Study Desk

So go eat your food and enjoy it; drink your wine and be happy, because that is what God wants you to do.

Enjoy life with the wife you love. Enjoy all the useless days of this useless life God has given you here on earth, because it is all you have. So enjoy the work you do here on earth.

You don't know where the wind will blow, and you don't know how a baby grows inside the mother. In the same way, you don't know what God is doing, or how he created everything.

Young people, enjoy yourselves while you are young; be happy while you are young. Do whatever your heart desires, whatever you want to do. But remember that God will judge you for everything you do.

You will turn back into the dust of the earth again, but your spirit will return to God who gave it.

Now, everything has been heard, so I give my final advice: Honor God and obey his commands, because this is all people must do.

God will judge everything, even what is done in secret, the good and the evil.

How terrible! Israel is a nation of sin, a people loaded down with guilt, a group of children doing evil, children who are full of evil. They have left the Lord ; they hate God, the Holy One of Israel, and have turned away from him as if he were a stranger.

Jerusalem, your rulers are like those of Sodom, and your people are like those of Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord ; listen to the teaching of our God!

The city of Jerusalem once followed the Lord , but she is no longer loyal to him. She used to be filled with fairness; people there lived the way God wanted. But now, murderers live there.

So the Lord God All-Powerful, the Mighty One of Israel, says: "You, my enemies, will not cause me any more trouble. I will pay you back for what you did.

I will bring back judges as you had long ago; your counselors will be like those you had in the beginning. Then you will be called the City That Is Right with God, the Loyal City."

Many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord , to the Temple of the God of Jacob. Then God will teach us his ways, and we will obey his teachings." His teachings will go out from Jerusalem; the message of the Lord will go out from Jerusalem.

People will not be proud any longer but will bow low with shame. God, do not forgive them.

Understand this: The Lord God All-Powerful will take away everything Judah and Jerusalem need— all the food and water,

What gives you the right to crush my people and grind the faces of the poor into the dirt?" The Lord God All-Powerful says this.

The Lord All-Powerful will receive glory by judging fairly; the holy God will show himself holy by doing what is right.

They say, "Let God hurry; let him do his work soon so we may see it. Let the plan of the Holy One of Israel happen soon so that we will know what it is."

They will be destroyed just as fire burns straw or dry grass. They will be destroyed like a plant whose roots rot and whose flower dies and blows away like dust. They have refused to obey the teachings of the Lord All-Powerful and have hated the message from the Holy God of Israel.

But I, the Lord God , say, "‘Their plan will not succeed; it will not happen,