న్యాయాధిపతులు 17
၁အခါတစ်ပါးကမိက္ခာအမည်ရှိသောလူ တစ်ယောက်သည် ဧဖရိမ်တောင်ကုန်းဒေသ တွင်နေထိုင်၏။-
2 ౨ అతడు తన తల్లితో “నీ దగ్గర నుండి నేను తీసుకున్న పదకొండు వందల వెండి ఇదిగో. వాటిని తీసుకున్న వాణ్ణి నువ్వు శపించడం నేను విన్నాను. చూడు, అవి నా దగ్గరే ఉన్నాయి. నేనే వాటిని దొంగిలించాను” అన్నాడు. అతని తల్లి అతణ్ణి చూసి “కొడుకా, యెహోవా నిన్ను ఆశీర్వదించు గాక!” అంది.
၂သူသည်မိမိ၏မိခင်အား``မိခင်၏ငွေတစ်ဆယ့် တစ်ပိဿာပျောက်ဆုံးသွားစဉ်အခါကခိုး ယူသူအား မိခင်ကျိန်ဆဲခဲ့သည်ကိုကျွန်တော် ကြားရပါသည်။ ထိုငွေသည်ကျွန်တော့်မှာ ရှိပါသည်။ ကျွန်တော်ယူမိပါသည်'' ဟု ပြောလေသည်။ သူ၏မိခင်ကလည်း``ငါ့သား၊ ထာဝရဘုရား သည်သင့်အားကောင်းချီးပေးတော်မူပါစေ သော'' ဟုဆို၏။-
3 ౩ అతడు ఆ పదకొండు వందల వెండిని తిరిగి తన తల్లికి ఇచ్చేశాడు. ఆమె “ఈ సొమ్మును నేను యెహోవాకు ఇచ్చేస్తున్నాను. దీనితో నా కొడుకు కోసం ఒక చెక్క విగ్రహమూ, మరొక పోత విగ్రహమూ తయారు చేయిస్తాను. అందుకని ఇవి నీకే తిరిగి ఇచ్చేస్తాను” అంది.
၃သူသည်ထိုငွေကိုမိခင်အားပြန်၍ပေး၏။ ထို အခါမိခင်ဖြစ်သူက``ငါ့သား၊ ကျိန်စာ မသင့်စိမ့်သောငှာငါကိုယ်တိုင်ပင်ထိုငွေကို ထာဝရဘုရားအားပေးလှူဆက်ကပ်မည်။ ငွေဖြင့်မွမ်းမံထားသည့်သစ်သားရုပ်တု တစ်ခုကိုပြုလုပ်ရာတွင် ထိုငွေကိုအသုံး ပြုမည်ဖြစ်၍သင့်အားပြန်ပေးမည်'' ဟုဆို၏။-
4 ౪ అతడు ఆ నాణేలను తన తల్లికి ఇచ్చాడు. ఆమె వాటిలో రెండు వందలు తీసి ఒక కంసాలికి ఇచ్చింది. వాడు వాటితో ఒక విగ్రహాన్ని చెక్కాడు. లోహంతో మరో విగ్రహాన్ని పోత పోశాడు. ఆ విగ్రహాన్ని మీకా ఇంట్లోనే ఉంచారు.
၄သားဖြစ်သူသည်လည်းထိုငွေကိုမယူဘဲ အမိအားပြန်၍ပေးလေသည်။ ထိုအခါ မိခင်သည်ငွေနှစ်ပိဿာကိုယူ၍ပန်းထိမ် အားပေးအပ်ကာ သစ်သားရုပ်တုတစ်ခု ထုလုပ်စေပြီးလျှင်ငွေဖြင့်မွမ်းမံစေ၏။ ထိုရုပ်တုကိုမိက္ခာ၏အိမ်တွင်ထားရှိ သတည်း။
5 ౫ మీకా ఇంట్లో విగ్రహాలున్న పూజ గది ఒకటుంది. అతడు ఒక ఎఫోదునూ కొన్ని విగ్రహాలనూ చేయించి అందులో ఉంచాడు. తన కొడుకుల్లో ఒకణ్ణి పూజారిగా ప్రతిష్టించాడు. అతని కొడుకే అతనికి యాజకుడు అయ్యాడు.
