Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had resided, the land of Canaan.
This is the account of Jacob. When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was tending the flock with his brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because Joseph had been born to him in his old age; so he made him a robe of many colors.
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.
. . .
The LORD will devote to destruction the gulf of the Sea of Egypt; with a scorching wind He will sweep His hand over the Euphrates. He will split it into seven streams for men to cross with dry sandals.
Set me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol. Its sparks are fiery flames, the fiercest blaze of all.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills with a balance?
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.
Wisdom has built her house; she has carved out her seven pillars.
She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table.
She has sent out her maidservants; she calls out from the heights of the city.
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” she says to him who lacks judgment.
“Come, eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed.
. . .
You unleash your mouth for evil and unharness your tongue for deceit.
You sit and malign your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.
You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you. But now I rebuke you and accuse you to your face.
These curses will be a sign and a wonder upon you and your descendants forever.
Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart in all your abundance,
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.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of adversity come and the years approach of which you will say, “I find no pleasure in them,”
In the twelve months before her turn to go to King Xerxes, the harem regulation required each young woman to receive beauty treatments with oil of myrrh for six months, and then with perfumes and cosmetics for another six months.
The LORD also said to Moses, “Take fragrant spices—gum resin, onycha, galbanum, and pure frankincense—in equal measures,
and make a fragrant blend of incense, the work of a perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy.
Grind some of it into fine powder and place it in front of the Testimony in the Tent of Meeting, where I will meet with you. It shall be most holy to you.
You are never to use this formula to make incense for yourselves; you shall regard it as holy to the LORD.
Anyone who makes something like it to enjoy its fragrance shall be cut off from his people.”
And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.”
So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every bird of flight after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so.
. . .
When Aaron has finished purifying the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, he is to bring forward the live goat.
Then he is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites in regard to all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man appointed for the task.
The goat will carry on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place, and the man will release it into the wilderness.
Then he shall take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
After Aaron casts lots for the two goats, one for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat,
he shall present the goat chosen by lot for the LORD and sacrifice it as a sin offering.
But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement by sending it into the wilderness as the scapegoat.
For the life of all flesh is its blood. Therefore I have told the Israelites, ‘You must not eat the blood of any living thing, because the life of all flesh is its blood; whoever eats it must be cut off.’
I have taken from the sons of Israel the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the contribution of their peace offerings, and I have given them to Aaron the priest and his sons as a permanent portion from the sons of Israel.’”
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
Without speech or language, without a sound to be heard,
For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
Without speech or language, without a sound to be heard,
their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun.
Like a bridegroom emerging from his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course,
. . .
Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but my ears You have opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require.
Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll:
I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.”
Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever, and justice is the scepter of Your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you above your companions with the oil of joy.
All your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from palaces of ivory the harps make you glad.
For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggle in their death; their bodies are well-fed.
They are free of the burdens others carry; they are not afflicted like other men.
Therefore pride is their necklace; a garment of violence covers them.
From their prosperity proceeds iniquity; the imaginations of their hearts run wild.
. . .
A Psalm of the sons of Korah. A song. He has founded His city on the holy mountains.
The LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are ascribed to you, O city of God. Selah
“I will mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know Me—along with Philistia, Tyre, and Cush—when I say, ‘This one was born in Zion.’”
And it will be said of Zion: “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High Himself will establish her.”
. . .
How beautiful you are, my darling—how very beautiful! Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead.