106
1 Praise Yahweh!
Praise Yahweh, because he does good things for us;
he faithfully loves us forever/continually!
2 Because Yahweh has done many great things,
no one can [RHQ] tell all the great things that Yahweh has done,
and no one can praise him enough/sufficiently.
3 ◄Happy are/He is pleased with► those who act fairly/justly,
with those who always do what is right.
4 Yahweh, be kind to me when you help your people;
help me when you rescue/save them.
5 Allow me to see it when your people become prosperous again
and when all the people of your nation, Israel, are happy;
allow me to be happy with them!
I want to praise you along with all those others who belong to you.
6 We and our ancestors have sinned;
we have done what is wicked and what is evil [DOU].
7 When our ancestors were in Egypt,
they did not pay attention to the wonderful things that Yahweh did;
they forgot about the many times that he showed that he faithfully loved them.
Instead, when they were at the Red Sea,
they rebelled against God, who is greater than any other god.
8 But he rescued them for the sake of his own reputation
in order that he could show that he is very powerful.
9 He rebuked the Red Sea and it became dry,
and then while he led our ancestors,
they walked through it as though it were as dry as a desert [SIM].
10 In that way he rescued them from the power [MTY] of their enemies who hated them [DOU].
11 Then their enemies were drowned in the water of the Red Sea;
not one of them was left.
12 When that happened, our ancestors believed that Yahweh had truly done for them what he had promised to do,
and they sang to praise him.
13 But they soon forgot when he had done for them;
they did things without waiting to find out what Yahweh wanted them to do.
14 They intensely wanted food like they formerly ate in Egypt.
They did evil things to find out if they could do those things without God punishing them.
15 So he gave them what they requested,
but he also caused a terrible disease to afflict them.
16 Later when some of the men became jealous of Moses
and his older brother Aaron, who was dedicated to serve Yahweh by being a priest,
17 the ground opened up and swallowed Dathan
and also buried Abiram and his family.
18 And God sent a fire down from heaven
which burned up all the wicked people who ◄supported them/agreed with► them.
19 Then the Israeli leaders made a gold statue of a calf at Sinai Mountain
and worshiped it.
20 Instead of worshiping our glorious God,
they started to worship a statue of an ox that eats grass!
21 They forgot about God, who had rescued them by the great miracles that he performed in Egypt.
22 They forgot about the wonderful things that he did for them in Egypt
and the amazing/awesome things that he did for them at the Red Sea.
23 Because of that, God said that he would get rid of the Israelis,
but Moses, whom God had chosen to serve him, stood up to persuade God not to get rid of them.
And as a result God did not destroy them.
24 Later, our ancestors ◄refused/were afraid► to enter beautiful Canaan land
because they did not believe that God would enable them to take the land from the people who were living there as he had promised.
25 They stayed in their tents and grumbled
and would not pay attention to what Yahweh said that they should do.
26 So he solemnly [MTY] told them
that he would cause them to die there in the desert,
27 and that he would scatter their descendants among the people of other nations/people-groups who did not believe in him,
and that he would allow them to die in those lands.
28 Later the Israeli people started to worship the idol of Baal who they thought lived at Peor Mountain,
and they ate meat that had been sacrificed to Baal and those other lifeless gods.
29 Yahweh became very angry because of what they had done,
so again he sent a terrible disease to attack/strike them.
30 But Phinehas stood up and punished/killed the ones who had sinned greatly,
and as a result the ◄plague/serious disease► ended.
31 People have remembered that righteous deed that Phinehas did,
and in future years people will remember it.
32 Then at Meribah Springs our ancestors caused Yahweh to become angry,
and as a result Moses had trouble.
33 They caused Moses to become very angry [IDI],
and he said things that were foolish.
34 Our ancestors did not destroy the people who did not believe in Yahweh
like he told them to do.
35 Instead, the men took women from those people-groups,
and they started to do the evil things that those people did.
36 Our ancestors worshiped the idols of those people,
which resulted in their being destroyed/exiled/taken to another country [MET].
37 Some of the Israelis sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons that those idols represented.
38 They killed [MTY] their own children, who ◄were innocent/had not things that were wrong►,
and offered them as sacrifices to the idols in Canaan.
As a result, Canaan land was polluted by those murders [MTY].
39 So by their deeds they caused themselves to become unacceptable to God;
because they did not faithfully worship only God,
they became like women who sleep with other men instead of sleeping only with their husbands [MET].
40 So Yahweh became very angry with his people;
he was completely disgusted with them.
41 As a result he allowed people-groups who did not believe in him to conquer them,
so those who hated our ancestors started to rule over them.
42 Their enemies ◄oppressed them/treated them cruelly►
and caused them to be completely controlled by their enemies [MET].
43 Many times Yahweh rescued them,
but they continued to rebel against him,
and they were finally destroyed because of the sins that they committed.
44 However, Yahweh always heard them when they cried out to him,
and he listened to them when they were distressed.
45 For their sake, he thought about the agreement/promise that he had made to bless them,
and because he never stopped loving them very much,
he changed his mind about punishing them more.
46 He caused all those who had taken the Israelis to Babylonia to ◄feel sorry for/pity► them.
47 Yahweh our God, rescue/save us
and bring us back to Israel from among those people-groups
in order that we may thank you [MTY]
and joyfully praise you.
48 Praise Yahweh, the God whom we Israelis worship,
praise him now and forever!
And I wish/desire that everyone say “Amen/May it be so!”
Praise Yahweh!
Book Five
Note: The Old Testament in this translation is still being worked on, and is in draft form. Updates will be posted at eBible.org/t4t/.