M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
24 Abraham was now a very old man, and God blessed him in every way. 2 One day Abraham said to his household administrator, who was his oldest servant,
3 “Swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not let my son marry one of these local girls, these Canaanites. 4 Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife for him there.”
5 “But suppose I can’t find a girl who will come so far from home?” the servant asked. “Then shall I take Isaac there, to live among your relatives?”
6 “No!” Abraham warned. “Be careful that you don’t do that under any circumstance. 7 For the Lord God of heaven told me to leave that land and my people, and promised to give me and my children this land. He will send his angel on ahead of you, and he will see to it that you find a girl from there to be my son’s wife. 8 But if you don’t succeed, then you are free from this oath; but under no circumstances are you to take my son there.”
9 So the servant vowed[a] to follow Abraham’s instructions.
10 He took with him ten of Abraham’s camels loaded with samples of the best of everything his master owned and journeyed to Iraq, to Nahor’s village. 11 There he made the camels kneel down outside the town, beside a spring. It was evening, and the women of the village were coming to draw water.
12 “O Jehovah, the God of my master,” he prayed, “show kindness to my master Abraham and help me to accomplish the purpose of my journey. 13 See, here I am, standing beside this spring, and the girls of the village are coming out to draw water. 14 This is my request: When I ask one of them for a drink and she says, ‘Yes, certainly, and I will water your camels too!’—let her be the one you have appointed as Isaac’s wife. That is how I will know.”
15-16 As he was still speaking to the Lord about this, a beautiful young girl[b] named Rebekah arrived with a water jug on her shoulder and filled it at the spring. (Her father was Bethuel the son of Nahor and his wife Milcah.) 17 Running over to her, the servant asked her for a drink.
18 “Certainly, sir,” she said, and quickly lowered the jug for him to drink. 19 Then she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels, too, until they have enough!”
20 So she emptied the jug into the watering trough and ran down to the spring again and kept carrying water to the camels until they had enough. 21 The servant said no more, but watched her carefully to see if she would finish the job,[c] so that he would know whether she was the one. 22 Then at last, when the camels had finished drinking, he produced a quarter-ounce gold earring[d] and two five-ounce gold bracelets for her wrists.
23 “Whose daughter are you, miss?” he asked. “Would your father have any room to put us up for the night?”
24 “My father is Bethuel,” she replied. “My grandparents are Milcah and Nahor. 25 Yes, we have plenty of straw and food for the camels, and a guest room.”
26 The man stood there a moment with head bowed, worshiping Jehovah. 27 “Thank you, Lord God of my master Abraham,” he prayed; “thank you for being so kind and true to him, and for leading me straight to the family of my master’s relatives.”
28 The girl ran home to tell her folks,[e] 29-30 and when her brother Laban saw the ring, and the bracelets on his sister’s wrists, and heard her story, he rushed out to the spring where the man was still standing beside his camels, and said to him, 31 “Come and stay with us, friend;[f] why stand here outside the city when we have a room all ready for you, and a place prepared for the camels!”
32 So the man went home with Laban, and Laban gave him straw to bed down the camels, and feed for them, and water for the camel drivers to wash their feet. 33 Then supper was served. But the old man said, “I don’t want to eat until I have told you why I am here.”
“All right,” Laban said, “tell us your errand.”
34 “I am Abraham’s servant,” he explained. 35 “And Jehovah has overwhelmed my master with blessings so that he is a great man among the people of his land. God has given him flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and a fortune in silver and gold, and many slaves and camels and donkeys.
36 “Now when Sarah, my master’s wife, was very old, she gave birth to my master’s son, and my master has given him everything he owns. 37 And my master made me promise not to let Isaac marry one of the local girls,[g] 38 but to come to his relatives here in this far-off land, to his brother’s family,[h] and to bring back a girl from here to marry his son. 39 ‘But suppose I can’t find a girl who will come?’ I asked him. 40 ‘She will,’ he told me—‘for my Lord, in whose presence I have walked, will send his angel with you and make your mission successful. Yes, find a girl from among my relatives, from my brother’s family. 41 You are under oath to go and ask. If they won’t send anyone, then you are freed from your promise.’
42 “Well, this afternoon when I came to the spring I prayed this prayer: ‘O Jehovah, the God of my master Abraham, if you are planning to make my mission a success, please guide me in this way: 43 Here I am, standing beside this spring. I will say to some girl who comes out to draw water, “Please give me a drink of water!” 44 And she will reply, “Certainly! And I’ll water your camels too!” Let that girl be the one you have selected to be the wife of my master’s son.’
