The One Year Bible TLB (270 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
December 28This is the fate of Israel, as pronounced by the Lord, who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him:
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“I will make Jerusalem and Judah like a cup of poison to all the nearby nations that send their armies to surround Jerusalem.
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Jerusalem will be a heavy stone burdening the world. And though all the nations of the earth unite in an attempt to move her, they will all be crushed.
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“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will bewilder the armies drawn up against her, and make fools of them, for I will watch over the people of Judah, but blind all her enemies.
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“And the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, ‘The people of Jerusalem have found strength in the Lord Almighty, their God.’
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“In that day I will make the clans of Judah like a little fire that sets the forest aflame—like a burning match among the sheaves; they will burn up all the neighboring nations right and left, while Jerusalem stands unmoved.
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The Lord will give victory to the rest of Judah first, before Jerusalem, so that the people of Jerusalem and the royal line of David won’t be filled with pride at their success.
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“The Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem; the weakest among them will be as mighty as King David! And the royal line will be as God, like the Angel of the Lord who goes before them!
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For my plan is to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
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“Then I will pour out the spirit of grace and prayer on all the people of Jerusalem. They will look on him they pierced, and mourn for him as for an only son, and grieve bitterly for him as for an oldest child who died.
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The sorrow and mourning in Jerusalem at that time will be even greater than the grievous mourning for the godly King Josiah,
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who was killed in the valley of Megiddo.
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“All of Israel will weep in profound sorrow. The whole nation will be bowed down with universal grief—king, prophet, priest, and people. Each family will go into private mourning, husbands and wives apart, to face their sorrow alone.
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“At that time a Fountain will be opened to the people of Israel and Jerusalem, a Fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and defilement.”
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And the Lord Almighty declares, “In that day I will get rid of every vestige of idol worship throughout the land, so that even the names of the idols will be forgotten. All false prophets and fortune-tellers will be wiped out,
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and if anyone begins false prophecy again, his own father and mother will slay him! ‘You must die,’ they will tell him, ‘for you are prophesying lies in the name of the Lord.’
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“No one will be boasting then of his prophetic gift! No one will wear prophet’s clothes to try to fool the people then.
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“‘No,’ he will say. ‘I am not a prophet; I am a farmer. The soil has been my livelihood from my earliest youth.’
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“And if someone asks, ‘Then what are these scars on your chest and your back?’
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he will say, ‘I got into a brawl at the home of a friend!’
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“Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, the man who is my associate and equal,” says the Lord Almighty. “Strike down the Shepherd and the sheep will scatter, but I will come back and comfort and care for the lambs.
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Two-thirds of all the nation of Israel will be cut off and die,
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but a third will be left in the land.
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I will bring the third that remain through the fire and make them pure, as gold and silver are refined and purified by fire. They will call upon my name and I will hear them; I will say, ‘These are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’”
After this I heard the shouting of a vast crowd in heaven, “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Salvation is from our God. Honor and authority belong to him alone;
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for his judgments are just and true. He has punished the Great Prostitute who corrupted the earth with her sin;
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and he has avenged the murder of his servants.”
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Again and again their voices rang, “Praise the Lord! The smoke from her burning ascends forever and forever!”
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Then the twenty-four Elders and four Living Beings fell down and worshiped God, who was sitting upon the throne, and said, “Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”
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And out of the throne came a voice that said, “Praise our God, all you his servants, small and great, who fear him.”
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Then I heard again what sounded like the shouting of a huge crowd, or like the waves of a hundred oceans crashing on the shore, or like the mighty rolling of great thunder, “Praise the Lord. For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
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Let us be glad and rejoice and honor him; for the time has come for the wedding banquet of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself.
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She is permitted to wear the cleanest and whitest and finest of linens.” (Fine linen represents the good deeds done by the people of God.)
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And the angel
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dictated this sentence to me: “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “God himself has stated this.”
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Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said, “No! Don’t! For I am a servant of God just as you are, and as your brother Christians are, who testify of their faith in Jesus. Worship God. The purpose of all prophecy and of all I have shown you is to tell about Jesus.”
