M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

The Queen of Sheba

10 The Queen of Sheba heard news that Solomon was a great king who served the Lord.^[a] So she came to ask Solomon some difficult questions to see how wise he was. ² She arrived at Jerusalem with a big group of servants. She had many camels that carried spices. They also carried a lot of gold and valuable jewels. When she came to Solomon, she talked to him about everything that was in her mind. ³ Solomon answered all her questions. There was nothing that was too difficult for the king to explain to her. ⁴ The Queen of Sheba saw that Solomon was very wise.^[b] She saw the palace that he had built. ⁵ She saw all the food that he ate in his palace. She saw all his servants and officers and their beautiful clothes. She saw the servants who prepared his food and wine. She saw the burnt offerings that he offered in the Lord's temple. All these things caused her to hold her breath in surprise. ⁶ She said to the king, ‘In my own country I heard news about your wisdom and about all the things that you had done. Everything that I heard was true! ⁷ But I did not believe those things until I came here. Now I have seen everything with my own eyes, and it is true! Really, they told me less than half of what was true! You are even wiser and richer than the report that people told me. ⁸ God has blessed your people and your officers! They are always with you, and they can listen to your wise words. ⁹ So we praise the Lord your God! He is happy with you and he has chosen you to rule Israel. The Lord's love for Israel will continue for ever. So he has made you king to rule in a fair and honest way.’

¹⁰ The Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon more than 4,000 kilograms of gold, a lot of spices and many valuable jewels. Nobody has ever brought such a big number of spices as she gave to the king.

¹¹ Hiram's ships had brought gold from Ophir. They also brought from there large loads of good wood, and valuable jewels. ¹² The king used the wood to make steps for the Lord's temple and for the king's palace. He also used it to make harps and lyres for the musicians. Nobody has ever seen such valuable wood, even until today.

¹³ So King Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba all the gifts that he chose for her. He gave her everything that she wanted. Then she left Solomon and she returned to her own country with her servants.

Solomon's riches

¹⁴ Solomon received 25 tons of gold each year.

¹⁵ He also received money from traders, from the kings of Arabia and from the rulers of each region in Israel.

¹⁶ King Solomon's workers used gold to make 200 large shields. They hit the gold with hammers to make it flat. They used about four kilograms of gold to cover each shield. ¹⁷ They also made 300 small shields in the same way. They used about 2 kilograms of gold to cover each shield. He put these shields in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon.^[c]

¹⁸ The king used ivory to make a large throne. He covered it with gold. ¹⁹ There were six steps up to the throne. The back of the throne was a round shape at the top. On both sides of the seat there were places for the king to put his arms. An image of a lion stood on each side of the throne. ²⁰ There were 12 more images of lions on the six steps. There was one lion at each end of every step. There was no throne like it in any other kingdom. ²¹ They used gold to make all King Solomon's cups that he drank from. In the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon, all the dishes and other things were made with gold. They used pure gold. They did not make anything with silver. In Solomon's time, people did not think that silver was very valuable.

²² The king had many large ships that could sail across the seas.^[d] They sailed with King Hiram's ships. Every three years they returned to Solomon with their loads. They brought to him gold, silver and ivory. They also brought apes and monkeys.^[e]

²³ King Solomon was richer and wiser than any other king in the world. ²⁴ People from every nation in the world wanted to talk to Solomon. They wanted to listen to the wisdom that God had given to him. ²⁵ Every year, people who came to visit Solomon brought him gifts. They brought things that were made from silver and gold, as well as clothes, weapons, spices, horses and mules.

²⁶ Solomon brought together many chariots and horses for his soldiers to ride. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses. He kept some of them in Jerusalem where he lived as king. He put the others in cities that he had chosen for this.

²⁷ While Solomon ruled as king, there was as much silver in Jerusalem as stones! There was as much wood from cedar trees as there were fig trees that grew in the low hills in the west. ²⁸ Solomon brought his horses from Egypt and from Kue. He sent traders to Kue to buy them for him. ²⁹ Each chariot that they bought in Egypt cost 600 pieces of silver. Each horse cost 150 pieces of silver. They also sold chariots and horses to all the kings of the Hittites and to the kings of Syria.

