M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Samuel’s Birth

1 There was a man named Elkanah son of Jeroham from Ramathaim in the mountains of Ephraim. Elkanah was from the family of Zuph. (Jeroham was Elihu’s son. Elihu was Tohu’s son, and Tohu was the son of Zuph from the family group of Ephraim.) ² Elkanah had two wives named Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.

³ Every year Elkanah left his town of Ramah and went up to Shiloh to worship the Lord All-Powerful and to offer sacrifices to him. Shiloh was where Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, served as priests of the Lord. ⁴ When Elkanah offered sacrifices, he always gave a share of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to her sons and daughters. ⁵ But Elkanah always gave a special share of the meat to Hannah, because he loved Hannah and because the Lord had kept her from having children. ⁶ Peninnah would tease Hannah and upset her, because the Lord had made her unable to have children. ⁷ This happened every year when they went up to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. Peninnah would upset Hannah until Hannah would cry and not eat anything. ⁸ Her husband Elkanah would say to her, “Hannah, why are you crying and why won’t you eat? Why are you sad? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”

⁹ Once, after they had eaten their meal in Shiloh, Hannah got up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair near the entrance to the Lord’s house. ¹⁰ Hannah was so sad that she cried and prayed to the Lord. ¹¹ She made a promise, saying, “Lord All-Powerful, see how sad I am. Remember me and don’t forget me. If you will give me a son, I will give him back to you all his life, and no one will ever cut his hair with a razor.”^[a]

¹² While Hannah kept praying, Eli watched her mouth. ¹³ She was praying in her heart so her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk ¹⁴ and said to her, “Stop getting drunk! Throw away your wine!”

¹⁵ Hannah answered, “No, sir, I have not drunk any wine or beer. I am a deeply troubled woman, and I was telling the Lord about all my problems. ¹⁶ Don’t think I am an evil woman. I have been praying because I have many troubles and am very sad.”

¹⁷ Eli answered, “Go! I wish you well. May the God of Israel give you what you asked of him.”

¹⁸ Hannah said, “May I always please you.” When she left and ate something, she was not sad anymore.

¹⁹ Early the next morning Elkanah’s family got up and worshiped the Lord. Then they went back home to Ramah. Elkanah had sexual relations with his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. ²⁰ So Hannah became pregnant, and in time she gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel,^[b] saying, “His name is Samuel because I asked the Lord for him.”

Hannah Gives Samuel to God

²¹ Every year Elkanah went with his whole family to Shiloh to offer sacrifices and to keep the promise he had made to God. ²² But one time Hannah did not go with him. She told him, “When the boy is old enough to eat solid food, I will take him to Shiloh. Then I will give him to the Lord, and he will always live there.”

²³ Elkanah, Hannah’s husband, said to her, “Do what you think is best. You may stay home until the boy is old enough to eat. May the Lord do what you have said.” So Hannah stayed at home to nurse her son until he was old enough to eat.

²⁴ When Samuel was old enough to eat, Hannah took him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, along with a three-year-old bull, one-half bushel of flour, and a leather bag filled with wine. ²⁵ After they had killed the bull for the sacrifice, Hannah brought Samuel to Eli. ²⁶ She said to Eli, “As surely as you live, sir, I am the same woman who stood near you praying to the Lord. ²⁷ I prayed for this child, and the Lord answered my prayer and gave him to me. ²⁸ Now I give him back to the Lord. He will belong to the Lord all his life.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

1 From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. God called me to be an apostle and chose me to tell the Good News.

² God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets, as it is written in the Holy Scriptures. ^3-4 The Good News is about God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. As a man, he was born from the family of David. But through the Spirit of holiness he was declared to be God’s Son with great power by rising from the dead. ⁵ Through Christ, God gave me the special work of an apostle, which was to lead people of all nations to believe and obey. I do this work for him. ⁶ And you who are in Rome are also called to belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷ To all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his holy people:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

A Prayer of Thanks

⁸ First I want to say that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because people everywhere in the world are talking about your faith. ⁹ God, whom I serve with my whole heart by telling the Good News about his Son, knows that I always mention you ¹⁰ every time I pray. I pray that I will be allowed to come to you, and this will happen if God wants it. ¹¹ I want very much to see you, to give you some spiritual gift to make you strong. ¹² I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I planned many times to come to you, but this has not been possible. I wanted to come so that I could help you grow spiritually as I have helped the other non-Jewish people.

¹⁴ I have a duty to all people—Greeks and those who are not Greeks, the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵ That is why I want so much to preach the Good News to you in Rome.

