Study Desk

For out of the north a nation is coming up against her, which will make her land waste and unpeopled: they are in flight, man and beast are gone.

Then every man becomes like a beast without knowledge; every gold-worker is put to shame by the image he has made: for his metal image is deceit, and there is no breath in them.

And after reading them, say, O Lord, you have said about this place that it is to be cut off, so that no one will be living in it, not a man or a beast, but it will be unpeopled for ever.

Son of man, when a land, sinning against me, does wrong, and my hand is stretched out against it, and the support of its bread is broken, and I make it short of food, cutting off man and beast from it:

Or if I send a sword against that land, and say, Sword, go through the land, cutting off from it man and beast:

Or if I send disease into that land, letting loose my wrath on it in blood, cutting off from it man and beast:

For this is what the Lord has said: How much more when I send my four bitter punishments on Jerusalem, the sword and need of food and evil beasts and disease, cutting off from it man and beast?

The Lord has said, My hand will be stretched out against Edom, cutting off from it man and beast: and I will make it waste, from Teman even as far as Dedan they will be put to the sword.

Say to them, These are the words of the Lord: See, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great river-beast stretched out among his Nile streams, who has said, The Nile is mine, and I have made it for myself.

For this cause the Lord has said: See, I am sending a sword on you, cutting off from you man and beast.

No foot of man will go through it and no foot of beast, and it will be unpeopled for forty years.

Son of man, make a song of grief for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him, Young lion of the nations, destruction has come on you; and you were like a sea-beast in the seas, sending out bursts of water, troubling the waters with your feet, making their streams dirty.

Man and beast will be increased in you, and they will have offspring and be fertile: I will make you thickly peopled as you were before, and will do more for you than at the first: and you will be certain that I am the Lord.

The priests may not take for food any bird or beast which has come to a natural death or whose death has been caused by another animal.

Let his heart be changed from that of a man, and the heart of a beast be given to him; and let seven times go by him.

And I saw another beast, like a bear, and it was lifted up on one side, and three side-bones were in its mouth, between its teeth: and they said to it, Up! take much flesh.

After this I saw another beast, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings like those of a bird; and the beast had four heads, and the power of a ruler was given to it.

After this, in my vision of the night, I saw a fourth beast, a thing causing fear and very troubling, full of power and very strong; and it had great iron teeth: it took its food, crushing some of it to bits and stamping down the rest with its feet: it was different from all the beasts before it; and it had ten horns.

Then I saw--because of the voice of the great words which the horn said--I saw till the beast was put to death, and its body was given to destruction, and the beast was given to the burning of fire.

Then it was my desire to have certain knowledge about the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, a cause of great fear, whose teeth were of iron and his nails of brass; who took his food, crushing some of it to bits and stamping on the rest with his feet;