israel and palestine

¹⁸On that day, God formed a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your offspring I will give this land, from the river of Egypt, even to the great river Euphrates:

³For this reason, I am not willing to destroy them before your face, so that you may have enemies, and so that their gods may be your ruin.”

²“Moses, my servant, has died. Rise up, and cross this Jordan, you and all the people with you, into the land which I will give to the sons of Israel. ³I will deliver to you every place that the step of your foot will tread upon, just as I said to Moses.

²³Also, the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for it is mine, and you are newcomers and settlers to me.

¹“But as for you, son of man, prophesy over the mountains of Israel, and you shall say: O mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord. ²Thus says the Lord God: Because the enemy has said about you: ‘It is well! The everlasting heights have been given to us as an inheritance!’ ³because of this, prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord God: Because you have been made desolate, and you have been trampled on every side, and you have been made into an inheritance for the remainder of the nations, and because you rose up, over the tip of the tongue and over the shame of the people, ⁴because of this, O mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains, and to the hills, to the torrents, and to the valleys, and to the deserts, and to the ruins, and to the forsaken cities, which have been depopulated and ridiculed by the remainder of the nations all around: ⁵Because of this, thus says the Lord God: In the fire of my zeal, I have spoken about the remainder of the nations, and about all of Idumea, who have given my land to themselves, joyfully, as an inheritance, and with all the heart and mind, and who have cast it out, so that they may lay waste to it. ⁶Therefore, prophesy over the soil of Israel, and you shall say to the mountains, and to the hills, to the ridges, and to the valleys: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I have spoken in my zeal and in my fury, because you have endured the shame of the Gentiles.

¹Then the Lord said to Abram: “Depart from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, and come into the land that I will show you. ²And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and magnify your name, and you will be blessed. ³I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

⁴For Gaza will be destroyed, and Ashkelon will be in the desert; they will expel Ashdod at midday, and Ekron will be eradicated. ⁵Woe to you who inhabit the coast of the sea, you people of perdition. The word of the Lord is over you, Canaan, the land of the Philistines, and I will disperse you, so that not one inhabitant will be left. ⁶And the coastline of the sea will be a resting place for shepherds and a fence line for cattle. ⁷And it will be the line of him who will remain from the house of Judah. There they will pasture. In the houses of Ashkelon, they will rest towards evening. For the Lord their God will visit them, and he will turn away their captivity.

²O God, who will ever be like you? Do not be silent, and do not be unmoved, O God. ³For behold, your enemies have sounded off, and those who hate you have carried out a head. ⁴They have acted with malice in counsel over your people, and they have plotted against your holy ones. ⁵They have said, “Come, let us scatter them from the nations and not allow the name of Israel to be remembered any longer.” ⁶For they plotted unanimously. Joined together against you, they ordained a covenant: ⁷the tabernacle of Edomites and Ishmaelites, and Moab and the Hagarites,

¹The burden of the word of the Lord upon Israel. The Lord, stretching forth the heavens and founding the earth and forming the spirit of man within him, says: ²Behold, I will set Jerusalem as a lintel of the effects of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, yet even Judah will be in the blockade against Jerusalem. ³And this shall be: In that day, I will set Jerusalem as a burdensome stone to every people. All who will lift it up will be torn to pieces. And all the kingdoms of the earth will be gathered together against her. ⁴In that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with stupor and his rider with madness. And I will open my eyes upon the house of Judah, and I will strike every horse of the people with blindness. ⁵And the governors of Judah will say in their heart, “Let the inhabitants of Jerusalem be strengthened for me, in the Lord of hosts, their God.” ⁶In that day, I will set the governors of Judah like a flaming furnace among wood, and like a flaming torch among hay. And they will devour, to the right and to the left, all the surrounding peoples. And Jerusalem will be inhabited again, in her own place, in Jerusalem.

¹Joshua was old and advanced in age, and the Lord said to him: “You have grown old, and are aged, and a very wide land remains, which has not yet been divided by lot, ²specifically, all of Galilee, Philistia, and all of Geshur; ³from the muddy river, which irrigates Egypt, as far as the border of Ekron toward the north, the land of Canaan, which is divided among the rulers of Philistia: the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gathites, and the Ekronites; ⁴truly, to the south are the Hivites, all the land of Canaan, and Mearah of the Sidonians, as far as Aphek and the borders of the Amorite ⁵and his confines; also, the region of Lebanon toward the east, from Baalgad, under mount Hermon, until you enter into Hamath;

⁸And knowing their sorrow, I have descended in order to free them from the hands of the Egyptians, and to lead them from that land into a good and spacious land, into a land which flows with milk and honey, to the places of the Canaanite, and Hittite, and Amorite, and Perizzite, and Hivite, and Jebusite.

⁷Now it happened that, when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabs, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites had heard that the walls of Jerusalem had been closed, and that the breaches had begun to be repaired, they were exceedingly angry. ⁸And they all gathered together, so that they might go forth and fight against Jerusalem, and so that they might prepare ambushes.

⁴And he left them, so that by them he might test Israel, as to whether or not they would listen to the commandments of the Lord, which he instructed to their fathers by the hand of Moses.