Blessings for Obedience

¹“You shall not make sidols for yourselves or erect an timage or upillar, and you shall not set up a vfigured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. ²wYou shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

³x“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, ⁴then yI will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. ⁵zYour threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And ayou shall eat your bread to the full and bdwell in your land securely. ⁶cI will give peace in the land, and dyou shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And eI will remove harmful beasts from the land, fand the sword shall not go through your land. ⁷You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. ⁸gFive of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. ⁹hI will turn to you and imake you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. ¹⁰You shall eat jold store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. ¹¹kI will make my dwelling1 among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. ¹²lAnd I mwill walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. ¹³nI am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. oAnd I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Punishment for Disobedience

¹⁴p“But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, ¹⁵if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but qbreak my covenant, ¹⁶then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with rwasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And syou shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. ¹⁷I will tset my face against you, and uyou shall be struck down before your enemies. vThose who hate you shall rule over you, and wyou shall flee when none pursues you. ¹⁸And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again xsevenfold for your sins, ¹⁹and I will break ythe pride of your power, and I zwill make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. ²⁰And ayour strength shall be spent in vain, for byour land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

²¹c“Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins. ²²And dI will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that eyour roads shall be deserted.

²³“And fif by this discipline you are not turned to me cbut walk contrary to me, ²⁴gthen I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁵And hI will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And if you gather within your cities, iI will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶jWhen I break your supply2 of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and kyou shall eat and not be satisfied.

²⁷“But lif in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, ²⁸then I will walk contrary to you min fury, and I myself will discipline you xsevenfold for your sins. ²⁹nYou shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰And oI will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and pcast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you. ³¹And I will qlay your cities waste and will rmake your sanctuaries desolate, and sI will not smell your pleasing aromas. ³²And tI myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be uappalled at it. ³³And vI will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

³⁴w“Then the land shall enjoy3 its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. ³⁵As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it. ³⁶And as for those of you who are left, xI will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The ysound of a zdriven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. ³⁷They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though none pursues. And ayou shall have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. ³⁹And those of you who are left shall brot away in your enemies' lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them.

⁴⁰“But if cthey confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they dcommitted against me, and also in walking contrary to me, ⁴¹so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their euncircumcised heart is fhumbled and they make amends for their iniquity, ⁴²then I will gremember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will hremember the land. ⁴³But wthe land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, iI will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and jbreak my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, kwhom I brought out of the land of Egypt lin the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.”

⁴⁶mThese are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses non Mount Sinai.

The Steadfast Love of the Lord

¹hShout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!

iPraise befits the upright.

²Give thanks to the Lord with the jlyre;

make melody to him with jthe harp of kten strings!

³Sing to him la new song;

play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

⁴For the word of the Lord is upright,

and all his work is done in mfaithfulness.

⁵He nloves righteousness and justice;

othe earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

⁶By pthe word of the Lord the heavens were made,

and by qthe breath of his mouth all rtheir host.

⁷He gathers the waters of the sea as sa heap;

he tputs the deeps in storehouses.

⁸Let all the earth fear the Lord;

let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!

⁹For uhe spoke, and it came to be;

he commanded, and it stood firm.

¹⁰The Lord vbrings the counsel of the nations to nothing;

he frustrates the plans of the peoples.

¹¹wThe counsel of the Lord stands forever,

the plans of his heart to all generations.

¹²xBlessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

the people whom he has ychosen as his heritage!

¹³The Lord zlooks down from heaven;

he sees all the children of man;

¹⁴from awhere he sits enthroned he blooks out

on all the inhabitants of the earth,

¹⁵he who fashions the hearts of them all

and observes all their deeds.

¹⁶cThe king is not saved by his great army;

a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

¹⁷dThe war horse is a false hope for salvation,

and by its great might it cannot rescue.

¹⁸Behold, ethe eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,

fon those who hope in his steadfast love,

¹⁹that he may gdeliver their soul from death

and keep them alive in hfamine.

²⁰Our soul iwaits for the Lord;

he is our jhelp and kour shield.

²¹For our heart is lglad in him,

because we mtrust in his holy name.

²²Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,

even as we hope in you.

Death Comes to All

¹But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, chow the righteous and the wise and their deeds are din the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. ²eIt is the same for all, since fthe same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,1 to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who gswears is as he who shuns an oath. ³This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that ethe same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and hmadness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. ⁴But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. ⁵For the living know that they will die, but ithe dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for jthe memory of them is forgotten. ⁶Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.

Enjoy Life with the One You Love

⁷Go, keat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

⁸lLet your garments be always white. Let not moil be lacking on your head.

⁹Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your nvain2 life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your oportion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. ¹⁰Whatever your hand finds to do, pdo it with your might,3 qfor there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Wisdom Better Than Folly

¹¹rAgain I saw that under the sun sthe race is not to the swift, nor tthe battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and uchance vhappen to them all. ¹²For man wdoes not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and xlike birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are ysnared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

¹³I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. ¹⁴There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. ¹⁵But there was found in it za poor, wise man, and he by his awisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. ¹⁶But I say that bwisdom is better than might, though cthe poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.

¹⁷The words of the wise heard in dquiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. ¹⁸eWisdom is better than weapons of war, but fone sinner destroys much good.

Greeting

¹Paul, a servant1 of God and aan apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and btheir knowledge of the truth, cwhich accords with godliness, ²din hope of eternal life, which God, ewho never lies, fpromised gbefore the ages began2 ³and hat the proper time manifested in his word3 ithrough the preaching jwith which I have been entrusted kby the command of God our Savior;

⁴To Titus, lmy true child in ma common faith:

nGrace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

Qualifications for Elders

⁵oThis is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and pappoint elders in every town as I directed you— ⁶qif anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife,4 and his children are believers5 and not open to the charge of rdebauchery or insubordination. ⁷For an overseer,6 sas God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not tbe arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent uor greedy for gain, ⁸but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, vand disciplined. ⁹He must whold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in xsound7 doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

¹⁰For there are many who are insubordinate, yempty talkers and deceivers, especially those of zthe circumcision party.8 ¹¹They must be silenced, since athey are upsetting whole families by teaching bfor shameful gain what they ought not to teach. ¹²cOne of the Cretans,9 a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”10 ¹³This testimony is true. Therefore drebuke them esharply, that they fmay be sound in the faith, ¹⁴gnot devoting themselves to Jewish myths and hthe commands of people iwho turn away from the truth. ¹⁵jTo the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and kunbelieving, nothing is pure; but both ltheir minds and their consciences are defiled. ¹⁶mThey profess to know God, but they ndeny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, ounfit for any good work.