Daily reading in version Bible In Basic English - English
Then turning we took the road to Bashan: and Og, king of Bashan, came out against us with all his people, and made an attack on us at Edrei.
And the Lord said to me, Have no fear of him: for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hands do to him as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was ruling in Heshbon.
So the Lord our God gave up Og, king of Bashan, and all his people into our hands and we overcame him so completely that all his people came to their end in the fight.
At that time we took all his towns there was not one town of the sixty towns, all the country of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan, which we did not take.
All these towns had high walls round them with doors and locks and in addition we took a great number of unwalled towns.
And we put them to the curse, every town together with men, women, and children.
But we took for ourselves all the cattle and the stored wealth of the towns.
At that time we took their land from the two kings of the Amorites on the far side of Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon
(By the Sidonians, Hermon is named Sirion, and by the Amorites Shenir)
All the towns of the table-land and all Gilead and Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
(For Og, king of Bashan, was the last of all the Rephaim his bed was made of iron is it not in Rabbah, in the land of the children of Ammon? It was nine cubits long and four cubits wide, measured by the common cubit.)
And this land which we took at that time, from Aroer by the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill-country of Gilead with its towns, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites.
The rest of Gilead and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, all the land of Argob, together with Bashan, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (This land is named the land of the Rephaim.
Jair, the son of Manasseh, took all the land of Argob, as far as the country of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, naming it, Bashan, Havvoth-Jair after himself, as it is to this day.)
And Gilead I gave to Machir.
And the land from Gilead to the valley of the Arnon, with the middle of the valley as a limit, as far as the river Jabbok which is the limit of the country of the children of Ammon, I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites
As well as the Arabah, with the river Jordan as their limit, from Chinnereth to the Salt Sea, under the slopes of Pisgah to the east.
At that time I gave you orders, saying, The Lord has given you this land for your heritage: all the men of war are to go over armed before your brothers the children of Israel.
But your wives and your little ones and your cattle (for it is clear that you have much cattle) may go on living in the towns I have given you
Till the Lord has given rest to your brothers as to you, and till they have taken for themselves the land which the Lord your God is giving them on the other side of Jordan: then you may go back, every man of you, to the heritage which I have given you.
And I gave orders to Joshua at that time, saying, Your eyes have seen what the Lord your God has done to these two kings: so will the Lord do to all the kingdoms into which you come.
Have no fear of them, for the Lord your God will be fighting for you.
And at that time I made request to the Lord, saying,
O Lord God, you have now for the first time let your servant see your great power and the strength of your hand for what god is there in heaven or on earth able to do such great works and such acts of power?
Let me go over, O Lord, and see the good land on the other side of Jordan, and that fair mountain country, even Lebanon.
But the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not give ear to my prayer and the Lord said to me, Let it be enough, say no more about this thing.
Go up to the top of Pisgah, and turning your eyes to the west and the north, to the south and the east, see the land with your eyes: for you are not to go over Jordan.
But give my orders to Joshua, comforting him and making him strong for he is to go over Jordan at the head of this people, and he will give them this land which you will see for their heritage.
So we were waiting in the valley facing Beth-peor.
And now give ear, O Israel, to the laws and the decisions which I am teaching you, and do them so that life may be yours, and you may go in and take for yourselves the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
Make no addition to the orders which I give you, and take nothing from them, but keep the orders of the Lord your God which I give you.
Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for destruction came from the Lord on all those among you who went after Baal-peor.
But you who kept faith with the Lord are living, every one of you, today.
I have been teaching you laws and decisions, as I was ordered to do by the Lord my God, so that you might keep them in the land to which you are going to take it for your heritage.
So keep these laws and do them for so will your wisdom and good sense be clear in the eyes of the peoples, who hearing all these laws will say, Truly, this great nation is a wise and far-seeing people.
For what great nation has a god so near to them as the Lord our God is, whenever we are turned to him in prayer?
And what great nation has laws and decisions so right as all this law which I put before you today?
Only take care, and keep watch on your soul, for fear that the things which your eyes have seen go from your memory and from your heart all the days of your life but let the knowledge of them be given to your children and to your children's children
That day when you were waiting before the Lord your God in Horeb, and the Lord said to me, Make all the people come together, so that hearing my words they may go in fear of me all the days of their life on earth and give this teaching to their children.