45 “Well, while I was still speaking these words, Rebekah was coming along with her water jug upon her shoulder; and she went down to the spring and drew water and filled the jug. I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’ 46 She quickly lifted the jug down from her shoulder so that I could drink, and told me, ‘Certainly, sir, and I will water your camels too!’ So she did! 47 Then I asked her, ‘Whose family are you from?’ And she told me, ‘Nahor’s. My father is Bethuel, the son of Nahor and his wife Milcah.’ So I gave her the ring and the bracelets. 48 Then I bowed my head and worshiped and blessed Jehovah, the God of my master Abraham, because he had led me along just the right path to find a girl from the family of my master’s brother.[i] 49 So tell me, yes or no. Will you or won’t you be kind to my master and do what is right? When you tell me, then I’ll know what my next step should be, whether to move this way or that.”
50 Then Laban and Bethuel replied, “The Lord has obviously brought you here, so what can we say? 51 Take her and go! Yes, let her be the wife of your master’s son, as Jehovah has directed.”
52 At this reply, Abraham’s servant fell to his knees before Jehovah. 53 Then he brought out jewels set in solid gold and silver for Rebekah, and lovely clothing; and he gave many valuable presents to her mother and brother. 54 Then they had supper, and the servant and the men with him stayed there overnight. But early the next morning he said, “Send me back to my master!”
55 “But we want Rebekah here at least another ten days or so!” her mother and brother exclaimed. “Then she can go.”
56 But he pleaded, “Don’t hinder my return; the Lord has made my mission successful, and I want to report back to my master.”
57 “Well,” they said, “we’ll call the girl and ask her what she thinks.”
58 So they called Rebekah. “Are you willing to go with this man?” they asked her.
And she replied, “Yes, I will go.”
59 So they told her good-bye, sending along the woman who had been her childhood nurse, 60 and blessed her with this blessing as they parted:
“Our sister,
May you become
The mother of many millions!
May your descendants
Overcome all your enemies.”
61 So Rebekah and her servant girls mounted the camels and went with him.
62 Meanwhile, Isaac, whose home was in the Negeb, had returned to Beer-lahai-roi. 63 One evening as he was taking a walk out in the fields, meditating, he looked up and saw the camels coming. 64 Rebekah noticed him and quickly dismounted.
65 “Who is that man walking through the fields to meet us?” she asked the servant.
And he replied, “It is my master’s son!”[j] So she covered her face with her veil. 66 Then the servant told Isaac the whole story.
67 And Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother’s tent, and she became his wife. He loved her very much, and she was a special comfort to him after the loss of his mother.
23 Then Jesus said to the crowds, and to his disciples, 2 “You would think these Jewish leaders and these Pharisees were Moses, the way they keep making up so many laws![a] 3
5 “Everything they do is done for show. They act holy[b] by wearing on their arms little prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and by lengthening the memorial fringes of their robes. 6 And how they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the reserved pews in the synagogue! 7 How they enjoy the deference paid them on the streets and to be called ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Master’! 8 Don’t ever let anyone call you that. For only God is your Rabbi and all of you are on the same level, as brothers. 9 And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven should be addressed like that. 10 And don’t be called ‘Master,’ for only one is your master, even the Messiah.
11 “The more lowly your service to others, the greater you are. To be the greatest, be a servant. 12 But those who think themselves great shall be disappointed and humbled; and those who humble themselves shall be exalted.
13-14 “Woe to you, Pharisees, and you other religious leaders. Hypocrites! For you won’t let others enter the Kingdom of Heaven and won’t go in yourselves. And you pretend to be holy, with all your long, public prayers in the streets, while you are evicting widows from their homes. Hypocrites! 15 Yes, woe upon you hypocrites. For you go to all lengths to make one convert, and then turn him into twice the son of hell you are yourselves. 16 Blind guides! Woe upon you! For your rule is that to swear ‘By God’s Temple’ means nothing—you can break that oath, but to swear ‘By the gold in the Temple’ is binding! 17 Blind fools! Which is greater, the gold, or the Temple that sanctifies the gold? 18 And you say that to take an oath ‘By the altar’ can be broken, but to swear ‘By the gifts on the altar’ is binding! 19 Blind! For which is greater, the gift on the altar, or the altar itself that sanctifies the gift? 20 When you swear ‘By the altar,’ you are swearing by it and everything on it, 21 and when you swear ‘By the Temple,’ you are swearing by it and by God who lives in it. 22 And when you swear ‘By heavens,’ you are swearing by the Throne of God and by God himself.