၅ဤမိက္ခာဆိုသူ၌ မိမိကိုယ်ပိုင်ဝတ်ပြုကိုး ကွယ်ရာဌာနတစ်ခုရှိ၏။ သူသည်ရုပ်တု များနှင့်သင်တိုင်းတော်တစ်ခုကိုပြုလုပ် ပြီးလျှင် မိမိသားတစ်ယောက်အားမိမိ ၏ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်အဖြစ်ဖြင့်ခန့်ထား လေသည်။-
၆ထိုကာလ၌ဣသရေလလူမျိုးတွင်ဘုရင် မရှိသေးချေ။ လူတိုင်းပင်မိမိ၏စိတ် သဘောအတိုင်းပြုလုပ်လေသည်။
7 ౭ అక్కడ యూదా గోత్రంలో చేరిన ఒక లేవీ యువకుడు ఉండేవాడు. ఇతడు యూదా ప్రాంతానికి చెందిన బేత్లెహేము నుండి వచ్చాడు.
၇ထိုကာလ၌ယုဒပြည်ဗက်လင်မြို့တွင် နေထိုင် သောလေဝိအမျိုးသားလူငယ်တစ်ယောက်သည်၊-
8 ౮ ఆ వ్యక్తి తనకో నివాస స్థలం కోసం యూదా బేత్లెహేము నుండి బయలుదేరి ప్రయాణం చేస్తూ ఎఫ్రాయిము కొండ ప్రాంతంలో ఉన్న మీకా యింటికి వచ్చాడు.
၈အခြားတစ်မြို့တစ်ရွာသို့သွားရောက်နေထိုင် ရန်ဗက်လင်မြို့မှထွက်ခွာလာစဉ် ဧဖရိမ် တောင်ကုန်းဒေသရှိမိက္ခာ၏အိမ်သို့ရောက် ရှိလာလေသည်။-
9 ౯ అతణ్ణి మీకా “నీవు ఎక్కడ నుంచి వచ్చావు?” అని అడిగాడు. దానికతడు “నేను యూదా బేత్లెహేమునుంచి వచ్చిన లేవీయుణ్ణి. నాకో నివాస స్థలం కోసం వెదుకుతున్నాను.” అన్నాడు.
၉မိက္ခာက``သင်သည်အဘယ်အရပ်မှလာသနည်း'' ဟုမေး၏။ သူက``အကျွန်ုပ်သည်ယုဒပြည်ဗက် လင်မြို့မှလေဝိအမျိုးသားဖြစ်၍နေထိုင်ရန် အရပ်ကိုရှာနေသူဖြစ်ပါသည်'' ဟုပြန်ပြော လေသည်။
10 ౧౦ అప్పుడు మీకా “నువ్వు నా దగ్గరే ఉండు. నాకు తండ్రిగా, యాజకుడుగా ఉండు. నీకు సంవత్సరానికి పది వెండి నాణేలూ, బట్టలూ, ఆహారమూ ఇస్తాను.” అన్నాడు. దానికి ఆ లేవీయుడు అంగీకరించాడు.
၁၀မိက္ခာကလည်း``အကျွန်ုပ်နှင့်အတူနေပါလော့။ အကျွန်ုပ်အားအကြံဉာဏ်ပေးသူ၊ အကျွန်ုပ်၏ ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်အဖြစ်ဖြင့်နေပါလော့။ သင့် အားတစ်နှစ်လျှင်ငွေဒင်္ဂါးတစ်ဆယ်နှင့်ဝတ်စုံ ကိုလည်းကောင်း၊ အစားအစာကိုလည်းကောင်း အကျွန်ုပ်ထောက်ပံ့ပါမည်'' ဟုဆိုလေသော်၊-
၁၁လေဝိလူငယ်သည်မိက္ခာနှင့်အတူနေထိုင် ရန်သဘောတူလိုက်၏။ သူသည်မိက္ခာ၏သား သဖွယ်အတူနေထိုင်လေသည်။
၁၂မိက္ခာသည်သူ့အားမိမိ၏ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်အဖြစ် ဖြင့်ခန့်ထားသဖြင့် သူသည်မိက္ခာ၏အိမ်၌နေထိုင် လေသည်။-
13 ౧౩ అప్పుడు మీకా “ఈ లేవీయుడు నాకు యాజకుడుగా ఉన్నాడు కాబట్టి యెహోవా నాకు తప్పక మేలు చేస్తాడని నాకు తెలుసు” అన్నాడు.
၁၃မိက္ခာကလည်း``ယခုငါသည်လေဝိအမျိုးသား တစ်ဦးအား မိမိ၏ယဇ်ပုရောဟိတ်အဖြစ်ဖြင့် ရရှိထားလေပြီ။ ထို့ကြောင့်ထာဝရဘုရား သည်အစစအရာရာ၌ ငါ့အားတိုးတက် အောင်မြင်စေတော်မူလိမ့်မည်'' ဟုဆို၏။