Paul and Timothy say ‘Hello’

1 Paul and Timothy write this letter to you. We are servants of Christ Jesus.

We are writing to you, God's own people who live in Philippi. You belong to God because you are united with Christ Jesus. We are writing to all of you. This includes the leaders and the deacons in the church there.^[a]

² We pray that God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will continue to help you. We pray that they will give you peace in your minds.

Paul thanks God for the believers at Philippi

³ Every time that I think about you, I thank my God because of you. ⁴ I am always praying for you. Every time that I pray for you, I feel very happy. ⁵ I am happy because together we tell people the good news about Christ. You have always helped me with that work, since the first day that you yourselves heard the good news. ⁶ I know that God has begun to do good things in you. And I am sure that he will continue to work in you. Then, on the day when Jesus Christ returns, his work in you will be finished.

⁷ It is right for me to feel like this about all of you, because I love you very much. God has been very kind to all of us. Because you know that, you have continued to help me. You have helped me while I have been here in this prison. You also helped me when I was free and I could teach the good news. I explained to people why the good news is God's true message. Together, we have known how kind God is. ⁸ God knows that I very much want to be with all of you. I love you very much, just like Christ Jesus himself loves you.

⁹ This is what I pray for you. I pray that you will continue to love each other more and more. I pray that you will know God better and better. I pray that you will understand all those things that are true. ¹⁰ Then you will be able to choose what is best in the way that you live. Then, on the day when Christ returns, you will be completely clean. You will not be guilty of any bad thing. ¹¹ Because of the work that Jesus Christ has done in you, you will be right with God. And your lives will be full of good things. As a result, people will praise God and they will say that he is very great.

Paul has served God in prison

¹² My friends, I want you to know this. The trouble that has happened to me has helped more people to know about God's good news. ¹³ I am in a prison because I am Christ's servant.^[b] The soldiers in the king's house and all the people here know that. ¹⁴ Also, because I am in a prison, most of the other believers here trust the Lord even more. The Lord has made them brave, so that they are not afraid to speak God's message to people.

¹⁵ It is true that some of these Christians are jealous of me. They want to show that they are better than me. That is why they tell people the message about Christ. But other Christians speak about Christ because they want to help me. ¹⁶ They tell people about him because they love me. They know that God has put me here in this prison. And he wants me to show people that the good news is true. ¹⁷ Those other people speak about Christ because they want to seem important. They do not really want to help people. They just want to cause trouble for me while I am here in this prison. ¹⁸ But it does not matter to me! All of them are telling people about Christ. That is the most important thing. Whether they speak because of wrong reasons or because of right reasons, they are speaking the message about Christ! Because of that, I am happy.

Yes, I will continue to be happy. ¹⁹ You are praying for me and Jesus Christ's Spirit is helping me. So I know that what has happened to me will have a good result. Yes, God will rescue me. ²⁰ I never want to do anything that will cause me to be ashamed. I hope very much that I will never do that. I want to be brave now, as I always have been. In the way that I live, I want to show that Christ is very great. I want to do that if I continue to live. And I want to do that if I die.

²¹ Christ is everything that I live for. If I die, that will be even better for me. ²² But if I continue to live, I will be able to do more good things to help people. I do not know whether it would be better to live or to die. I do not know which to choose. ²³ Both of them seem very good to me. I want to leave this world so that I can be with Christ. That is a much better thing. ²⁴ But you people need me to continue to live here in this world. ²⁵ Yes, I am sure that you need me. For that reason, I know that I will continue to live among you. Then I will be able to help you to trust Christ even more. And that will make you even happier. ²⁶ Then, when I am there with you again, you will have an even better reason to thank Christ Jesus.

