and prayed, “O Lord, the God of Israel, seated on your throne above the winged creatures, you alone are God, ruling all the kingdoms of the world. You created the earth and the sky.
Praise the Lord God of Israel, Creator of heaven and earth! He has given King David a wise son, full of understanding and skill, who now plans to build a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself.
And then the people of Israel prayed this prayer: “You, Lord, you alone are Lord; you made the heavens and the stars of the sky. You made land and sea and everything in them; you gave life to all. The heavenly powers bow down and worship you.
In six days I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.
It is a permanent sign between the people of Israel and me, because I, the Lord, made heaven and earth in six days, and on the seventh day I stopped working and rested.”
The sun, moon, and stars will crumble to dust. The sky will disappear like a scroll being rolled up, and the stars will fall like leaves dropping from a vine or a fig tree.
God created the heavens and stretched them out; he fashioned the earth and all that lives there; he gave life and breath to all its people. And now the Lord God says to his servant,
I am the one who made the earth and created human beings to live there. By my power I stretched out the heavens; I control the sun, the moon, and the stars.
The Lord created the heavens— he is the one who is God! He formed and made the earth— he made it firm and lasting. He did not make it a desolate waste, but a place for people to live. It is he who says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other god.
The God of Jacob is not like them; he is the one who made everything, and he has chosen Israel to be his very own people. The Lord Almighty is his name.
Instead of being gathered and buried, their bones will be like manure lying on the ground. They will be spread out before the sun, the moon, and the stars, which these people have loved and served, and which they have consulted and worshiped.
So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘People of Israel! It was not to me that you slaughtered and sacrificed animals for forty years in the desert.
Do not be tempted to worship and serve what you see in the sky—the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Lord your God has given these to all other peoples for them to worship.
We who believe, then, do receive that rest which God promised. It is just as he said, “I was angry and made a solemn promise: ‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’” He said this even though his work had been finished from the time he created the world.
