M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Elimelech’s Family Moves to Moab

1 In the days when there were judges to rule, there was a time of no food in the land. A certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to visit the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. ² The name of the man was Elimelech. His wife’s name was Naomi. And the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the land of Moab and stayed there. ³ But Naomi’s husband Elimelech died. And she was left with her two sons, ⁴ who married Moabite women. The name of one was Orpah. The name of the other was Ruth. After living there about ten years, ⁵ both Mahlon and Chilion died. Naomi was left without her two children and her husband.

Naomi and Ruth Return to Bethlehem

⁶ Then Naomi got ready to return from the land of Moab with her daughters-in-law. She had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had brought food to His people. ⁷ So she left with her two daughters-in-law and went on the way toward the land of Judah. ⁸ But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, each one of you return to your own mother’s house. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have done with the dead and with me. ⁹ May the Lord help you to find a home, each in the family of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they cried in loud voices. ¹⁰ They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” ¹¹ But Naomi said, “Return to your people, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Do I have more sons within me, who could become your husbands? ¹² Return, my daughters. Go. For I am too old to have a husband. If I had hope, if I should have a husband tonight and give birth to sons, ¹³ would you wait until they were grown? Would you not marry until then? No, my daughters. It is harder for me than for you. For the hand of the Lord is against me.” ¹⁴ Then they cried again in loud voices. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law. But Ruth held on to her.

¹⁵ Naomi said, “See, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and her gods. Return after your sister-in-law.” ¹⁶ But Ruth said, “Do not beg me to leave you or turn away from following you. I will go where you go. I will live where you live. Your people will be my people. And your God will be my God. ¹⁷ I will die where you die, and there I will be buried. So may the Lord do the same to me, and worse, if anything but death takes me from you.” ¹⁸ When Naomi saw that Ruth would do nothing but go with her, she said no more to her.

¹⁹ So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. The whole town of Bethlehem was happy because of them. The women said, “Is this Naomi?” ²⁰ She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara. For the All-powerful has brought much trouble to me. ²¹ I went out full. But the Lord has made me return empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has spoken against me. The All-powerful has allowed me to suffer.”

²² So Naomi returned. And her daughter-in-law Ruth, the Moabite woman, returned with her from the land of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley gathering time.

Paul Speaks to King Agrippa

26 Agrippa said to Paul, “You may now speak for yourself.” Paul lifted his hand and started to talk, ² “King Agrippa, the Jews have said many things against me. I am happy to be able to tell you my side of the story. ³ You know all about the Jewish ways and problems. So I ask you to listen to me until I have finished.

⁴ “All the Jews know about my life from the time I was a boy until now. I lived among my own people in Jerusalem. ⁵ If they would tell what they know, they would say that I lived the life of a proud religious law-keeper. I was in the group of proud religious law-keepers who tried to obey every law.

⁶ “And now I am on trial here because I trust the promise God made to our fathers. ⁷ This promise is what our twelve family groups of the Jewish nation hope to see happen. They worship God day and night. King Agrippa, it is because of this hope that they are saying things against me. ⁸ Why do you think it is hard to believe that God raises people from the dead?

⁹ “I used to think I should work hard against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. ¹⁰ I did that in Jerusalem. I put many of the followers in prison. The head religious leaders gave me the right and the power to do it. Then when the followers were killed, I said it was all right. ¹¹ I beat them and tried to make them speak against God in all the Jewish places of worship. In my fight against them, I kept going after them even into cities in other countries.

¹² “When I was going to Damascus to do this, I had the right and the power from the head religious leaders to make it hard for the followers. ¹³ I was on the road at noon. King Agrippa, I saw a light from heaven brighter than the sun. It was shining around me and the men with me. ¹⁴ We all fell to the ground. Then I heard a voice speaking to me in the Jewish language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you working so hard against Me? You hurt yourself by trying to hurt Me.’ ¹⁵ I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, the One you are working against. ¹⁶ Get up. Stand on your feet. I have chosen you to work for Me. You will tell what you have seen and you will say what I want you to say. This is the reason I have allowed you to see Me. ¹⁷ I will keep you safe from the Jews and from the people who are not Jews. I am sending you to these people. ¹⁸ You are to open their eyes. You are to turn them from darkness to light. You are to turn them from the power of Satan to the power of God. In this way, they may have their sins forgiven. They may have what is given to them, along with all those who are set apart for God by having faith in Me.’