And you came near, waiting at the foot of the mountain and flames of fire went up from the mountain to the heart of heaven, with dark clouds, and all was black as night.
And the voice of the Lord came to you out of the fire: the sound of his words came to your ears but you saw no form there was nothing but a voice.
And he gave you his agreement with you, the ten rules which you were to keep, which he put in writing on the two stones of the law.
And the Lord gave me orders at that time to make clear to you these laws and decisions, so that you might do them in the land to which you are going, and which is to be your heritage.
So keep watch on yourselves with care for you saw no form of any sort on the day when the voice of the Lord came to you in Horeb out of the heart of the fire:
So that you may not be turned to evil ways and make for yourselves an image in the form of any living thing, male or female,
Or any beast of the earth, or winged bird of the air,
Or of anything which goes flat on the earth, or any fish in the water under the earth.
And when your eyes are lifted up to heaven, and you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the army of heaven, do not let yourselves be moved to give them worship, or become the servants of what the Lord has given equally to all peoples under heaven.
But the Lord has taken you out of the flaming fire, out of Egypt, to be to him the people of his heritage, as you are today.
And the Lord was angry with me because of you, and made an oath that I was not to go over Jordan into the good land which the Lord is giving you for your heritage:
But death is to come to me in this land, I may not go over Jordan: but you will go over and take that good land for your heritage.
Take care that you do not let the agreement of the Lord your God, which he has made with you, go out of your mind, or make for yourselves images of any sort, against the orders which the Lord your God has given you.
For the Lord your God is an all-burning fire, and he will not let the honour which is his be given to any other.
If, when you have had children and children's children, and have been living a long time in the land, you are turned to evil ways, and make an image of any sort, and do evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, moving him to wrath:
May heaven and earth be my witnesses against you today, that destruction will quickly overtake you, cutting you off from that land which you are going over Jordan to take your days will not be long in that land, but you will come to a complete end.
And the Lord will send you wandering among the peoples only a small band of you will be kept from death among the nations where the Lord will send you.
There you will be the servants of gods, made by men's hands, of wood and stone, having no power of seeing or hearing or taking food or smelling.
But if in those lands you are turned again to the Lord your God, searching for him with all your heart and soul, he will not keep himself from you.
When you are in trouble and all these things have come on you, if, in the future, you are turned again to the Lord your God, and give ear to his voice:
Because the Lord your God is a God of mercy, he will not take away his help from you or let destruction overtake you, or be false to the agreement which he made by an oath with your fathers.
Give thought now to the days which are past, before your time, from the day when God first gave life to man on the earth, and searching from one end of heaven to the other, see if such a great thing as this has ever been, or if anything like it has been talked of in story.
Has any people ever gone on living after hearing the voice of God out of the heart of the fire as you did?
Has God ever before taken a nation for himself from out of another nation, by punishments and signs and wonders, by war and by a strong hand and a stretched-out arm and great acts of wonder and fear, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes?
All this he let you see, so that you might be certain that the Lord is God and there is no other.
Out of heaven itself his voice came to you, teaching you and on earth he let you see his great fire and his words came to your ears out of the heart of the fire.
And because of his love for your fathers, he took their seed and made it his, and he himself, present among you, took you out of Egypt by his great power
Driving out before you nations greater and stronger than you, to take you into their land and give it to you for your heritage, as at this day.
So today be certain, and keep the knowledge deep in your hearts, that the Lord is God, in heaven on high and here on earth there is no other God.
Then keep his laws and his orders which I give you today, so that it may be well for you and for your children after you, and that your lives may be long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for ever.
Then Moses had three towns marked out on the far side of Jordan looking to the east
To which anyone causing the death of his neighbour in error and not through hate, might go in flight so that in one of these towns he might be kept from death:
The names of the towns were Bezer in the waste land, in the table-land, for the Reubenites and Ramoth in Gilead for the Gadites and Golan in Bashan for Manasseh.
