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The LORD is great and is to be highly praised in the city of our God, on his sacred hill.
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Zion, the mountain of God, is high and beautiful; the city of the great king brings joy to all the world.
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God has shown that there is safety with him inside the fortresses of the city.
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The kings gathered together and came to attack Mount Zion.
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But when they saw it, they were amazed; they were afraid and ran away.
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There they were seized with fear and anguish, like a woman about to bear a child,
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like ships tossing in a furious storm.
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We have heard what God has done, and now we have seen it in the city of our God, the LORD Almighty; he will keep the city safe forever.
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Inside your Temple, O God, we think of your constant love.
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You are praised by people everywhere, and your fame extends over all the earth. You rule with justice;
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let the people of Zion be glad! You give right judgments; let there be joy in the cities of Judah!
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People of God, walk around Zion and count the towers;
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take notice of the walls and examine the fortresses, so that you may tell the next generation:
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"This God is our God forever and ever; he will lead us for all time to come."
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Then all the army leaders, including Johanan son of Kareah and Azariah son of Hoshaiah, came with people of every class
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and said to me, "Please do what we ask you! Pray to the LORD our God for us. Pray for all of us who have survived. Once there were many of us; but now only a few of us are left, as you can see.
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Pray that the LORD our God will show us the way we should go and what we should do."
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I answered, "Very well, then. I will pray to the LORD our God, just as you have asked, and whatever he says, I will tell you. I will not keep back anything from you."
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Then they said to me, "May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not obey all the commands that the LORD our God gives you for us.
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Whether it pleases us or not, we will obey the LORD our God, to whom we are asking you to pray. All will go well with us if we obey him."
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Ten days later the LORD spoke to me;
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so I called together Johanan, all the army leaders who were with him, and all the other people.
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I said to them, "The LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me with your request has said,
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'If you are willing to go on living in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not pull you up. The destruction I brought on you has caused me great sorrow.
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Stop being afraid of the king of Babylonia. I am with you, and I will rescue you from his power.
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Because I am merciful, I will make him have mercy on you and let you go back home. I, the LORD, have spoken.'
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"But you people who are left in Judah must not disobey the LORD your God and refuse to live in this land. You must not say, 'No, we will go and live in Egypt, where we won't face war any more or hear the call to battle or go hungry.' If you say this, then the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says, 'If you are determined to go and live in Egypt,
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then the war that you fear will overtake you, and the hunger you dread will follow you, and you will die there in Egypt.
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All the people who are determined to go and live in Egypt will die either in war or of starvation or disease. Not one of them will survive, not one will escape the disaster that I am going to bring on them.'
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"The LORD, the God of Israel, says, 'Just as my anger and fury were poured out on the people of Jerusalem, so my fury will be poured out on you if you go to Egypt. You will be a horrifying sight; people will make fun of you and use your name as a curse. You will never see this place again.' "
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Then I continued, "The LORD has told you people who are left in Judah not to go to Egypt. And so I warn you now
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that you are making a fatal mistake. You asked me to pray to the LORD our God for you, and you promised that you would do everything that he commands.
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And now I have told you, but you are disobeying everything that the LORD our God sent me to tell you.
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So then, remember this: you will die in war or of starvation or disease in the land where you want to go and live."
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I finished telling the people everything that the LORD their God had sent me to tell them.
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Then Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other arrogant men said to me, "You are lying. The LORD our God did not send you to tell us not to go and live in Egypt.
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Baruch son of Neriah has stirred you up against us, so that the Babylonians will gain power over us and can either kill us or take us away to Babylonia."
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So neither Johanan nor any of the army officers nor any of the people would obey the LORD's command to remain in the land of Judah.
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Then Johanan and all the army officers took everybody left in Judah away to Egypt, together with all the people who had returned from the nations where they had been scattered:
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the men, the women, the children, and the king's daughters. They took everyone whom Nebuzaradan the commanding officer had left under the care of Gedaliah, including Baruch and me.
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They disobeyed the LORD's command and went into Egypt as far as the city of Tahpanhes.
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There the LORD said to me,
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"Get some large stones and bury them in the mortar of the pavement in front of the entrance to the government building here in the city, and let some of the Israelites see you do it.
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Then tell them that I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, am going to bring my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to this place, and he will put his throne over these stones that you buried, and will spread the royal tent over them.
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Nebuchadnezzar will come and defeat Egypt. Those people who are doomed to die of disease will die of disease, those doomed to be taken away as prisoners will be taken away as prisoners, and those doomed to be killed in war will be killed in war.
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I will set fire to the temples of Egypt's gods, and the king of Babylonia will either burn their gods or carry them off. As shepherds pick their clothes clean of lice, so the king of Babylonia will pick the land of Egypt clean and then leave victorious.
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He will destroy the sacred stone monuments at Heliopolis in Egypt and will burn down the temples of the Egyptian gods."
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The LORD spoke to me concerning all the Israelites living in Egypt, in the cities of Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Memphis, and in the southern part of the country.
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The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, said, "You yourselves have seen the destruction I brought on Jerusalem and all the other cities of Judah. Even now they are still in ruins, and no one lives in them
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because their people had done evil and had made me angry. They offered sacrifices to other gods and served gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever worshiped.
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I kept sending you my servants the prophets, who told you not to do this terrible thing that I hate.