¹⁹ “King Agrippa, I obeyed what I saw from heaven. ²⁰ First I told what I saw to those in Damascus and then in Jerusalem. I told it through all the country of Judea. I even preached to the people who are not Jews that they should be sorry for their sins and turn from them to God. I told them they should do things to show they are sorry for their sins.

²¹ “That is why the Jews took hold of me in the house of God and tried to kill me. ²² God has helped me. To this day I have told these things to the people who are well-known and to those not known. I have told only what the early preachers and Moses said would happen. ²³ It was that Christ must suffer and be the first to rise from the dead. He would give light to the Jews and to the other nations.”

²⁴ As Paul was speaking for himself, Festus cried out in a loud voice, “Paul, you are crazy! All your learning keeps you from thinking right!” ²⁵ Paul said, “Most respected Festus, I am not crazy. I am speaking the truth! ²⁶ The king knows about all this. I am free to speak to him in plain words. Nothing I have said is new to him. These things happened where everyone saw them. ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe the writings of the early preachers? I know that you believe them.”

²⁸ Then Agrippa said to Paul, “In this short time you have almost proven to me that I should become a Christian!” ²⁹ Paul said, “My prayer to God is that you and all who hear me today would be a Christian as I am, only not have these chains!” ³⁰ King Agrippa and Festus and Bernice and those who sat with them got up. ³¹ As they left the courtroom, they said to each other, “This man has done nothing for which he should be kept in prison or be put to death.” ³² Agrippa told Festus, “This man could go free if he had not asked to be sent to Caesar.”

Baruch Reads the Book in the House of God

36 In the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, ² “Take a book and write in it all the words which I have said to you about Israel, Judah, and all the nations. Write all I have said since the day I first spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. ³ It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the trouble I am planning to bring on them, so that everyone will turn from his sinful way. Then I will forgive their wrong-doing and their sin.”

⁴ So Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah. And Baruch wrote in the book all the words which Jeremiah told him that the Lord had said to him. ⁵ Then Jeremiah said to Baruch, “I am shut up here and cannot go into the house of the Lord. ⁶ So you go to the Lord’s house on the special day of no food, and read to the people the words of the Lord which you have written down as I told them to you. And also read them to all the people of Judah who come from their cities. ⁷ It may be that their prayer will come before the Lord, and everyone will turn from his sinful way. For the punishment that the Lord said would come to these people because of His anger is very bad.” ⁸ Baruch the son of Neriah did all that Jeremiah the man of God told him. He read from the book the words of the Lord in the Lord’s house.

⁹ In the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, all the people in Jerusalem and all those from the cities of Judah set apart to the Lord a day when they would not eat. ¹⁰ Then Baruch read from the book the words of Jeremiah to all the people in the house of the Lord, in the room of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the writer, in the upper place by the New Gate of the Lord’s house.

The Book Is Read to the Leaders

¹¹ When Micaiah the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, had heard all the words of the Lord from the book, ¹² he went down to the king’s house, into the writer’s room. And he saw that all the leaders were sitting there. There was Elishama the writer, and Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, and Elnathan the son of Achbor, and Gemariah the son of Shaphan, and Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the other leaders. ¹³ And Micaiah told them all that he had heard Baruch read to the people from the book. ¹⁴ Then all the leaders sent Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi, to Baruch, saying, “Take the book you have read to the people, and come.” So Baruch the son of Neriah took the book in his hand and went to them. ¹⁵ They told him, “Sit down and read it to us.” So Baruch read it to them. ¹⁶ When they had heard all the words, they turned in fear to one another and said to Baruch, “For sure we will tell all these words to the king.” ¹⁷ And they asked Baruch, “Tell us, how did you write all this? Did Jeremiah tell it to you?” ¹⁸ Baruch said to them, “He told me all these words, and I wrote them down in the book.” ¹⁹ Then the leaders said to Baruch, “Go and hide, both you and Jeremiah. And do not let anyone know where you are.”

