M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
1 This is the story of Elkanah, a man of the tribe of Ephraim who lived in Ramathaim-zophim, in the hills of Ephraim.
His father’s name was Jeroham,
His grandfather was Elihu,
His great-grandfather was Tohu,
His great-great-grandfather was Zuph.
2 He had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had some children, but Hannah didn’t.
3 Each year Elkanah and his families journeyed to the Tabernacle at Shiloh to worship the Lord of the heavens and to sacrifice to him. (The priests on duty at that time were the two sons of Eli—Hophni and Phinehas.) 4 On the day he presented his sacrifice, Elkanah would celebrate the happy occasion by giving presents to Peninnah and her children; 5 but although he loved Hannah very much, he could give her only one present, for the Lord had sealed her womb; so she had no children to give presents to. 6 Peninnah made matters worse by taunting Hannah because of her barrenness. 7 Every year it was the same—Peninnah scoffing and laughing at her as they went to Shiloh, making her cry so much she couldn’t eat.
8 “What’s the matter, Hannah?” Elkanah would exclaim. “Why aren’t you eating? Why make such a fuss over having no children? Isn’t having me better than having ten sons?”
9 One evening after supper, when they were at Shiloh, Hannah went over to the Tabernacle. Eli the priest was sitting at his customary place beside the entrance. 10 She was in deep anguish and was crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord.
11 And she made this vow: “O Lord of heaven, if you will look down upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you, and he’ll be yours for his entire lifetime, and his hair shall never be cut.”[a]
12-13 Eli noticed her mouth moving as she was praying silently and, hearing no sound, thought she had been drinking.
14 “Must you come here drunk?” he demanded. “Throw away your bottle.”
15-16 “Oh no, sir!” she replied, “I’m not drunk! But I am very sad and I was pouring out my heart to the Lord. Please don’t think that I am just some drunken bum!”
17 “In that case,” Eli said, “cheer up! May the Lord of Israel grant you your petition, whatever it is!”
18 “Oh, thank you, sir!” she exclaimed, and went happily back, and began to take her meals again.
19-20 The entire family was up early the next morning and went to the Tabernacle to worship the Lord once more. Then they returned home to Ramah, and when Elkanah slept with Hannah, the Lord remembered her petition; in the process of time, a baby boy was born to her. She named him Samuel (meaning “asked of God”)[b] because, as she said, “I asked the Lord for him.”
21-22 The next year Elkanah and Peninnah and her children went on the annual trip to the Tabernacle without Hannah, for she told her husband, “Wait until the baby is weaned, and then I will take him to the Tabernacle and leave him there.”
23 “Well, whatever you think best,” Elkanah agreed. “May the Lord’s will be done.”
So she stayed home until the baby was weaned. 24 Then, though he was still so small, they took him to the Tabernacle in Shiloh, along with a three-year-old bull for the sacrifice, and a bushel of flour and some wine. 25 After the sacrifice they took the child to Eli.
26 “Sir, do you remember me?” Hannah asked him. “I am the woman who stood here that time praying to the Lord! 27 I asked him to give me this child, and he has given me my request; 28 and now I am giving him to the Lord for as long as he lives.” So she left him there at the Tabernacle for the Lord to use.
1 Dear friends in Rome: This letter is from Paul, Jesus Christ’s slave, chosen to be a missionary, and sent out to preach God’s Good News. 2 This Good News was promised long ago by God’s prophets in the Old Testament. 3 It is the Good News about his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who came as a human baby, born into King David’s royal family line; 4 and by being raised from the dead he was proved to be the mighty Son of God, with the holy nature of God himself.
5 And now, through Christ, all the kindness of God has been poured out upon us undeserving sinners; and now he is sending us out around the world to tell all people everywhere the great things God has done for them, so that they, too, will believe and obey him.
6-7 And you, dear friends in Rome, are among those he dearly loves; you, too, are invited by Jesus Christ to be God’s very own—yes, his holy people. May all God’s mercies and peace be yours from God our Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord.
8 Let me say first of all that wherever I go I hear you being talked about! For your faith in God is becoming known around the world. How I thank God through Jesus Christ for this good report, and for each one of you. 9 God knows how often I pray for you. Day and night I bring you and your needs in prayer to the one I serve with all my might, telling others the Good News about his Son.
10 And one of the things I keep on praying for is the opportunity, God willing,[a] to come at last to see you and, if possible, that I will have a safe trip. 11-12 For I long to visit you so that I can impart to you the faith[b] that will help your church grow strong in the Lord. Then, too, I need your help, for I want not only to share my faith with you but to be encouraged by yours: Each of us will be a blessing to the other.
