The Bible, quoted
in its own voices.

Bless the LORD, my soul. The LORD, my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty. He covers himself with light as with a garment. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain. He lays the beams of his rooms in the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He walks on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers winds, and his servants flames of fire. He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be moved forever. You covered it with the deep as with a cloak. The waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled. At the voice of your thunder they hurried away.

In this confidence, I was determined to come first to you, that you might have a second benefit, and by you to pass into Macedonia, and again from Macedonia to come to you, and to be sent forward by you on my journey to Judea. When I therefore planned this, did I show fickleness? Or the things that I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be the “Yes, yes” and the “No, no?” But as God is faithful, our word toward you was not “Yes and no.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not “Yes and no,” but in him is “Yes.” For however many are the promises of God, in him is the “Yes.” Therefore also through him is the “Amen”, to the glory of God through us.

For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this: that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it; all is before them. All things come alike to all. There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, to the clean, to the unclean, to him who sacrifices, and to him who doesn’t sacrifice. As is the good, so is the sinner; he who takes an oath, as he who fears an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event to all. Yes also, the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead. For to him who is joined with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything, neither do they have any more a reward; for their memory is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy has perished long ago; neither do they any longer have a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.

“Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves! Let’s enter into the fortified cities, and let’s be silent there; for the LORD our God has put us to silence, and given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay! The snorting of his horses is heard from Dan. The whole land trembles at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they have come, and have devoured the land and all that is in it, the city and those who dwell therein.” “For, behold, I will send serpents, adders among you, which will not be charmed; and they will bite you,” says the LORD. Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! My heart is faint within me. Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very far off: “Isn’t the LORD in Zion? Isn’t her King in her?” “Why have they provoked me to anger with their engraved images, and with foreign idols?”

Sing to the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is therein, the islands and their inhabitants. Let the wilderness and its cities raise their voices, with the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing. Let them shout from the top of the mountains! Let them give glory to the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands. The LORD will go out like a mighty man. He will stir up zeal like a man of war. He will raise a war cry. Yes, he will shout aloud. He will triumph over his enemies.

Then these presidents and local governors assembled together to the king, and said this to him, “King Darius, live forever! All the presidents of the kingdom, the deputies and the local governors, the counselors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute and to make a strong decree, that whoever asks a petition of any god or man for thirty days, except of you, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, that it not be changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which doesn’t alter.” Therefore King Darius signed the writing and the decree.

This is now, beloved, the second letter that I have written to you; and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by reminding you that you should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first, that in the last days mockers will come, walking after their own lusts and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

“Oholah played the prostitute when she was mine. She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbors, who were clothed with blue—governors and rulers, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. She gave herself as a prostitute to them, all of them the choicest men of Assyria. She defiled herself with the idols of whomever she lusted after. She hasn’t left her prostitution since leaving Egypt; for in her youth they lay with her. They caressed her youthful nipples and they poured out their prostitution on her. “Therefore I delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians on whom she doted. These uncovered her nakedness. They took her sons and her daughters, and they killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women; for they executed judgments on her.

“Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’”

Yes, he loved cursing, and it came to him. He didn’t delight in blessing, and it was far from him. He clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment. It came into his inward parts like water, like oil into his bones. Let it be to him as the clothing with which he covers himself, for the belt that is always around him. This is the reward of my adversaries from the LORD, of those who speak evil against my soul. But deal with me, GOD the Lord, for your name’s sake, because your loving kindness is good, deliver me; for I am poor and needy. My heart is wounded within me. I fade away like an evening shadow. I am shaken off like a locust.