This is the law which Moses put before the children of Israel:
These are the rules and the laws and the decisions which Moses gave to the children of Israel after they came out of Egypt
On the far side of Jordan, in the valley facing Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who was ruling in Heshbon, whom Moses and the children of Israel overcame after they had come out of Egypt:
And they took his land for a heritage, and the land of Og, king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, whose lands were on the other side of Jordan to the east
From Aroer on the edge of the valley of the Arnon as far as Mount Sion, which is Hermon,
And all the Arabah on the far side of Jordan to the east, as far as the sea of the Arabah under the slopes of Pisgah.
And he went into the Synagogue, and for three months he was preaching there without fear, reasoning and teaching about the kingdom of God.
But because some of the people were hard-hearted and would not give hearing, saying evil words about the Way before the people, he went away from them, and kept the disciples separate, reasoning every day in the school of Tyrannus.
And this went on for two years, so that all those who were living in Asia had knowledge of the word of the Lord, Greeks as well as Jews.
And God did special works of power by the hands of Paul:
So that bits of linen and clothing from his body were taken to people who were ill, and their diseases went away from them and the evil spirits went out.
But some of the Jews who went from place to place driving out evil spirits, took it on themselves to make use of the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I give you orders, by Jesus, whom Paul is preaching.
And there were seven sons of a man named Sceva, a Jew and a chief priest, who did this.
And the evil spirit, answering, said to them, I have knowledge of Jesus, and of Paul, but who are you?
And the man in whom the evil spirit was, jumping on them, was stronger than the two of them, and overcame them, so that they went running from that house, wounded and without their clothing.
And this came to the ears of all those, Jews and Greeks, who were living at Ephesus and fear came on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was made great.
And a number of those who had faith came and made a public statement of their sins and all their acts.
And a great number of those who were experts in strange arts took their books and put them on the fire in front of everyone: and when the books were valued they came to fifty thousand bits of silver.
So the word of the Lord was increased very greatly and was full of power.
Now after these things were ended, Paul came to a decision that when he had gone through Macedonia and Achaia he would go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I have a desire to see Rome.
And having sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, into Macedonia, he himself went on living in Asia for a time.
And about that time a great outcry took place about the Way.
For there was a certain man named Demetrius, a silver-worker, who made silver boxes for the images of Diana, and gave no small profit to the workmen
Whom he got together, with other workmen of the same trade, and said to them, Men, it is clear that from this business we get our wealth.
And you see, for it has come to your ears, that not only at Ephesus, but almost all through Asia, this Paul has been teaching numbers of people and turning them away, saying that those are not gods who are made by men's hands:
And there is danger, not only that our trade may be damaged in the opinion of men, but that the holy place of the great goddess Diana may be no longer honoured, and that she to whom all Asia and the world give worship, will be put down from her high position.
And hearing this, they were very angry, crying out and saying, Great is Diana of Ephesus.
And the town was full of noise and trouble, and they all came running into the theatre, having taken by force Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia who were journeying in company with Paul.
And when Paul was about to go in to the people, the disciples did not let him.
And some of the rulers of Asia, being his friends, sent to him, requesting him seriously not to put himself in danger by going into the theatre.
And some said one thing, and some another: for there was no order in the meeting and most of them had no idea why they had come together.
Then they took Alexander out from among the people, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander, making a sign with his hand, was about to make a statement to the people in answer:
But when they saw that he was a Jew, all of them with one voice went on crying out for about two hours, Great is Diana of Ephesus.
And when the chief secretary had got the people quiet, he said, Men of Ephesus, is any man without knowledge that the town of Ephesus is the keeper of the holy place of the great Diana, who was sent down from Jupiter?
So then, because these things may not be doubted, it would be better for you to be quiet, and do nothing unwise.
For you have taken these men, who are not doing damage to the holy place or talking against our goddess.
If, then, Demetrius and the workmen who are with him have a protest to make against any man, the law is open to them, and there are judges let them put up a cause at law against one another.
But if any other business is in question, let it be taken up in the regular meeting.
For, truly, we are in danger of being made responsible for this day's trouble, there being no cause for it: and we are not able to give any reason for this coming together.
And when he had said this, he sent the meeting away.