Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song! Praise him in the assembly of the godly!

Then some of the elders of Judah stepped forward and spoke to all the people gathered there. They said,

“For this is what the sovereign Lord says: Bring up an army against them and subject them to terror and plunder.

Now you are wrecked by the seas, in the depths of the waters; your merchandise and all your company have sunk along with you.

“Assyria is there with all her assembly around her grave, all of them struck down by the sword.

“‘Be ready and stay ready, you and all your companies assembled around you, and be a guard for them.

Therefore no one will assign you land in the Lord’s community.

David told the entire assembly: “Praise the Lord your God!” So the entire assembly praised the Lord God of their ancestors; they bowed down and stretched out flat on the ground before the Lord and the king.

King Hezekiah of Judah supplied 1,000 bulls and 7,000 sheep for the assembly, while the officials supplied them with 1,000 bulls and 10,000 sheep. Many priests consecrated themselves.

Then God said to him, “I am the sovereign God. Be fruitful and multiply! A nation – even a company of nations – will descend from you; kings will be among your descendants!

He said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations, and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.’

O my soul, do not come into their council, do not be united to their assembly, my heart, for in their anger they have killed men, and for pleasure they have hamstrung oxen.

You must care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community of Israel will kill it around sundown.

“‘If the whole congregation of Israel strays unintentionally and the matter is not noticed by the assembly, and they violate one of the Lord’s commandments, which must not be violated, so they become guilty,

the assembly must present a young bull for a sin offering when the sin they have committed becomes known. They must bring it before the Meeting Tent,

He must bring the rest of the bull outside the camp and burn it just as he burned the first bull – it is the sin offering of the assembly.

and he is to purify the Most Holy Place, he is to purify the Meeting Tent and the altar, and he is to make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

One statute must apply to you who belong to the congregation and to the resident foreigner who is living among you, as a permanent statute for your future generations. You and the resident foreigner will be alike before the Lord.

They and all that they had went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed over them. So they perished from among the community.

So Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting. They then threw themselves down with their faces to the ground, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.