Psalm 76

Who Can Stand Before You?

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.

In Judah God is known;
his name is great in Israel.
2
His abode has been established in Salem,
his dwelling place in Zion.
3
There he broke the flashing arrows,
the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. Selah

4
Glorious are you, more majestic
than the mountains full of prey.
5
The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil;
they sank into sleep;
all the men of war
were unable to use their hands.
6
At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,
both rider and horse lay stunned.

7
But you, you are to be feared!
Who can stand before you
when once your anger is roused?
8
From the heavens you uttered judgment;
the earth feared and was still,
9
when God arose to establish judgment,
to save all the humble of the earth. Selah

10
Surely the wrath of man shall praise you;
the remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt.
11
Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them;
let all around him bring gifts
to him who is to be feared,
12
who cuts off the spirit of princes,
who is to be feared by the kings of the earth.

Joshua 20

The Cities of Refuge

Then the Lord said to Joshua,
2 “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, 3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. 4 He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city. Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place, and he shall remain with them. 5 And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate him in the past. 6 And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until the death of him who is high priest at the time. Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home, to the town from which he fled.’” 7 So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah. 8 And beyond the Jordan east of Jericho, they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh. 9 These were the cities designated for all the people of Israel and for the stranger sojourning among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, till he stood before the congregation.