M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
19 Word soon reached Joab that the king was weeping and mourning for Absalom. 2 As the people heard of the king’s deep grief for his son, the joy of that day’s wonderful victory was turned into deep sadness. 3 The entire army crept back into the city as though they were ashamed and had been beaten in battle.
4 The king covered his face with his hands and kept on weeping, “O my son Absalom! O Absalom my son, my son!”
5 Then Joab went to the king’s room and said to him, “We saved your life today and the lives of your sons, your daughters, your wives, and concubines; and yet you act like this, making us feel ashamed, as though we had done something wrong. 6 You seem to love those who hate you, and hate those who love you. Apparently we don’t mean anything to you; if Absalom had lived and all of us had died, you would be happy. 7 Now go out there and congratulate the troops, for I swear by Jehovah that if you don’t, not a single one of them will remain here during the night; then you will be worse off than you have ever been in your entire life.”
8-10 So the king went out and sat at the city gates, and as the news spread throughout the city that he was there, everyone went to him.
Meanwhile, there was much discussion and argument going on all across the nation: “Why aren’t we talking about bringing the king back?” was the great topic everywhere. “For he saved us from our enemies, the Philistines; and Absalom, whom we made our king instead, chased him out of the country, but now Absalom is dead. Let’s ask David to return and be our king again.”
11-12 Then David sent Zadok and Abiathar the priests to say to the elders of Judah, “Why are you the last ones to reinstate the king? For all Israel is ready, and only you are holding out. Yet you are my own brothers, my own tribe, my own flesh and blood!”
13 And he told them to tell Amasa, “Since you are my nephew, may God strike me dead if I do not appoint you as commander-in-chief of my army in place of Joab.” 14 Then Amasa convinced all the leaders of Judah, and they responded as one man. They sent word to the king, “Return to us and bring back all those who are with you.”
15 So the king started back to Jerusalem. And when he arrived at the Jordan River, it seemed as if everyone in Judah had come to Gilgal to meet him and escort him across the river! 16 Then Shimei (the son of Gera the Benjaminite), the man from Bahurim, hurried across with the men of Judah to welcome King David. 17 A thousand men from the tribe of Benjamin were with him, including Ziba, the servant of Saul, and Ziba’s fifteen sons and twenty servants; they rushed down to the Jordan to arrive ahead of the king. 18 They all worked hard ferrying the king’s household and troops across, and helped them in every way they could.
As the king was crossing, Shimei fell down before him, 19 and pleaded, “My lord the king, please forgive me and forget the terrible thing I did when you left Jerusalem; 20 for I know very well how much I sinned. That is why I have come here today, the very first person in all the tribe of Joseph to greet you.”
21 Abishai asked, “Shall not Shimei die, for he cursed the Lord’s chosen king!”
22 “Don’t talk to me like that!” David exclaimed. “This is not a day for execution but for celebration! I am once more king of Israel!”
23 Then, turning to Shimei, he vowed, “Your life is spared.”
24-25 Now Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson, arrived from Jerusalem to meet the king. He had not washed his feet or clothes nor trimmed his beard since the day the king left Jerusalem.
“Why didn’t you come with me, Mephibosheth?” the king asked him.
26 And he replied, “My lord, O king, my servant Ziba deceived me. I told him, ‘Saddle my donkey so that I can go with the king.’ For as you know I am lame. 27 But Ziba has slandered me by saying that I refused to come.[a] But I know that you are as an angel of God, so do what you think best. 28 I and all my relatives could expect only death from you, but instead you have honored me among all those who eat at your own table! So how can I complain?”
29 “All right,” David replied. “My decision is that you and Ziba will divide the land equally between you.”
30 “Give him all of it,” Mephibosheth said. “I am content just to have you back again!”
31-32 Barzillai, who had fed the king and his army during their exile in Mahanaim, arrived from Rogelim to conduct the king across the river. He was very old now, about eighty, and very wealthy.
33 “Come across with me and live in Jerusalem,” the king said to Barzillai. “I will take care of you there.”
34 “No,” he replied, “I am far too old for that. 35 I am eighty years old today, and life has lost its excitement.[b] Food and wine are no longer tasty, and entertainment is not much fun; I would only be a burden to my lord the king. 36 Just to go across the river with you is all the honor I need! 37 Then let me return again to die in my own city, where my father and mother are buried. But here is Chimham.[c] Let him go with you and receive whatever good things you want to give him.”
