ Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. ⁹ I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will establish My covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will still be eating the old supply of grain when you need to clear it out to make room for the new. ¹¹ And I will make My dwelling place among you, and My soul will not despise you. ¹² I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people. ¹³ I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness. ¹⁴ If, however, you fail to obey Me and to carry out all these commandments, ¹⁵ and if you reject My statutes, despise My ordinances, and neglect to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant, ¹⁶ then this is what I will do to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease, and fever that will destroy your sight and drain your life. You will sow your seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷ And I will set My face against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one pursues you. ¹⁸ And if after all this you will not obey Me, I will proceed to punish you sevenfold for your sins. ¹⁹ I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, ²⁰ and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit. ²¹ If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multiply your plagues seven times, according to your sins. ²² I will send wild animals against you to rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and reduce your numbers, until your roads lie desolate. ²³ And if in spite of these things you do not accept My discipline, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me, ²⁴ then I will act with hostility toward you, and I will strike you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁵ And I will bring a sword against you to execute the vengeance of the covenant. Though you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be delivered into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶ When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied. ²⁷ But if in spite of all this you do not obey Me, but continue to walk in hostility toward Me, ²⁸ then I will walk in fury against you, and I, even I, will punish you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁹ You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters. ³⁰ I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you. ³¹ I will reduce your cities to rubble and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will refuse to smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices. ³² And I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who dwell in it will be appalled. ³³ But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste. ³⁴ Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. ³⁵ As long as it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not receive during the Sabbaths when you lived in it. ³⁶ As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them. ³⁷ They will stumble over one another as before the sword, though no one is behind them. So you will not be able to stand against your enemies. ³⁸ You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you. ³⁹ Those of you who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away in their iniquity and will decay in the sins of their fathers. ⁴⁰ But if they will confess their iniquity and that of their fathers in the unfaithfulness that they practiced against Me, by which they have also walked in hostility toward Me— ⁴¹ and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity, ⁴² then I will remember My covenant with Jacob and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. ⁴³ For the land will be abandoned by them, and it will enjoy its Sabbaths by lying desolate without them. And they will pay the penalty for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and abhorred My statutes. ⁴⁴ Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or despise them so as to destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵ But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their fathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.” ⁴⁶ These are the statutes, ordinances, and laws that the LORD established between Himself and the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai.

²⁵ After you have children and grandchildren and you have been in the land a long time, if you then act corruptly and make an idol of any form—doing evil in the sight of the LORD your God and provoking Him to anger— ²⁶ I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ Then the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you. ²⁸ And there you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. ²⁹ But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. ³⁰ When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice. ³¹ For the LORD your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers, which He swore to them by oath.

³⁵ You were shown these things so that you would know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides Him.

³⁹ Know therefore this day and take to heart that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.

¹ “Now if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God and are careful to follow all His commandments I am giving you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ² And all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the voice of the LORD your God: ³ You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. ⁴ The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. ⁵ Your basket and kneading bowl will be blessed. ⁶ You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. ⁷ The LORD will cause the enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will march out against you in one direction but flee from you in seven. ⁸ The LORD will decree a blessing on your barns and on everything to which you put your hand; the LORD your God will bless you in the land He is giving you. ⁹ The LORD will establish you as His holy people, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. ¹⁰ Then all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you. ¹¹ The LORD will make you prosper abundantly—in the fruit of your womb, the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your land—in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. ¹² The LORD will open the heavens, His abundant storehouse, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none. ¹³ The LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward, if you hear and carefully follow the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am giving you today. ¹⁴ Do not turn aside to the right or to the left from any of the words I command you today, and do not go after other gods to serve them. ¹⁵ If, however, you do not obey the LORD your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: ¹⁶ You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. ¹⁷ Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. ¹⁸ The fruit of your womb will be cursed, as well as the produce of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. ¹⁹ You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. ²⁰ The LORD will send curses upon you, confusion and reproof in all to which you put your hand, until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the wickedness you have committed in forsaking Him. ²¹ The LORD will make the plague cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land that you are entering to possess. ²² The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. ²³ The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. ²⁴ The LORD will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed. ²⁵ The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ²⁶ Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the air and beasts of the earth, with no one to scare them away. ²⁷ The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs and itch from which you cannot be cured. ²⁸ The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind, ²⁹ and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you. ³⁰ You will be pledged in marriage to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house but will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but will not enjoy its fruit. ³¹ Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it. Your donkey will be taken away and not returned to you. Your flock will be given to your enemies, and no one will save you. ³² Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, while your eyes grow weary looking for them day after day, with no power in your hand. ³³ A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed. ³⁴ You will be driven mad by the sights you see. ³⁵ The LORD will afflict you with painful, incurable boils on your knees and thighs, from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. ³⁶ The LORD will bring you and the king you appoint to a nation neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone. ³⁷ You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the LORD will drive you. ³⁸ You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because the locusts will consume it. ³⁹ You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but will neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. ⁴⁰ You will have olive trees throughout your territory but will never anoint yourself with oil, because the olives will drop off. ⁴¹ You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity. ⁴² Swarms of locusts will consume all your trees and the produce of your land. ⁴³ The foreigner living among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink down lower and lower. ⁴⁴ He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail. ⁴⁵ All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, since you did not obey the LORD your God and keep the commandments and statutes He gave you. ⁴⁶ These curses will be a sign and a wonder upon you and your descendants forever. ⁴⁷ Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance, ⁴⁸ you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you. ⁴⁹ The LORD will bring a nation from afar, from the ends of the earth, to swoop down upon you like an eagle—a nation whose language you will not understand, ⁵⁰ a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young. ⁵¹ They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish. ⁵² They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you. ⁵³ Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you. ⁵⁴ The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived, ⁵⁵ refusing to share with any of them the flesh of his children he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within all your gates. ⁵⁶ The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter ⁵⁷ the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates. ⁵⁸ If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— ⁵⁹ He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. ⁶⁰ He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you. ⁶¹ The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. ⁶² You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left few in number, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. ⁶³ Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. ⁶⁴ Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. ⁶⁵ Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul. ⁶⁶ So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival. ⁶⁷ In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see. ⁶⁸ The LORD will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”

⁴ He is the Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are just. A God of faithfulness without injustice, righteous and upright is He.

