M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

4 The wife of one of the guild prophets complained to Elisha. “Your servant my husband died,” she said, “and you know that he feared Adonai. Now a creditor has come to take my two children as his slaves.” ² Elisha asked her, “What should I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house but a flask of oil.” ³ Then he said, “Go, and borrow containers from all your neighbors, empty containers; and don’t borrow just a few! ⁴ Then go in; shut the door, with you and your sons inside; and pour oil into all those containers; and as they are filled, put them aside.” ⁵ So she left him and shut the door on herself and her sons. They brought her the containers while she poured. ⁶ When the containers were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another container”; but he answered, “There isn’t another container.” Then the oil stopped flowing. ⁷ She came and told the man of God; and he said, “Go, sell the oil, and pay your debt; then you and your sons can live on what’s left.”

⁸ One day Elisha visited Shunem, and a well-to-do woman living there pressed him to stay and eat a meal. After this, whenever he came through, he stopped there for a meal. ⁹ She said to her husband, “I can see that this is a holy man of God who keeps stopping at our place. ¹⁰ Please, let’s build him a little room on the roof. We’ll put a bed and a table in it for him, and a stool and a candlestick. Then, whenever he comes to visit us, he can stay there.”

¹¹ One day Elisha came to visit there, and he went into the upper room to lie down. ¹² He said to Geichazi his servant, “Call this Shunamit.” He called her; and when she arrived, ¹³ he said to him, “Tell her this: ‘You have shown us so much hospitality! What can I do to show my appreciation? Do you want me to say anything to the king for you? or to the commander of the army?” She answered, “I’m happy living as I do, among my own people.” ¹⁴ He said, “What, then, is to be done for her?” Geichazi answered, “There’s one thing — she doesn’t have a son; and her husband is old. ¹⁵ Elisha said, “Call her.” After he called her, she stood in the doorway. ¹⁶ He said, “Next year, when the season comes around, you will be holding a son.” “No, my lord,” she answered. “Man of God, don’t lie to your servant!” ¹⁷ But the woman conceived and gave birth to a son the following year when the season came around, just as Elisha had said to her.

¹⁸ When the child was old enough, he went out one day to be with his father, who was with the reapers. ¹⁹ Suddenly he cried out to his father, “My head! My head hurts!” He said to his servant, “Carry him back to his mother.” ²⁰ When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he lay on her lap until noon; and then he died. ²¹ She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut the door on him and went out. ²² She called to her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants with a donkey. I must get to the man of God as fast as I can; I’ll come straight back.” ²³ He asked, “Why are you going to him today? It isn’t Rosh-Hodesh and it isn’t Shabbat.” She said, “It’s all right.” ²⁴ Then she saddled the donkey and ordered her servant, “Drive as fast as you can; don’t slow down for me unless I say so.”

²⁵ She set out and came to the man of God on Mount Karmel. When the man of God saw her in the distance, he said to Geichazi his servant, “Look, here comes that Shunamit. ²⁶ Run now to meet her, and ask her, “Is everything all right with you? with your husband? with the child?” She answered, “Everything is all right.” ²⁷ But when she reached the man of God on the hill, she grabbed his feet. Geichazi came up to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She is in great distress, but Adonai has hidden from me what it is, he hasn’t told me.” ²⁸ Then she said, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Didn’t I say not to deceive me?” ²⁹ Then Elisha said to Geichazi, “Get dressed for action, take my staff in your hand, and be on your way. If you meet anyone, don’t greet him; if anyone greets you, don’t answer; and lay my staff on the child’s face.” ³⁰ The mother of the child said, “As Adonai lives, and as you live, I will not leave you. He got up and followed her. ³¹ Geichazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the child’s face, but there was no sound or sign of life. So he went back to Elisha and told him, “The child didn’t wake up.”

³² When Elisha reached the house, there the child was, dead and laid on the bed. ³³ He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to Adonai. ³⁴ Then he got up on the bed and lay on top of the child, putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands. As he stretched himself out on the child, its flesh began to grow warm. ³⁵ Then he went down, walked around in the house awhile, went back up and stretched himself out on the child again. The child sneezed seven times, then opened his eyes. ³⁶ Elisha called Geichazi and said, “Call this Shunamit.” So he called her; and when she came in to him, he said, “Pick up your son.” ³⁷ She entered, fell at his feet and prostrated herself on the floor. Then she picked up her son and went out.

³⁸ Elisha went back to Gilgal. At the time, there was a famine in the land. The guild prophets were sitting before him, and he said to his servant, “Put the big pot on the fire, and boil some soup for the prophets.” ³⁹ One of them went out to the field to gather vegetables and came upon a wild vine, from which he filled the front of his cloak with wild squash. On returning he cut them up and put them into the stew; they didn’t know what they were. ⁴⁰ Then they poured it out for the men to eat; but on tasting it, they cried, “Man of God! There’s death in that pot!” And they couldn’t eat it. ⁴¹ But he said, “Bring some flour.” He threw it in the pot, then said, “Pour it out for the people to eat.” This time there was nothing harmful in the pot.

⁴² A man came from Ba‘al-Shalishah bringing the man of God twenty loaves of bread made from the barley firstfruits and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give this to the people to eat.” ⁴³ His servant said, “How am I to serve this to a hundred men?” But he said, “Give it to the people to eat; for Adonai says that they will eat and have some left over.” ⁴⁴ So he served them, and they ate and had some left over, as Adonai had said.

1 From: Sha’ul, an emissary of the Messiah Yeshua by command of God our deliverer and the Messiah Yeshua our hope,

² To: Timothy, a true son because of your trust:

Grace, mercy and shalom from God the Father and the Messiah Yeshua our Lord.