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But you would not listen or pay any attention. You would not give up your evil practice of sacrificing to other gods.
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So I poured out my anger and fury on the towns of Judah and on the streets of Jerusalem, and I set them on fire. They were left in ruins and became a horrifying sight, as they are today.
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"And so I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, now ask why you are doing such an evil thing to yourselves. Do you want to bring destruction on men and women, children and babies, so that none of your people will be left?
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Why do you make me angry by worshiping idols and by sacrificing to other gods here in Egypt, where you have come to live? Are you doing this just to destroy yourselves, so that every nation on earth will make fun of you and use your name as a curse?
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Have you forgotten all the wicked things that have been done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem by your ancestors, by the kings of Judah and their wives, and by you and your wives?
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But to this day you have not humbled yourselves. You have not honored me or lived according to all the laws that I gave you and your ancestors.
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"So then, I, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, will turn against you and destroy all Judah.
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As for the people of Judah who are left and are determined to go and live in Egypt, I will see to it that all of them are destroyed. All of them, great and small, will die in Egypt, either in war or of starvation. They will be a horrifying sight; people will make fun of them and use their name as a curse.
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I will punish those who live in Egypt, just as I punished Jerusalem---with war, starvation, and disease.
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None of the people of Judah who are left and have come to Egypt to live will escape or survive. Not one of them will return to Judah, where they long to live once again. No one will return except a few refugees."
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Then all the men who knew that their wives offered sacrifices to other gods, and all the women who were standing there, including the Israelites who lived in southern Egypt---a large crowd in all---said to me,
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"We refuse to listen to what you have told us in the name of the LORD.
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We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven, and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles.
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But ever since we stopped sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and stopped pouring out wine offerings to her, we have had nothing, and our people have died in war and of starvation."
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And the women added, "When we baked cakes shaped like the Queen of Heaven, offered sacrifices to her, and poured out wine offerings to her, our husbands approved of what we were doing."
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Then I said to all the men and the women who had answered me in this way,
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"As for the sacrifices which you and your ancestors, your kings and your leaders, and the people of the land offered in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem---do you think that the LORD did not know about them or that he forgot them?
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This very day your land lies in ruins and no one lives in it. It has become a horrifying sight, and people use its name as a curse because the LORD could no longer endure your wicked and evil practices.
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This present disaster has come on you because you offered sacrifices to other gods and sinned against the LORD by not obeying all his commands."
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I told all the people, especially the women, what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, was saying to the people of Judah living in Egypt: "Both you and your wives have made solemn promises to the Queen of Heaven. You promised that you would offer sacrifices to her and pour out wine offerings to her, and you have kept your promises. Very well, then! Keep your promises! Carry out your vows!
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But now listen to the vow that I, the LORD, have made in my mighty name to all you Israelites in Egypt: Never again will I let any of you use my name to make a vow by saying, 'I swear by the living Sovereign LORD!'
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I will see to it that you will not prosper, but will be destroyed. All of you will die, either in war or of disease, until not one of you is left.
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But a few of you will escape death and return from Egypt to Judah. Then the survivors will know whose words have come true, mine or theirs.
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I, the LORD, will give you proof that I will punish you in this place and that my promise to bring destruction on you will come true.
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I will hand over King Hophra of Egypt to his enemies who want to kill him, just as I handed over King Zedekiah of Judah to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, who was his enemy and wanted to kill him."
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(12:18) (And the dragon stood on the seashore.) Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads; on each of its horns there was a crown, and on each of its heads there was a name that was insulting to God.
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The beast looked like a leopard, with feet like a bear's feet and a mouth like a lion's mouth. The dragon gave the beast his own power, his throne, and his vast authority.
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One of the heads of the beast seemed to have been fatally wounded, but the wound had healed. The whole earth was amazed and followed the beast.
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Everyone worshiped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshiped the beast also, saying, "Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?"
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The beast was allowed to make proud claims which were insulting to God, and it was permitted to have authority for forty-two months.
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It began to curse God, his name, the place where he lives, and all those who live in heaven.
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It was allowed to fight against God's people and to defeat them, and it was given authority over every tribe, nation, language, and race.
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All people living on earth will worship it, except those whose names were written before the creation of the world in the book of the living which belongs to the Lamb that was killed.
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"Listen, then, if you have ears!
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Whoever is meant to be captured will surely be captured; whoever is meant to be killed by the sword will surely be killed by the sword. This calls for endurance and faith on the part of God's people."
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Then I saw another beast, which came up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb's horns, and it spoke like a dragon.
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It used the vast authority of the first beast in its presence. It forced the earth and all who live on it to worship the first beast, whose wound had healed.
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This second beast performed great miracles; it made fire come down out of heaven to earth in the sight of everyone.
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And it deceived all the people living on earth by means of the miracles which it was allowed to perform in the presence of the first beast. The beast told them to build an image in honor of the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived.
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The second beast was allowed to breathe life into the image of the first beast, so that the image could talk and put to death all those who would not worship it.
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The beast forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to have a mark placed on their right hands or on their foreheads.
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No one could buy or sell without this mark, that is, the beast's name or the number that stands for the name.
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This calls for wisdom. Whoever is intelligent can figure out the meaning of the number of the beast, because the number stands for the name of someone. Its number is 666.