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Then I saw heaven opened and a white horse standing there; and the one sitting on the horse was named Faithful and True—the one who justly punishes and makes war.
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His eyes were like flames, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on his forehead,
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and only he knew its meaning.
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He was clothed with garments dipped in blood, and his title was “The Word of God.”
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The armies of heaven, dressed in finest linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses.
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In his mouth he held a sharp sword to strike down the nations; he ruled them with an iron grip; and he trod the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God.
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On his robe and thigh was written this title: “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
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Then I saw an angel standing in the sunshine, shouting loudly to the birds, “Come! Gather together for the supper of the Great God!
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Come and eat the flesh of kings, and captains, and great generals; of horses and riders; and of all humanity, both great and small, slave and free.”
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Then I saw the Evil Creature gathering the governments of the earth and their armies to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army.
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And the Evil Creature was captured, and with him the False Prophet,
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who could do mighty miracles when the Evil Creature was present—miracles that deceived all who had accepted the Evil Creature’s mark, and who worshiped his statue. Both of them—the Evil Creature and his False Prophet—were thrown alive into the Lake of Fire that burns with sulphur.
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And their entire army was killed with the sharp sword in the mouth of the one riding the white horse, and all the birds of heaven were gorged with their flesh.
Hallelujah! Yes, praise the Lord! How good it is to sing his praises! How delightful, and how right!
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He is rebuilding Jerusalem and bringing back the exiles.
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He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds.
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He counts the stars and calls them all by name.
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How great he is! His power is absolute! His understanding is unlimited.
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The Lord supports the humble, but brings the wicked into the dust.
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Sing out your thanks to him; sing praises to our God, accompanied by harps.
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He covers the heavens with clouds, sends down the showers, and makes the green grass grow in mountain pastures.
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He feeds the wild animals, and the young ravens cry to him for food.
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The speed of a horse is nothing to him. How puny in his sight is the strength of a man.
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But his joy is in those who reverence him, those who expect him to be loving and kind.
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Praise him, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!
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For he has fortified your gates against all enemies and blessed your children.
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He sends peace across your nation and fills your barns with plenty of the finest wheat.
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He sends his orders to the world. How swiftly his word flies.
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He sends the snow in all its lovely whiteness, scatters the frost upon the ground,
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and hurls the hail upon the earth. Who can stand before his freezing cold?
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But then he calls for warmer weather, and the spring winds blow and all the river ice is broken.
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He has made known his laws and ceremonies of worship to Israel—
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something he has not done with any other nation; they have not known his commands.
Hallelujah! Yes, praise the Lord!
These are the wise sayings of King Lemuel of Massa,
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taught to him at his mother’s knee:
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O my son, whom I have dedicated to the Lord,
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do not spend your time with women—the royal pathway to destruction.
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And it is not for kings, O Lemuel, to drink wine and whiskey.
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For if they drink, they may forget their duties and be unable to give justice to those who are oppressed.
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Hard liquor is for sick men at the brink of death, and wine for those in deep depression. Let them drink to forget their poverty and misery.
December 29Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming soon! On that day the Lord will gather together the nations to fight Jerusalem; the city will be taken, the houses rifled, the loot divided, the women raped; half the population will be taken away as slaves, and half will be left in what remains of the city.
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Then the Lord will go out fully armed for war, to fight against those nations.
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That day his feet will stand upon the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a very wide valley running from east to west, for half the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south.
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You will escape through that valley, for it will reach across to the city gate.
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Yes, you will escape as your people did long centuries ago from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and the Lord my God shall come, and all his saints and angels with him.
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The sun and moon and stars will no longer shine,
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yet there will be continuous day! Only the Lord knows how! There will be no normal day and night—at evening time it will still be light.
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Life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously both in winter and in summer.
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And the Lord shall be King over all the earth. In that day there shall be one Lord—his name alone will be worshiped.