23 “Yes, woe upon you, Pharisees, and you other religious leaders—hypocrites! For you tithe down to the last mint leaf in your garden, but ignore the important things—justice and mercy and faith. Yes, you should tithe, but you shouldn’t leave the more important things undone. 24 Blind guides! You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
25 “Woe to you, Pharisees, and you religious leaders—hypocrites! You are so careful to polish the outside of the cup, but the inside is foul with extortion and greed. 26 Blind Pharisees! First cleanse the inside of the cup, and then the whole cup will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, Pharisees, and you religious leaders! You are like beautiful mausoleums—full of dead men’s bones, and of foulness and corruption. 28 You try to look like saintly men, but underneath those pious robes of yours are hearts besmirched with every sort of hypocrisy and sin.
29-30 “Yes, woe to you, Pharisees, and you religious leaders—hypocrites! For you build monuments to the prophets killed by your fathers and lay flowers on the graves of the godly men they destroyed, and say, ‘We certainly would never have acted as our fathers did.’
31 “In saying that, you are accusing yourselves of being the sons of wicked men. 32 And you are following in their steps, filling up the full measure of their evil. 33 Snakes! Sons of vipers! How shall you escape the judgment of hell?
34 “I will send you prophets, and wise men, and inspired writers, and you will kill some by crucifixion, and rip open the backs of others with whips in your synagogues, and hound them from city to city, 35 so that you will become guilty of all the blood of murdered godly men from righteous Abel to Zechariah (son of Barachiah), slain by you in the Temple between the altar and the sanctuary. 36 Yes, all the accumulated judgment of the centuries shall break upon the heads of this very generation.
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones all those God sends to her! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. 38 And now your house is left to you, desolate. 39 For I tell you this, you will never see me again until you are ready to welcome the one sent to you from God.”[c]
13 On that same day, as the laws of Moses were being read, the people found a statement which said that the Ammonites and Moabites should never be permitted to worship at the Temple.[a] 2 For they had not been friendly to the people of Israel. Instead, they had hired Balaam to curse them—although God turned the curse into a blessing. 3 When this rule was read, all the foreigners were immediately expelled from the assembly.
4 Before this had happened, Eliashib the priest, who had been appointed as custodian of the Temple storerooms and who was also a good friend of Tobiah, 5 had converted a storage room into a beautiful guest room for Tobiah. The room had previously been used for storing the grain offerings, frankincense, bowls, and tithes of grain, new wine, and olive oil. Moses had decreed that these offerings belonged to the priests, Levites, the members of the choir, and the gatekeepers.
6 I was not in Jerusalem at the time, for I had returned to Babylon in the thirty-second year of the reign of King Artaxerxes (though I later received his permission to go back again to Jerusalem). 7 When I arrived back in Jerusalem and learned of this evil deed of Eliashib—that he had prepared a guest room in the Temple for Tobiah— 8 I was very upset and threw out all of his belongings from the room. 9 Then I demanded that the room be thoroughly cleaned, and I brought back the Temple bowls, the grain offerings, and frankincense.
10 I also learned that the Levites had not been given what was due them, so they and the choir singers who were supposed to conduct the worship services had returned to their farms. 11 I immediately confronted the leaders and demanded, “Why has the Temple been forsaken?” Then I called all the Levites back again and restored them to their proper duties. 12 And once more all the people of Judah began bringing their tithes of grain, new wine, and olive oil to the Temple treasury.
13 I put Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, and Pedaiah the Levite in charge of the administration of the storehouses; and I appointed Hanan (son of Zaccur, son of Mattaniah) as their assistant. These men had an excellent reputation, and their job was to make an honest distribution to their fellow Levites.
14 O my God, remember this good deed and do not forget all that I have done for the Temple.
15 One day I was on a farm and saw some men treading winepresses on the Sabbath, hauling in sheaves, and loading their donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all sorts of produce, which they took that day into Jerusalem. So I opposed them publicly. 16 There were also some men from Tyre bringing in fish and all sorts of wares and selling them on the Sabbath to the people of Jerusalem.
17 Then I asked the leaders of Judah, “Why are you profaning the Sabbath? 18 Wasn’t it enough that your fathers did this sort of thing and brought the present evil days upon us and upon our city? And now you are bringing more wrath upon the people of Israel by permitting the Sabbath to be desecrated in this way.”
19 So from then on I commanded that the gates of the city be shut as darkness fell on Friday evenings and not be opened until the Sabbath had ended; and I sent some of my servants to guard the gates so that no merchandise could be brought in on the Sabbath day. 20 The merchants and tradesmen camped outside Jerusalem once or twice, 21 but I spoke sharply to them and said, “What are you doing out here, camping around the wall? If you do this again, I will arrest you.” And that was the last time they came on the Sabbath.
22 Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and to guard the gates in order to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath. Remember this good deed, O my God! Have compassion upon me in accordance with your great goodness.