¹⁶ I am not ashamed of the Good News, because it is the power God uses to save everyone who believes—to save the Jews first, and then to save non-Jews. ¹⁷ The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself—that it begins and ends with faith. As the Scripture says, “But those who are right with God will live by faith.”^[a]

All People Have Done Wrong

¹⁸ God’s anger is shown from heaven against all the evil and wrong things people do. By their own evil lives they hide the truth. ¹⁹ God shows his anger because some knowledge of him has been made clear to them. Yes, God has shown himself to them. ²⁰ There are things about him that people cannot see—his eternal power and all the things that make him God. But since the beginning of the world those things have been easy to understand by what God has made. So people have no excuse for the bad things they do. ²¹ They knew God, but they did not give glory to God or thank him. Their thinking became useless. Their foolish minds were filled with darkness. ²² They said they were wise, but they became fools. ²³ They traded the glory of God who lives forever for the worship of idols made to look like earthly people, birds, animals, and snakes.

²⁴ Because they did these things, God left them and let them go their sinful way, wanting only to do evil. As a result, they became full of sexual sin, using their bodies wrongly with each other. ²⁵ They traded the truth of God for a lie. They worshiped and served what had been created instead of the God who created those things, who should be praised forever. Amen.

²⁶ Because people did those things, God left them and let them do the shameful things they wanted to do. Women stopped having natural sex and started having sex with other women. ²⁷ In the same way, men stopped having natural sex and began wanting each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and in their bodies they received the punishment for those wrongs.

²⁸ People did not think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking and to do things they should not do. ²⁹ They are filled with every kind of sin, evil, selfishness, and hatred. They are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, lying, and thinking the worst about each other. They gossip ³⁰ and say evil things about each other. They hate God. They are rude and conceited and brag about themselves. They invent ways of doing evil. They do not obey their parents. ³¹ They are foolish, they do not keep their promises, and they show no kindness or mercy to others. ³² They know God’s law says that those who live like this should die. But they themselves not only continue to do these evil things, they applaud others who do them.

The Fall of Jerusalem

39 This is how Jerusalem was captured: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and surrounded the city to attack it. This was during the tenth month of the ninth year Zedekiah was king of Judah. ² This lasted until the ninth day of the fourth month in Zedekiah’s eleventh year. Then the city wall was broken through. ³ And all these officers of the king of Babylon came into Jerusalem and sat down at the Middle Gate: Nergal-Sharezer of the district of Samgar; Nebo-Sarsekim, a chief officer; Nergal-Sharezer, an important leader; and all the other important officers.

⁴ When Zedekiah king of Judah and all his soldiers saw them, they ran away. They left Jerusalem at night and went out from the king’s garden. They went through the gate that was between the two walls and then headed toward the Jordan Valley. ⁵ But the Babylonian army chased them and caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. They captured him and took him to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who was at the town of Riblah in the land of Hamath. There Nebuchadnezzar passed his sentence on Zedekiah. ⁶ At Riblah the king of Babylon killed Zedekiah’s sons and all the important officers of Judah as Zedekiah watched. ⁷ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes. He put bronze chains on Zedekiah and took him to Babylon.

⁸ The Babylonians set fire to the palace and to the houses of the people, and they broke down the walls around Jerusalem. ⁹ Nebuzaradan, commander of the king’s special guards, took the people left in Jerusalem, those captives who had surrendered to him earlier, and the rest of the people of Jerusalem, and he took them all away to Babylon. ¹⁰ But Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, left some of the poorest people of Judah behind. They owned nothing, but that day he gave them vineyards and fields.

¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had given these orders about Jeremiah through Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard: ¹² “Find Jeremiah and take care of him. Do not hurt him, but do for him whatever he asks you.” ¹³ So Nebuchadnezzar sent these men for Jeremiah: Nebuzaradan, commander of the guards; Nebushazban, a chief officer; Nergal-Sharezer, an important leader; and all the other officers of the king of Babylon. ¹⁴ They had Jeremiah taken out of the courtyard of the guard. Then they turned him over to Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, who had orders to take Jeremiah back home. So they took him home, and he stayed among the people left in Judah.

¹⁵ While Jeremiah was guarded in the courtyard, the Lord spoke his word to him: ¹⁶ “Jeremiah, go and tell Ebed-Melech the Cushite this message: ‘This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: Very soon I will make my words about Jerusalem come true through disaster, not through good times. You will see everything come true with your own eyes. ¹⁷ But I will save you on that day, Ebed-Melech, says the Lord. You will not be handed over to the people you fear. ¹⁸ I will surely save you, Ebed-Melech. You will not die from a sword, but you will escape and live. This will happen because you have trusted in me, says the Lord.’”

A Prayer for God to Be Near

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

The Unbelieving Fool

For the director of music. Of David.