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All the land from Geba (the northern border of Judah) to Rimmon (the southern border) will become one vast plain, but Jerusalem will be on an elevated site, covering the area all the way from the Gate of Benjamin over to the site of the old gate, then to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses.
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And Jerusalem shall be inhabited, safe at last, never again to be cursed and destroyed.
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And the Lord will send a plague on all the people who fought Jerusalem. They will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away; their eyes will shrivel in their sockets, and their tongues will decay in their mouths.
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They will be seized with terror, panic-stricken from the Lord, and will fight against each other in hand-to-hand combat.
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All Judah will be fighting at Jerusalem.
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The wealth of all the neighboring nations will be confiscated—great quantities of gold and silver and fine clothing.
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(This same plague will strike the horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the other animals in the enemy camp.)
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In the end, those who survive the plague will go up to Jerusalem each year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, to celebrate a time of thanksgiving.
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And any nation anywhere in all the world that refuses to come to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, will have no rain.
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But if Egypt refuses to come, God will punish her with some other plague.
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And so Egypt and the other nations will all be punished if they refuse to come.
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In that day the bells on the horses will have written on them, “These Are Holy Property”;
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and the trash cans in the Temple of the Lord will be as sacred as the bowls beside the altar.
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In fact, every container in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sacred to the Lord Almighty; all who come to worship may use any of them free of charge to boil their sacrifices in; there will be no more grasping traders in the Temple of the Lord Almighty!
Then I saw an angel come down from heaven with the key to the bottomless pit and a heavy chain in his hand.
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He seized the Dragon—that old Serpent, the devil, Satan—and bound him in chains for a thousand years,
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and threw him into the bottomless pit, which he then shut and locked so that he could not fool the nations anymore until the thousand years were finished. Afterwards he would be released again for a little while.
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Then I saw thrones, and sitting on them were those who had been given the right to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony about Jesus, for proclaiming the Word of God, and who had not worshiped the Creature or his statue, nor accepted his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They had come to life again and now they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
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This is the First Resurrection. (The rest of the dead did not come back to life until the thousand years had ended.)
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Blessed and holy are those who share in the First Resurrection. For them the Second Death holds no terrors, for they will be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
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When the thousand years end, Satan will be let out of his prison.
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He will go out to deceive the nations of the world and gather them together, with Gog and Magog, for battle—a mighty host, numberless as sand along the shore.
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They will go up across the broad plain of the earth and surround God’s people and the beloved city of Jerusalem
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on every side. But fire from God in heaven will flash down on the attacking armies and consume them.
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Then the devil who had betrayed them will again
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be thrown into the Lake of Fire burning with sulphur where the Creature and False Prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
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And I saw a great white throne and the one who sat upon it, from whose face the earth and sky fled away, but they found no place to hide.
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I saw the dead, great and small, standing before God; and The Books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to the things written in The Books, each according to the deeds he had done.
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The oceans surrendered the bodies buried in them; and the earth and the underworld gave up the dead in them. Each was judged according to his deeds.
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And Death and Hell were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the Second Death—the Lake of Fire.
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And if anyone’s name was not found recorded in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Praise the Lord, O heavens! Praise him from the skies!
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Praise him, all his angels, all the armies of heaven.
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Praise him, sun and moon and all you twinkling stars.
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Praise him, skies above. Praise him, vapors high above the clouds.
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Let everything he has made give praise to him. For he issued his command, and they came into being;
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he established them forever and forever. His orders will never be revoked.
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And praise him down here on earth, you creatures of the ocean depths.
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Let fire and hail, snow, rain, wind, and weather all obey.
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Let the mountains and hills, the fruit trees and cedars,
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the wild animals and cattle, the snakes and birds,
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the kings and all the people with their rulers and their judges,
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young men and maidens, old men and children—
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all praise the Lord together. For he alone is worthy. His glory is far greater than all of earth and heaven.
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He has made his people strong, honoring his godly ones—the people of Israel, the people closest to him.
Hallelujah! Yes, praise the Lord!
You should defend those who cannot help themselves.
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Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.