13 I want you to know, dear brothers, that I planned to come many times before (but was prevented) so that I could work among you and see good results, just as I have among the other Gentile churches.[c] 14 For I owe a great debt to you and to everyone else, both to civilized people and uncivilized alike; yes, to the educated and uneducated alike. 15 So, to the fullest extent of my ability, I am ready to come also to you in Rome to preach God’s Good News.
16 For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is God’s powerful method of bringing all who believe it to heaven. This message was preached first to the Jews alone, but now everyone is invited to come to God in this same way. 17 This Good News tells us that God makes us ready for heaven—makes us right in God’s sight—when we put our faith and trust in Christ to save us. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith.[d] As the Scripture says it, “The man who finds life will find it through trusting God.”
18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, evil men who push away the truth from them. 19 For the truth about God is known to them instinctively;[e] God has put this knowledge in their hearts. 20 Since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made, and have known of his existence and great eternal power. So they will have no excuse when they stand before God at Judgment Day.[f]
21 Yes, they knew about him all right, but they wouldn’t admit it or worship him or even thank him for all his daily care. And after a while they began to think up silly ideas of what God was like and what he wanted them to do. The result was that their foolish minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming themselves to be wise without God, they became utter fools instead. 23 And then, instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they took wood and stone and made idols for themselves, carving them to look like mere birds and animals and snakes and puny[g] men.
24 So God let them go ahead into every sort of sex sin, and do whatever they wanted to—yes, vile and sinful things with each other’s bodies. 25 Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things.
26 That is why God let go of them and let them do all these evil things, so that even their women turned against God’s natural plan for them and indulged in sex sin with each other. 27 And the men, instead of having normal sex relationships with women, burned with lust for each other, men doing shameful things with other men and, as a result, getting paid within their own souls with the penalty they so richly deserved.
28 So it was that when they gave God up and would not even acknowledge him, God gave them up to doing everything their evil minds could think of. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip.
30 They were backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning and continually being disobedient to their parents. 31 They tried to misunderstand,[h] broke their promises, and were heartless—without pity. 32 They were fully aware of God’s death penalty for these crimes, yet they went right ahead and did them anyway and encouraged others to do them, too.
39 It was in January of the ninth year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah that King Nebuchadnezzar and all his army came against Jerusalem again and besieged it. 2 Two years later, in the month of July, they breached the wall, and the city fell, 3 and all the officers of the Babylonian army came in and sat in triumph at the middle gate. Nergal-sharezer was there, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim, Nergal-sharezer the king’s chief assistant, and many others.
4 When King Zedekiah and his soldiers realized that the city was lost, they fled during the night, going out through the gate between the two walls back of the palace garden and across the fields toward the Jordan Valley. 5 But the Babylonians chased the king and caught him on the plains of Jericho and brought him to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced judgment upon him. 6 The king of Babylon made Zedekiah watch as they killed his children and all the nobles of Judah. 7 Then he gouged out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him in chains to send him away to Babylon as a slave.
8 Meanwhile the army burned Jerusalem, including the palace, and tore down the walls of the city. 9 Then Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, and his men sent the remnant of the population and all those who had defected to him to Babylon. 10 But throughout the land of Judah he left a few people, the very poor, and gave them fields and vineyards.
11-12 Meanwhile King Nebuchadnezzar had told Nebuzaradan to find Jeremiah. “See that he isn’t hurt,” he said. “Look after him well and give him anything he wants.” 13 So Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, and Nebushazban, the chief of the eunuchs, and Nergal-sharezer, the king’s advisor, and all the officials took steps to do as the king had commanded. 14 They sent soldiers to bring Jeremiah out of the prison, and put him into the care of Gedaliah (son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan), to take him back to his home. And Jeremiah lived there among his people who were left in the land.
15 The Lord gave the following message to Jeremiah before the Babylonians arrived, while he was still in prison: 16 “Send this word to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian: The Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will do to this city everything I threatened; I will destroy it before your eyes, 17 but I will deliver you. You shall not be killed by those you fear so much. 18 As a reward for trusting me, I will preserve your life and keep you safe.”
13 How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? 2 How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?
3 Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die. 4 Don’t let my enemies say, “We have conquered him!” Don’t let them gloat that I am down.
5 But I will always trust in you and in your mercy and shall rejoice in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has blessed me so richly.
14 That man is a fool who says to himself, “There is no God!” Anyone who talks like that is warped and evil and cannot really be a good person at all.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God. 3 But no, all have strayed away; all are rotten with sin. Not one is good, not one! 4 They eat my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying! Don’t they really know any better?
5 Terror shall grip them, for God is with those who love him. 6 He is the refuge of the poor and humble when evildoers are oppressing them. 7 Oh, that the time of their rescue were already here, that God would come from Zion now to save his people. What gladness when the Lord has rescued Israel!
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.