³ As I counseled you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus, so that you may order certain people who are teaching a different doctrine to stop. ⁴ Have them stop devoting their attention to myths and never-ending genealogies; these divert people to speculating instead of doing God’s work, which requires trust. ⁵ The purpose of this order is to promote love from a clean heart, from a good conscience and from sincere trust. ⁶ Some, by aiming amiss, have wandered off into fruitless discussion. ⁷ They want to be teachers of Torah, but they understand neither their own words nor the matters about which they make such emphatic pronouncements. ⁸ We know that the Torah is good, provided one uses it in the way the Torah itself intends. ⁹ We are aware that Torah is not for a person who is righteous, but for those who are heedless of Torah and rebellious, ungodly and sinful, wicked and worldly, for people who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, ¹⁰ the sexually immoral — both heterosexual and homosexual — slave dealers, liars, perjurers, and anyone who acts contrary to the sound teaching ¹¹ that accords with the Good News of the glorious and blessed God.

This Good News was entrusted to me; ¹² and I thank the one who has given me strength, the Messiah Yeshua, our Lord, that he considered me trustworthy enough to put me in his service, ¹³ even though I used to be a man who blasphemed and persecuted and was arrogant! But I received mercy because I had acted in unbelief, not understanding what I was doing. ¹⁴ Our Lord’s grace overflowed to me with trust and love that come through the Messiah Yeshua. ¹⁵ So here is a statement you can trust, one that fully deserves to be accepted: the Messiah came into the world to save sinners, and I’m the number one sinner! ¹⁶ But this is precisely why I received mercy — so that in me, as the number one sinner, Yeshua the Messiah might demonstrate how very patient he is, as an example to those who would later come to trust in him and thereby have eternal life. ¹⁷ So to the King — eternal, imperishable and invisible, the only God there is — let there be honor and glory for ever and ever! Amen.

¹⁸ This charge, son Timothy, I put to you, in keeping with the prophecies already made about you, so that by these prophecies you may fight the good fight, ¹⁹ armed with trust and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, some have made shipwreck of their trust; ²⁰ among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander. I have turned them over to the Adversary, so that they will learn not to insult God.

8 After that first vision, it was in the third year of the reign of King Belshatzar that another vision appeared to me, Dani’el. ² I looked into the vision; and as I looked, I found myself in Shushan the capital, in the province of ‘Eilam. I looked into the vision, and I was by the Ulai canal. ³ I looked up; and as I watched, there in front of the stream stood a ram with two horns. The horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up later [than the other]. ⁴ I saw the ram pushing to the west, north and south; and no animals could stand up against it; nor was there anyone that could rescue from its power. So it did as it pleased and became very strong.

⁵ I was beginning to understand, when a male goat came from the west, passing over the whole earth without touching the ground. The goat had a prominent horn between its eyes. ⁶ It approached the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing in front of the river, and charged it with savage force. ⁷ I watched as it advanced on the ram, filled with rage against it, and struck the ram, breaking its two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against it. It threw the ram to the ground and trampled it down, and there was no one that could rescue it from the goat’s power. ⁸ The male goat then became extremely strong; but when it was strong, the big horn was broken; and in its place arose what appeared to be four horns in the directions of the four winds of heaven. ⁹ Out of one of them came a little horn which grew extremely big in the directions of the south and east, and in the direction of the Glory. ¹⁰ It grew so great that it reached the army of heaven; it hurled some of the army and the stars to the ground and trampled on them. ¹¹ Yes, it even considered itself as great as the prince of the army; the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was thrown down. ¹² Through sin, the army was put in its power, along with the regular burnt offering. It flung truth on the ground as it acted and prospered.

¹³ Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the speaker, “How long will the events of the vision last, this vision concerning the regular offering and the transgression which is so appalling, that allows the sanctuary and the army to be trampled underfoot?” ¹⁴ The first said to me, “Two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings, after which the sanctuary will be restored to its rightful state.”

¹⁵ After I, Dani’el, had seen the vision and was trying to understand it, suddenly there stood in front of me someone who appeared to be a man. ¹⁶ I heard a human voice calling from between the banks of the Ulai, “Gavri’el, make this man understand the vision!” ¹⁷ He came up to where I was standing, and his approach so terrified me that I fell on my face. But he said to me, “Human being! Understand that the vision refers to the time of the end.” ¹⁸ As he was speaking with me, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face toward the ground; but he touched me, set me on my feet, ¹⁹ and said, “I am going to explain to you what will happen at the end of the period of fury, because [the vision] has to do with the time at the end. ²⁰ You saw a ram with two horns which are the kings of Media and Persia. ²¹ The shaggy male goat is the king of Greece, and the prominent horn between its eyes is the first king. ²² As for the horn that broke and the four which rose up in its place, four kingdoms will arise out of this nation, but not with the power the first king had. ²³ In the latter part of their reign, when the evildoers have become as evil as possible, there will arise an arrogant king skilled in intrigue. ²⁴ His power will be great, but not with the power the first king had. He will be amazingly destructive, he will succeed in whatever he does, and he will destroy the mighty and the holy ones. ²⁵ He will succeed through craftiness and deceit, become swelled with pride, and destroy many people just when they feel the most secure. He will even challenge the prince of princes; but, without human intervention, he will be broken. ²⁶ The vision of the evenings and mornings which has been told is true; but you are to keep the vision secret, because it is about days in the distant future.”

²⁷ I, Dani’el, grew weak and was ill for some days. Then I got up and took care of the king’s affairs; but I was appalled at the vision and still couldn’t understand it.