23 About the same time I realized that some of the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, 24 and that many of their children spoke in the language of Ashdod and couldn’t speak the language of Judah at all. 25 So I confronted these parents and cursed them and punched a few of them and knocked them around and pulled out their hair; and they vowed before God that they would not let their children intermarry with non-Jews.
26 “Wasn’t this exactly King Solomon’s problem?” I demanded. “There was no king who could compare with him, and God loved him and made him the king over all Israel; but even so he was led into idolatry by foreign women. 27 Do you think that we will let you get away with this sinful deed?”
28 One of the sons of Jehoiada (the son of Eliashib the High Priest) was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I chased him out of the Temple. 29 Remember them, O my God, for they have defiled the priesthood and the promises and vows of the priests and Levites. 30 So I purged out the foreigners and assigned tasks to the priests and Levites, making certain that each knew his work. 31 They supplied wood for the altar at the proper times and cared for the sacrifices and the first offerings of every harvest. Remember me, my God, with your kindness.
23 Gazing intently at the Council, Paul began:
“Brothers, I have always lived before God in all good conscience!”
2 Instantly Ananias the High Priest commanded those close to Paul to slap him on the mouth.
3 Paul said to him, “God shall slap you, you whitewashed pigpen.[a] What kind of judge are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that?”
4 Those standing near Paul said to him, “Is that the way to talk to God’s High Priest?”
5 “I didn’t realize he was the High Priest, brothers,” Paul replied, “for the Scriptures say, ‘Never speak evil of any of your rulers.’”
6 Then Paul thought of something! Part of the Council were Sadducees, and part were Pharisees! So he shouted, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, as were all my ancestors! And I am being tried here today because I believe in the resurrection of the dead!”
7 This divided the Council right down the middle—the Pharisees against the Sadducees— 8 for the Sadducees say there is no resurrection or angels or even eternal spirit within us,[b] but the Pharisees believe in all of these.
9 So a great clamor arose. Some of the Jewish leaders[c] jumped up to argue that Paul was all right. “We see nothing wrong with him,” they shouted. “Perhaps a spirit or angel spoke to him there on the Damascus road.”
10 The shouting grew louder and louder, and the men were tugging at Paul from both sides, pulling him this way and that. Finally the commander, fearing they would tear him apart, ordered his soldiers to take him away from them by force and bring him back to the armory.
11 That night the Lord stood beside Paul and said, “Don’t worry, Paul; just as you have told the people about me here in Jerusalem, so you must also in Rome.”
12-13 The next morning some forty or more of the Jews got together and bound themselves by a curse neither to eat nor drink until they had killed Paul! 14 Then they went to the chief priests and elders and told them what they had done. 15 “Ask the commander to bring Paul back to the Council again,” they requested. “Pretend you want to ask a few more questions. We will kill him on the way.”
16 But Paul’s nephew got wind of their plan and came to the armory and told Paul.
17 Paul called one of the officers and said, “Take this boy to the commander. He has something important to tell him.”
18 So the officer did, explaining, “Paul, the prisoner, called me over and asked me to bring this young man to you to tell you something.”
19 The commander took the boy by the hand, and leading him aside asked, “What is it you want to tell me, lad?”
20 “Tomorrow,” he told him, “the Jews are going to ask you to bring Paul before the Council again, pretending they want to get some more information. 21 But don’t do it! There are more than forty men hiding along the road ready to jump him and kill him. They have bound themselves under a curse to neither eat nor drink till he is dead. They are out there now, expecting you to agree to their request.”
22 “Don’t let a soul know you told me this,” the commander warned the boy as he left. 23-24 Then the commander called two of his officers and ordered, “Get 200 soldiers ready to leave for Caesarea at nine o’clock tonight! Take 200 spearmen and 70 mounted cavalry. Give Paul a horse to ride and get him safely to Governor Felix.”
25 Then he wrote this letter to the governor:
26 “From: Claudius Lysias
“To: His Excellency, Governor Felix.
“Greetings!
27 “This man was seized by the Jews, and they were killing him when I sent the soldiers to rescue him, for I learned that he was a Roman citizen. 28 Then I took him to their Council to try to find out what he had done. 29 I soon discovered it was something about their Jewish beliefs, certainly nothing worthy of imprisonment or death. 30 But when I was informed of a plot to kill him, I decided to send him on to you and will tell his accusers to bring their charges before you.”
31 So that night, as ordered, the soldiers took Paul to Antipatris. 32 They returned to the armory the next morning, leaving him with the cavalry to take him on to Caesarea.
33 When they arrived in Caesarea, they presented Paul and the letter to the governor. 34 He read it and then asked Paul where he was from.
“Cilicia,” Paul answered.
35 “I will hear your case fully when your accusers arrive,” the governor told him, and ordered him kept in the prison at King Herod’s palace.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.