²⁷ The most important thing is that you continue to live in a good way. Live in the way that the good news about Christ teaches. I want to know that you agree together about the good news. And that you work together to show others that the good news is true. Whether I come to visit you or not, I want to know that you all help one another like that. ²⁸ I want to know that you are not afraid of the people who speak against you. If you are brave, that will be a sign from God. It will show your enemies that they will lose and you will win. God will punish them, but he will save you. ²⁹ God is helping you to serve Christ well. That means that you believe in Christ. But it also means that you receive trouble and pain on his behalf. Both of those are gifts from God. ³⁰ You are receiving the same kinds of trouble that I myself receive. You saw that when I was with you. Now you hear that it is still happening to me.

A vision of the temple

40 In the 25th year that we had been prisoners in Babylon, the Lord took hold of me with great power. It happened on the tenth day of the first month of the year. It was 14 years since Babylonian soldiers had destroyed the city of Jerusalem. In a vision, the Lord took me there. ² In the vision, he took me to the land of Israel. He put me on a very high mountain. When I looked towards the south, I saw a group of buildings that looked like a city. ³ The Lord took me there. Then I saw a man who shone brightly like bronze. He was standing at the entrance of a building. He held a linen rope and a stick in his hand. He used them to measure things. ⁴ The man said to me, ‘Son of man, watch and listen carefully to me. Remember everything that I will show you. God has brought you here so that I can show these things to you. Tell Israel's people about everything that you see.’

The east gate

⁵ I saw a wall all the way round the place where the temple was. The stick in the man's hand was 3 metres long. He used it to measure the wall. The wall was 3 metres wide and 3 metres high.

⁶ Then he went to the gate on the east side. He climbed its steps and he measured the size of the entrance. It was 3 metres deep. ⁷ Beyond this was a passage with three rooms on each side. They were rooms for the guards. Each of these rooms was 3 metres long and 3 metres wide. The walls between the rooms were 2½ metres thick. Beyond them was a passage that was 3 metres long. This went to an entrance room to the yard of the temple. ⁸ The man measured the entrance room at the end of the passage. ⁹ It was 4 metres long. It had pillars that were 1 metre thick. It was the nearest part of the gate to the temple. ¹⁰ The three rooms on each side of the passage at the east gate were all the same size. The walls that were between each room were also the same size.

¹¹ Then the man measured the passage that went through the gate's entrance. The passage was 6½ metres wide. The gate's entrance itself was 5 metres wide. ¹² There was a low wall in front of the rooms on each side of the passage. It was ½ metre high. The rooms were 3 metres square. ¹³ The man also measured between the back wall of one room and the back wall of the room opposite. It was 12½ metres from one wall to the other wall, across the passage. ¹⁴ The entrance room had pillars on the outside that were 30 metres high. The yard was all around three sides of the room. ¹⁵ The passage was 25 metres long, from the gate at the front to the entrance room into the yard. ¹⁶ The rooms for the guards all had small windows in their outside walls. The walls between the rooms also had small windows. The entrance room to the yard also had windows of the same kind. Men had cut pictures of palm trees on the inside walls of the passage.^[a]

The outside yard

¹⁷ The man took me through the entrance gate into the outside yard of the temple. I saw 30 rooms there, all along the wall of the yard. A path of flat stones was in front of the rooms. ¹⁸ The path went all around the yard and it covered the space between the gates. It was called the lower path.

¹⁹ The man measured across the outside yard. He measured from the lower gate to the higher gate that went into the inside yard. The man measured 50 metres between the two gates.

The north gate

²⁰ Then the man measured the gate on the north side of the outside yard. ²¹ He measured the three rooms on each side of the passage and the walls between them. He also measured the entrance room itself. They all measured the same as those in the east gate. The whole entrance was 25 metres long and it was 12½ metres wide. ²² The entrance room, the windows and the pictures of palm trees were the same as those in the east gate. Seven steps went up to the north gate. The entrance room into the yard was at the end of the passage. ²³ Opposite this gate, across the yard, was the gate to the inside yard. It was the same as on the east side. The man measured 50 metres between the two gates.

