M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

War against the Amalekites

15 ^(A)Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one whom the Lord sent to anoint you king of his people Israel. Now listen to what the Lord Almighty says. ^2 (B)He is going to punish the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the Israelites when they were coming from Egypt. ³ Go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Don't leave a thing; kill all the men, women, children, and babies; the cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys.”

⁴ Saul called his forces together and inspected them at Telem: there were 200,000 soldiers from Israel and 10,000 from Judah. ⁵ Then he and his men went to the city of Amalek and waited in ambush in a dry riverbed. ⁶ He sent a warning to the Kenites, a people whose ancestors had been kind to the Israelites when they came from Egypt: “Go away and leave the Amalekites, so that I won't kill you along with them.” So the Kenites left.

⁷ Saul defeated the Amalekites, fighting all the way from Havilah to Shur, east of Egypt; ⁸ he captured King Agag of Amalek alive and killed all the people. ⁹ But Saul and his men spared Agag's life and did not kill the best sheep and cattle, the best calves and lambs,^[a] or anything else that was good; they destroyed only what was useless or worthless.^[b]

Saul Is Rejected as King

¹⁰ The Lord said to Samuel, ¹¹ “I am sorry that I made Saul king; he has turned away from me and disobeyed my commands.” Samuel was angry, and all night long he pleaded with the Lord. ¹² Early the following morning he went off to find Saul. He heard that Saul had gone to the town of Carmel, where he had built a monument to himself, and then had gone on to Gilgal. ¹³ Samuel went up to Saul, who greeted him, saying, “The Lord bless you, Samuel! I have obeyed the Lord's command.”

¹⁴ Samuel asked, “Why, then, do I hear cattle mooing and sheep bleating?”

¹⁵ Saul answered, “My men took them from the Amalekites. They kept the best sheep and cattle to offer as a sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have destroyed completely.”^[c]

¹⁶ “Stop,” Samuel ordered, “and I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”

“Tell me,” Saul said.

¹⁷ Samuel answered, “Even though you consider yourself of no importance, you are the leader of the tribes of Israel. The Lord anointed you king of Israel, ¹⁸ and he sent you out with orders to destroy those wicked people of Amalek. He told you to fight until you had killed them all. ¹⁹ Why, then, did you not obey him? Why did you rush to grab the loot, and so do what displeases the Lord?”

²⁰ “I did obey the Lord,” Saul replied. “I went out as he told me to, brought back King Agag, and killed all the Amalekites. ²¹ But my men did not kill the best sheep and cattle that they captured; instead, they brought them here to Gilgal to offer as a sacrifice to the Lord your God.”

²² Samuel said, “Which does the Lord prefer: obedience or offerings and sacrifices? It is better to obey him than to sacrifice the best sheep to him. ²³ Rebellion against him is as bad as witchcraft, and arrogance is as sinful as idolatry. Because you rejected the Lord's command, he has rejected you as king.”

²⁴ “Yes, I have sinned,” Saul replied. “I disobeyed the Lord's command and your instructions. I was afraid of my men and did what they wanted. ²⁵ But now I beg you, forgive my sin and go back with me, so that I can worship the Lord.”

²⁶ “I will not go back with you,” Samuel answered. “You rejected the Lord's command, and he has rejected you as king of Israel.”

^27 (C)Then Samuel turned to leave, but Saul caught hold of his cloak, and it tore. ²⁸ Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel away from you today and given it to someone who is a better man than you. ²⁹ Israel's majestic God does not lie or change his mind. He is not a human being—he does not change his mind.”

³⁰ “I have sinned,” Saul replied. “But at least show me respect in front of the leaders of my people and all of Israel. Go back with me so that I can worship the Lord your God.” ³¹ So Samuel went back with him, and Saul worshiped the Lord.

³² “Bring King Agag here to me,” Samuel ordered. Agag came to him, trembling with fear, thinking to himself, “What a bitter thing it is to die!”^{[d] 33} Samuel said, “As your sword has made many mothers childless, so now your mother will become childless.” And he cut Agag to pieces in front of the altar in Gilgal.

³⁴ Then Samuel went to Ramah, and King Saul went home to Gibeah. ³⁵ As long as Samuel lived, he never again saw the king; but he grieved over him. The Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king of Israel.

Duties toward State Authorities

13 ^(A)Everyone must obey state authorities, because no authority exists without God's permission, and the existing authorities have been put there by God. ² Whoever opposes the existing authority opposes what God has ordered; and anyone who does so will bring judgment on himself. ³ For rulers are not to be feared by those who do good, but by those who do evil. Would you like to be unafraid of those in authority? Then do what is good, and they will praise you, ⁴ because they are God's servants working for your own good. But if you do evil, then be afraid of them, because their power to punish is real. They are God's servants and carry out God's punishment on those who do evil. ⁵ For this reason you must obey the authorities—not just because of God's punishment, but also as a matter of conscience.

^6 (B)That is also why you pay taxes, because the authorities are working for God when they fulfill their duties. ⁷ Pay, then, what you owe them; pay them your personal and property taxes, and show respect and honor for them all.

