Elijah’s Message to Ahab

18 After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah, in the third year of the drought,^[a] saying, “Go, present yourself to Ahab; I will send rain on the earth.”^{(A) 2} So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. The famine was severe in Samaria. ³ Ahab summoned Obadiah, who was in charge of the palace. (Now Obadiah revered the Lord greatly; ⁴ when Jezebel was killing off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets, hid them fifty to a cave, and provided them with bread and water.)^{(B) 5} Then Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go through the land to all the springs of water and to all the wadis; perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive and not lose some of the animals.” ⁶ So they divided the land between them to pass through it; Ahab went in one direction by himself, and Obadiah went in another direction by himself.

⁷ As Obadiah was on the way, Elijah met him; Obadiah recognized him, fell on his face, and said, “Is it you, my lord Elijah?”^{(C) 8} He answered him, “It is I. Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here.” ⁹ And he said, “How have I sinned, that you would hand your servant over to Ahab to kill me? ¹⁰ As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom to which my lord has not sent to seek you, and when they would say, ‘He is not here,’ he would require an oath of the kingdom or nation that they had not found you.^{(D) 11} But now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here.’ ¹² As soon as I have gone from you, the spirit of the Lord will carry you I know not where; so, when I come and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me, although I your servant have revered the Lord from my youth.^{(E) 13} Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred of the Lord’s prophets fifty to a cave and provided them with bread and water?^{(F) 14} Yet now you say, ‘Go, tell your lord that Elijah is here’; he will surely kill me.” ¹⁵ Elijah said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself to him today.”^{(G) 16} So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

¹⁷ When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?”^{(H) 18} He answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals.^{(I) 19} Now therefore have all Israel assemble for me at Mount Carmel, with the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel’s table.”^(J)

Shining as Lights in the World

¹² Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling,^{(A) 13} for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

¹⁴ Do all things without murmuring and arguing,^{(B) 15} so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world,^{(C) 16} holding forth the word of life so that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.^(D)

¹⁷ But even if I am being poured out as a libation over the sacrifice and the service of your faith, I rejoice, and I rejoice together with all of you;^{(E) 18} in the same way also you should rejoice and rejoice together with me.

Timothy and Epaphroditus

¹⁹ I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I, too, may be consoled by news of you. ²⁰ I have no one so like myself who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. ²¹ All of them are seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.^{(F) 22} But Timothy’s^[a] worth you know, how like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.^{(G) 23} I hope therefore to send him as soon as I see how things go with me, ²⁴ and I trust in the Lord that I will also come soon.

²⁵ Still, I think it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus—my brother and coworker and fellow soldier, your messenger^[b] and minister to my need,^{(H) 26} for he has been longing for^[c] all of you and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. ²⁷ He was indeed so ill that he nearly died. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, so that I would not have one sorrow after another. ²⁸ I am the more eager to send him, therefore, in order that you may rejoice at seeing him again and that I may be less anxious. ²⁹ Welcome him, then, in the Lord with all joy, and honor such people,^{(I) 30} because he came close to death for the work of Christ,^[d] risking his life to make up for those services that you could not give me.

The Escape to Egypt

¹³ Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”^{(A) 14} Then Joseph^[a] got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt^{(B) 15} and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

The Massacre of the Infants

¹⁶ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi,^[b] he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.^{[c] 17} Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

The Return from Egypt

¹⁹ When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ²⁰ “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” ²¹ Then Joseph^[d] got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. ²² But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.^{(D) 23} There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”^[e](E)