³¹ For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies concede.

³⁹ See now that I am He; there is no God besides Me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.

² There is no one holy like the LORD. Indeed, there is no one besides You! And there is no Rock like our God.

³² For who is God besides the LORD? And who is the Rock except our God?

² “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah.

²² For I was ashamed to ask the king for an escort of soldiers and horsemen to protect us from our enemies on the road, since we had told him, “The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek Him, but His great anger is against all who forsake Him.”

³¹ For who is God besides the LORD? And who is the Rock except our God?

²⁵ Do not fear sudden danger or the ruin that overtakes the wicked, ²⁶ for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from the snare.

²⁹ You will sing as on the night of a holy festival, and your heart will rejoice like one who walks to the music of a flute, going up to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.

¹⁰ Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My right hand of righteousness. ¹¹ Behold, all who rage against you will be ashamed and disgraced; those who contend with you will be reduced to nothing and will perish. ¹² You will seek them but will not find them. Those who wage war against you will come to nothing. ¹³ For I am the LORD your God, who takes hold of your right hand and tells you: Do not fear, I will help you. ¹⁴ Do not fear, O worm of Jacob, O few men of Israel. I will help you,” declares the LORD. “Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

⁹ Behold, the former things have happened, and now I declare new things. Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.”

¹⁰ “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come.

¹² I alone decreed and saved and proclaimed—I, and not some foreign god among you. So you are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “that I am God.

² This is the word of the LORD, your Maker, who formed you from the womb and who will help you: “Do not be afraid, O Jacob My servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.

⁶ Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.

⁵ I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God but Me. I will equip you for battle, though you have not known Me, ⁶ so that all may know, from where the sun rises to where it sets, that there is none but Me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.

⁹ Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me.

⁵ Therefore I declared it to you long ago; I announced it before it came to pass, so that you could not claim, ‘My idol has done this; my carved image and molten god has ordained it.’

⁷ Who would not fear You, O King of nations? This is Your due. For among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like You.

¹⁰ As for you, O Jacob My servant, do not be afraid, declares the LORD, and do not be dismayed, O Israel. For I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their captivity! Jacob will return to quiet and ease, with no one to make him afraid. ¹¹ For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”

²⁸ But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the latter days. Your dream and the visions that came into your mind as you lay on your bed were these:

⁴⁷ The king said to Daniel, “Your God is truly the God of gods and Lord of kings, the Revealer of Mysteries, since you were able to reveal this mystery.”

¹⁶ Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. ¹⁷ If the God whom we serve exists, then He is able to deliver us from the blazing fiery furnace and from your hand, O king. ¹⁸ But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden statue you have set up.” ¹⁹ At this, Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and the expression on his face changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He gave orders to heat the furnace seven times hotter than usual, ²⁰ and he commanded some mighty men of valor in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the blazing fiery furnace. ²¹ So they were tied up, wearing robes, trousers, turbans, and other clothes, and they were thrown into the blazing fiery furnace. ²² The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the fiery flames killed the men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. ²³ And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, firmly bound, fell into the blazing fiery furnace. ²⁴ Suddenly King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in amazement and asked his advisers, “Did we not throw three men, firmly bound, into the fire?” “Certainly, O king,” they replied. ²⁵ “Look!” he exclaimed. “I see four men, unbound and unharmed, walking around in the fire—and the fourth looks like a son of the gods!” ²⁶ Then Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the blazing fiery furnace and called out, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out!” So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire, ²⁷ and when the satraps, prefects, governors, and royal advisers had gathered around, they saw that the fire had no effect on the bodies of these men. Not a hair of their heads was singed, their robes were unaffected, and there was no smell of fire on them. ²⁸ Nebuchadnezzar declared, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who trusted in Him. They violated the king’s command and risked their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.

²⁵ You will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling will be with the beasts of the field. You will feed on grass like an ox and be drenched with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass you by, until you acknowledge that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom He wishes.

²³ Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. The vessels from His house were brought to you, and as you drank wine from them with your nobles, wives, and concubines, you praised your gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you have failed to glorify the God who holds in His hand your very breath and all your ways. ²⁴ Therefore He sent the hand that wrote the inscription. ²⁵ Now this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. ²⁶ And this is the interpretation of the message: MENE means that God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. ²⁷ TEKEL means that you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. ²⁸ PERES means that your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.” ²⁹ Then Belshazzar gave the command, and they clothed Daniel in purple, placed a gold chain around his neck, and proclaimed him the third highest ruler in the kingdom. ³⁰ That very night Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans was slain,

²² My God sent His angel and shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, for I was found innocent in His sight, and I have done no wrong against you, O king.”

²⁷ Then you will know that I am present in Israel and that I am the LORD your God, and there is no other. My people will never again be put to shame.

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

¹⁰ “Have the people sit down,” Jesus said. Now there was plenty of grass in that place, so the men sat down, about five thousand of them.

³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

¹⁵ “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.

²³ For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore Him whom you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you. ²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. ²⁵ Nor is He served by the hands of men, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one blood He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ The Lord intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’ ²⁹ Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination. ³⁰ Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”

¹ Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.

² And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.