Duties toward One Another

⁸ Be under obligation to no one—the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law. ^9 (C)The commandments, “Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not desire what belongs to someone else”—all these, and any others besides, are summed up in the one command, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” ¹⁰ If you love others, you will never do them wrong; to love, then, is to obey the whole Law.

¹¹ You must do this, because you know that the time has come for you to wake up from your sleep. For the moment when we will be saved is closer now than it was when we first believed. ¹² The night is nearly over, day is almost here. Let us stop doing the things that belong to the dark, and let us take up weapons for fighting in the light. ¹³ Let us conduct ourselves properly, as people who live in the light of day—no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy. ¹⁴ But take up the weapons of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop paying attention to your sinful nature and satisfying its desires.

The Fall of Jerusalem^(A)

52 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of the Jeremiah who lived in the city of Libnah. ² King Zedekiah sinned against the Lord, just as King Jehoiakim had done. ³ The Lord became so angry with the people of Jerusalem and Judah that he banished them from his sight.

Zedekiah rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, ^4 (B)and so Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army and attacked Jerusalem on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign. They set up camp outside the city, built siege walls around it, ⁵ and kept it under siege until Zedekiah's eleventh year. ⁶ On the ninth day of the fourth month of that same year, when the famine was so bad that the people had nothing left to eat, ^7 (C)the city walls were broken through. Although the Babylonians were surrounding the city, all the soldiers escaped during the night. They left by way of the royal garden, went through the gateway connecting the two walls, and fled in the direction of the Jordan Valley. ⁸ But the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah, captured him in the plains near Jericho, and all his soldiers deserted him. ⁹ Zedekiah was taken to King Nebuchadnezzar, who was in the city of Riblah in the territory of Hamath, and there Nebuchadnezzar passed sentence on him. ¹⁰ At Riblah he put Zedekiah's sons to death while Zedekiah was looking on and he also had the officials of Judah executed. ^11 (D)After that, he had Zedekiah's eyes put out and had him placed in chains and taken to Babylon. Zedekiah remained in prison in Babylon until the day he died.

The Destruction of the Temple^(E)

¹² On the tenth day of the fifth month of the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Nebuzaradan, adviser to the king and commander of his army, entered Jerusalem. ^13 (F)He burned down the Temple, the palace, and the houses of all the important people in Jerusalem; ¹⁴ and his soldiers tore down the city walls. ¹⁵ Then Nebuzaradan took away to Babylonia^[a] the people who were left in the city, the remaining skilled workers, and those who had deserted to the Babylonians. ¹⁶ But he left in Judah some of the poorest people, who owned no property, and he put them to work in the vineyards and fields.

^17 (G)The Babylonians broke in pieces the bronze columns and the carts that were in the Temple, together with the large bronze tank, and they took all the bronze to Babylon. ¹⁸ They also took away the shovels and the ash containers used in cleaning the altar, the tools used in tending the lamps, the bowls used for catching the blood from the sacrifices, the bowls used for burning incense, and all the other bronze articles used in the Temple service. ¹⁹ They took away everything that was made of gold or silver: the small bowls, the pans used for carrying live coals, the bowls for holding the blood from the sacrifices, the ash containers, the lampstands, the bowls used for incense, and the bowls used for pouring out wine offerings. ²⁰ The bronze objects that King Solomon had made for the Temple—the two columns, the carts, the large tank, and the twelve bulls that supported it—were too heavy to weigh. ^21-22 The two columns were identical: each one was 27 feet high and 18 feet around. They were hollow, and the metal was 3 inches thick. On top of each column was a bronze capital 7½ feet high, and all around it was a grillwork decorated with pomegranates, all of which was also made of bronze. ²³ On the grillwork of each column there were a hundred pomegranates in all, and ninety-six of these were visible from the ground.

The People of Judah Are Taken to Babylonia^(H)

²⁴ In addition, Nebuzaradan, the commanding officer, took away as prisoners Seraiah the High Priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and the three other important Temple officials. ²⁵ From the city he took the officer who had been in command of the troops, seven of the king's personal advisers who were still in the city, the commander's assistant, who was in charge of military records, and sixty other important men. ²⁶ Nebuzaradan took them to the king of Babylonia, who was in the city of Riblah ²⁷ in the territory of Hamath. There the king had them beaten and put to death.

So the people of Judah were carried away from their land into exile. ²⁸ This is the record of the people that Nebuchadnezzar took away as prisoners: in his seventh year as king he carried away 3,023; ²⁹ in his eighteenth year, 832 from Jerusalem; ³⁰ and in his twenty-third year, 745—taken away by Nebuzaradan. In all, 4,600 people were taken away.

³¹ In the year that Evil-merodach became king of Babylonia, he showed kindness to King Jehoiachin of Judah by releasing him from prison. This happened on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin had been taken away as a prisoner. ³² Evil-merodach treated him kindly and gave him a position of greater honor than he gave the other kings who were exiles with him in Babylonia. ³³ So Jehoiachin was permitted to change from his prison clothes and to dine at the king's table for the rest of his life. ³⁴ Each day for as long as he lived, he was given a regular allowance for his needs.

A Prayer of Trust in God^[a]