The King Burns Jeremiah’s Book

²⁰ So they went to the king in the open space, but they had put the book in the room of Elishama the writer. And they told all the words to the king. ²¹ Then the king sent Jehudi to get the book, and he took it out of the room of Elishama the writer. And Jehudi read it to the king and to all the leaders who stood beside him. ²² It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house with a fire burning in the fireplace in front of him. ²³ When Jehudi had read three or four parts, the king cut them with a small knife and threw them into the fire in the fireplace. He did this until the book was destroyed in the fire. ²⁴ The king and all his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, and they did not tear their clothes. ²⁵ Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the book, but he would not listen to them. ²⁶ And the king told Jerahmeel the king’s son, Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel to take hold of Baruch the writer and Jeremiah the man of God. But the Lord had hidden them.

Jeremiah Writes Another Book

²⁷ Now the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the book with the words Jeremiah had told Baruch to write down. The Lord said, ²⁸ “Take another book and write in it all the words that were in the first book which Jehoiakim the king of Judah burned. ²⁹ And about Jehoiakim the king of Judah you will say, ‘This is what the Lord says: “You have burned this book, saying, ‘Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will be sure to come and destroy this land and put an end to every man and animal in it?’” ³⁰ So this is what the Lord says about Jehoiakim king of Judah: “He will have no one to sit on the throne of David. And his dead body will be thrown out to the heat of the day and the cold of the night. ³¹ I will punish him and his children and his servants for their sin. And I will bring on them and the people of Jerusalem and the men of Judah all the trouble that I have said would come to them, because they would not listen.”’” ³² Then Jeremiah took another book and gave it to Baruch the son of Neraiah, the writer. And as Jeremiah told them to him, he wrote down all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many words of the same kind were added to them.

God Speaks through Jeremiah to Baruch

45 This is the word which Jeremiah the man of God said to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written down in a book what Jeremiah told him. This was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah. ² “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to you, O Baruch: ³ ‘You said, “O, it is bad for me! For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain. I am tired from crying inside myself, and have found no rest.”’” ⁴ “So you are to tell him, ‘The Lord says, “I am breaking down what I have built. And I am pulling up by the roots what I have planted, that is, the whole land.” ⁵ Are you looking for great things for yourself? Do not look for them. For I am bringing trouble to all flesh,’ says the Lord. ‘But I will give you life in all the places you go.’”

Thanks to God for the Way He Judges

9 I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart. I will tell of all the great things You have done. ² I will be glad and full of joy because of You. I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. ³ When those who hate me turn away, they fall and are lost from You. ⁴ For You have stood by my right actions. You sit on Your throne, and are right in how You judge. ⁵ You have spoken sharp words to the nations and have destroyed the sinful. You have thrown out their name forever and ever. ⁶ Those who fight against You are finished forever. You have destroyed their cities. They will be remembered no more. ⁷ But the Lord lives forever. He has set up His throne to say who is guilty or not. ⁸ He will punish the world by what is right. He will be fair as He rules the people.

⁹ The Lord also keeps safe those who suffer. He is a safe place in times of trouble. ¹⁰ Those who know Your name will put their trust in You. For You, O Lord, have never left alone those who look for You. ¹¹ Sing praises to the Lord, Who lives in Zion! Tell all the nations what He has done! ¹² For He Who punishes for the blood of another remembers them. He does not forget the cry of those who suffer. ¹³ Have pity on me, O Lord! See how I suffer from those who hate me, You Who have lifted me up from the gates of death, ¹⁴ that I may tell of all Your praises in the gates of the people of Zion. There I will be full of joy because You save.

¹⁵ The nations have fallen into the hole they have dug. Their own feet have been caught in the net they have hidden. ¹⁶ The Lord has made Himself known. He is fair in His Law. The sinful trap themselves by the work of their own hands. ¹⁷ The sinful, all the nations that forget God, will be turned back into the grave.

¹⁸ But those in need will not always be forgotten. The hope of the poor will not be lost forever. ¹⁹ Rise up, O Lord! Do not let man win the fight against You. Let the nations come to You and be judged. ²⁰ Make them afraid, O Lord. Let the nations know they are only men.