38 “Good,” the king agreed. “Chimham shall go with me, and I will do for him whatever I would have done for you.”
39 So all the people crossed the Jordan with the king; and after David had kissed and blessed Barzillai, he returned home. 40 The king then went on to Gilgal, taking Chimham with him. And most of Judah and half of Israel were there to greet him. 41 But the men of Israel complained to the king because only men from Judah had ferried him and his household across the Jordan.
42 “Why not?” the men of Judah replied. “The king is one of our own tribe. Why should this make you angry? We have charged him nothing—he hasn’t fed us or given us gifts!”
43 “But there are ten tribes in Israel,” the others replied, “so we have ten times as much right in the king as you do; why didn’t you invite the rest of us? And, remember, we were the first to speak of bringing him back to be our king again.”
The argument continued back and forth, and the men of Judah were very rough in their replies.
12 This boasting is all so foolish, but let me go on. Let me tell about the visions I’ve had, and revelations from the Lord.
2-3 Fourteen years ago I[a] was taken up to heaven for a visit. Don’t ask me whether my body was there or just my spirit, for I don’t know; only God can answer that. But anyway, there I was in paradise, 4 and heard things so astounding that they are beyond a man’s power to describe or put in words (and anyway I am not allowed to tell them to others). 5 That experience is something worth bragging about, but I am not going to do it. I am going to boast only about how weak I am and how great God is to use such weakness for his glory. 6 I have plenty to boast about and would be no fool in doing it, but I don’t want anyone to think more highly of me than he should from what he can actually see in my life and my message.
7 I will say this: because these experiences I had were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up by them; so I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me and prick my pride. 8 Three different times I begged God to make me well again.
9 Each time he said, “No. But I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in weak people.” Now I am glad to boast about how weak I am; I am glad to be a living demonstration of Christ’s power, instead of showing off my own power and abilities. 10 Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite happy about “the thorn,” and about insults and hardships, persecutions and difficulties; for when I am weak, then I am strong—the less I have, the more I depend on him.
11 You have made me act like a fool—boasting like this—for you people ought to be writing about me and not making me write about myself. There isn’t a single thing these other marvelous fellows have that I don’t have too, even though I am really worth nothing at all. 12 When I was there I certainly gave you every proof that I was truly an apostle, sent to you by God himself, for I patiently did many wonders and signs and mighty works among you. 13 The only thing I didn’t do for you, which I do everywhere else in all other churches, was to become a burden to you—I didn’t ask you to give me food to eat and a place to stay. Please forgive me for this wrong!
14 Now I am coming to you again, the third time; and it is still not going to cost you anything, for I don’t want your money. I want you! And anyway, you are my children, and little children don’t pay for their father’s and mother’s food—it’s the other way around; parents supply food for their children. 15 I am glad to give you myself and all I have for your spiritual good, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me.
16 Some of you are saying, “It’s true that his visits didn’t seem to cost us anything, but he is a sneaky fellow, that Paul, and he fooled us. As sure as anything he must have made money from us some way.”
17 But how? Did any of the men I sent to you take advantage of you? 18 When I urged Titus to visit you and sent our other brother with him, did they make any profit? No, of course not. For we have the same Holy Spirit and walk in each other’s steps, doing things the same way.
19 I suppose you think I am saying all this to get back into your good graces. That isn’t it at all. I tell you, with God listening as I say it, that I have said this to help you, dear friends—to build you up spiritually—and not to help myself. 20 For I am afraid that when I come to visit you I won’t like what I find, and then you won’t like the way I will have to act. I am afraid that I will find you quarreling, and envying each other, and being angry with each other, and acting big, and saying wicked things about each other, and whispering behind each other’s backs, filled with conceit and disunity. 21 Yes, I am afraid that when I come God will humble me before you and I will be sad and mourn because many of you have sinned before and don’t even care about the wicked, impure things you have done: your lust and immorality, and the taking of other men’s wives.
26 Another message came to me from the Lord on the first day of the month, in the eleventh year (after King Jehoiachin was taken away to captivity).
2 “Son of dust, Tyre has rejoiced over the fall of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Ha! She who controlled the lucrative north-south trade routes along the coast and along the course of the Jordan River[a] has been broken, and I have fallen heir! Because she has been laid waste, I shall become wealthy!’”