The south gate

²⁴ Next, the man took me to the south side of the yard. I saw another gate there. The man measured the walls and the rooms in that entrance. They were the same size as the other walls and rooms. ²⁵ The rooms in this entrance had windows that were the same as those in the other entrances. The whole entrance was 25 metres long and it was 12½ metres wide. ²⁶ Seven steps went up to it. The entrance room to the yard was at the end of the passage. There were pictures of palm trees on the inside walls of the passage. ²⁷ The inside yard of the temple also had a gate on the south side. The man measured 50 metres between the two gates.

The south gate of the inside yard

²⁸ The man took me through the south gate into the inside yard. He measured the gate. It was the same size as the gates in the outside wall. ²⁹ The rooms for the guards, the walls between them and theentrance room were the same size as the ones at the other gates. There were windows along its walls and in the entrance room. As at the other gates, the whole entrance was 25 metres long and 12½ metres wide. ³⁰ The entrance rooms around the inside yard were 12½ metres wide and 2½ metres long. ³¹ The entrance room of this gate opened towards the outside yard. There were pictures of palm trees on the walls of the passage. Eight steps went up to this gate.

The east gate of the inside yard

³² The man took me to the east side the inside yard. He measured the gate. It was the same size as the other gates. ³³ The rooms for the guards, the walls between them and theentrance room were the same size as the ones at the other gates. There were windows along its walls and in the entrance room. The whole entrance was 25 metres long and 12½ metres wide. ³⁴ The entrance room of this gate opened towards the outside yard. There were pictures of palm trees on the walls of the passage. Eight steps went up to this gate.

The north gate of the inside yard

³⁵ Then the man took me to the north gate. He measured it. It was the same size as the other gates, ³⁶ with rooms for the guards, their walls and an entrance room with windows. The whole entrance was 25 metres long and 12½ metres wide. ³⁷ The door of the entrance room opened towards the outside yard. There were pictures of palm trees on the walls of the passage, on both sides. Eight steps went up to this gate.

Buildings near the north gate

³⁸ There was a small building joined to the entrance room of the north gate. There was a door between this building and the entrance room. In that building, the priests washed the dead bodies of animals for burnt offerings. ³⁹ In the entrance room there were four tables, two on each side of the room. They killed the animals for sacrifices on these tables. They were animals for burnt offerings and also for sin offerings and for guilt offerings.

⁴⁰ There were four more tables outside the entrance room of the north gate. Two tables were on each side of the steps at the entrance. ⁴¹ So there were eight tables on which they killed animals for sacrifices. Four tables were in the yard outside the entrance. Four tables were inside the entrance room. ⁴² They had used stone to make four tables for the burnt offerings. These tables were 50 centimetres high. Their tops were 75 centimetres square. They put the knives and the other tools that they used to kill the animals on these tables. ⁴³ They put the meat for the offerings on the stone tables. There were hooks all around the inside walls of the room. Each hook was 7½ centimetres long.

⁴⁴ There were two rooms for singers that had doors to the inside yard. One was beside the north gate and its door opened towards the south. The other room was beside the south gate and its door opened towards the north. ⁴⁵ The man said to me, ‘The room beside the north gate is for the priests who take care of the temple. ⁴⁶ The room beside the south gate is for the priests who serve God at the altar. These priests are descendants of Zadok.^[b] They are the only descendants of Levi who may come near to the Lord to serve him.’

⁴⁷ The man measured the inside yard. It was square, 50 metres long and 50 metres wide. There was an altar in front of the temple.

The temple building

⁴⁸ The man took me into the entrance room of the temple building. He measured the walls on each side of the entrance. They were 2½ metres thick. The entrance was 7 metres wide. The walls on each side of the entrance were 1½ metres wide. ⁴⁹ The entrance room was 10 metres wide and 6 metres long. Steps went up to the entrance room. There were two pillars, one on each side of the entrance.

God is a safe place^[a]