Psalms 68:3-18

³But righteous people should be joyful; they should rejoice when they are in God's presence; they should be happy, and be very joyful.

⁴Sing to God; sing to praise him; sing a song (OR, make a road) for him who rides on the clouds; his name is Yahweh; be glad when you are in his presence.

⁵God, who lives in his sacred temple, is like MET a father to those who are orphans, and he is the one who protects widows.

⁶For those who have no one to live with, he provides families to live with. He frees prisoners and enables them to be successful, but those who rebel against him will be forced to live in a very hot and dry land.

⁷God, you led your people out of Egypt, and then you marched with them through the desert.

⁸After you did that, because when you, the God worshiped by us Israeli people, appeared to us at Sinai Mountain,, the earth shook, and rain poured down from the sky.

⁹You caused plenty of rain to fall on your land*, and so you enabled good crops to grow again on the land that you gave to us Israelis.

¹⁰Your people built homes there; and because you were good to them, you provided food for those who were poor.

¹¹The Lord gave a message, and many women took that message to other places.

¹²They proclaimed, “Many kings and their armies are running away from our army!” When our army brought back to their homes the things that they captured, the women who were at home divided up those things among themselves and among their families.

¹³Even those women who were in the pens taking care of the sheep received some of those things; they got statues of doves whose wings were covered with silver and whose feathers were covered with pure yellow gold.

¹⁴When Almighty God scattered the enemy kings and their armies, the number of weapons that they abandoned there seemed like there had been a snowstorm on Zalmon (OR, a black) Mountain.

¹⁵There is a very high mountain in the Bashan region, a mountain which has many peaks.

¹⁶But the people who live near that mountain should not RHQ envy those who live near Zion, the mountain on which God chose to live! Yahweh will live there forever!

¹⁷After we defeated all our enemies, it was as though the Lord, surrounded by many thousands of strong chariots, descended from Sinai Mountain and came into the sacred temple in Jerusalem.

¹⁸He ascended the sacred mountain where his temple is, and took with him many people who had been captured in battles; and received gifts from the enemies whom he had defeated. He received gifts even from those who had rebelled against him, and Yahweh our God will live there in his sacred temple forever.