3 Therefore the Lord God says: “I stand against you, Tyre, and I will bring nations against you like ocean waves. 4 They will destroy the walls of Tyre and tear down her towers. I will scrape away her soil and make her a bare rock! 5 Her island shall become uninhabited, a place for fishermen to spread their nets, for I have spoken it,” says the Lord God. “Tyre shall become the prey of many nations, 6 and her mainland city shall perish by the sword. Then they shall know I am the Lord.”
7 For the Lord God says: “I will bring Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—the king of kings from the north—against Tyre with a great army and cavalry and chariots. 8 First he will destroy your suburbs; then he will attack your mainland city by building a siege wall and raising a roof of shields against it. 9 He will set up battering rams against your walls and with sledgehammers demolish your forts. 10 The hoofs of his cavalry will choke the city with dust, and your walls will shake as the horses gallop through your broken gates, pulling chariots behind them. 11 Horsemen will occupy every street in the city; they will butcher your people, and your famous, huge pillars will topple.
12 “They will plunder all your riches and merchandise and break down your walls. They will destroy your lovely homes and dump your stones and timber and even your dust into the sea. 13 I will stop the music of your songs. No more will there be the sound of harps among you. 14 I will make your island a bare rock,[b] a place for fishermen to spread their nets. You will never be rebuilt, for I, the Lord, have spoken it.” So says the Lord. 15 “The whole country will shake with your fall; the wounded will scream as the slaughter goes on.
16 “Then all the seaport rulers shall come down from their thrones and lay aside their robes and beautiful garments and sit on the ground shaking with fear at what they have seen. 17 And they shall wail for you, singing this dirge: ‘O mighty island city, with your naval power that terrorized the mainland, how you have vanished from the seas! 18 How the islands tremble at your fall! They watch dismayed.’”
19 For the Lord God says: “I will destroy Tyre to the ground. You will sink beneath the terrible waves of enemy attack. Great seas shall swallow you. 20 I will send you to the pit of hell to lie there with those of long ago. Your city will lie in ruins, dead, like the bodies of those in the underworld who entered long ago the nether world of the dead. Never again will you be inhabited or be given beauty here in the land of those who live. 21 I will bring you to a dreadful end; no search will be enough to find you,” says the Lord.
74 O God, why have you cast us away forever? Why is your anger hot against us—the sheep of your own pasture? 2 Remember that we are your people—the ones you chose in ancient times from slavery and made the choicest of your possessions. You chose Jerusalem[a] as your home on earth!
3 Walk through the awful ruins of the city and see what the enemy has done to your sanctuary. 4 There they shouted their battle cry and erected their idols to flaunt their victory. 5-6 Everything lies in shambles like a forest chopped to the ground. They came with their axes and sledgehammers and smashed and chopped the carved paneling; 7 they set the sanctuary on fire, and razed it to the ground—your sanctuary, Lord. 8 “Let’s wipe out every trace of God,” they said, and went through the entire country burning down the assembly places where we worshiped you.
9-10 There is nothing left to show that we are your people. The prophets are gone, and who can say when it all will end? How long, O God, will you allow our enemies to dishonor your name? Will you let them get away with this forever? 11 Why do you delay? Why hold back your power? Unleash your fist and give them a final blow.
12 God is my King from ages past; you have been actively helping me everywhere throughout the land. 13-14 You divided the Red Sea with your strength; you crushed the sea god’s heads! You gave him to the desert tribes to eat! 15 At your command the springs burst forth to give your people water; and then you dried a path for them across the ever-flowing Jordan. 16 Day and night alike belong to you; you made the starlight and the sun. 17 All nature is within your hands; you make the summer and the winter too. 18 Lord, see how these enemies scoff at you. O Jehovah, an arrogant nation has blasphemed your name.
19 O Lord, save me! Protect your turtledove from the hawks.[b] Save your beloved people from these beasts. 20 Remember your promise! For the land is full of darkness and cruel men. 21 O Lord, don’t let your downtrodden people be constantly insulted. Give cause for these poor and needy ones to praise your name! 22 Arise, O God, and state your case against our enemies. Remember the insults these rebels have hurled against you all day long. 23 Don’t overlook the cursing of these enemies of yours; it grows louder and louder.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.