M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Instructions about purity in the camp
5 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 Command the Israelites to send out from the camp anyone with a skin disease, an oozing discharge, or who has become unclean from contact with a corpse. 3 You must send out both male and female. You must send them outside the camp so that they will not make their camp, where I live among them, unclean.
4 The Israelites did so and sent them outside the camp. The Israelites did just what the Lord said to Moses.
5 The Lord spoke to Moses: 6 Tell the Israelites: When a man or a woman commits any sin against anyone else, thus breaking faith with the Lord, that person becomes guilty. 7 Such persons will confess the sin they have done. Each will make payment for his guilt, add one-fifth more, and give it to the injured party. 8 If the person has no close relative to whom the payment can be made, then the compensation payment will go to the Lord for the priest. This is in addition to the ram of reconciliation by which the guilty party himself is reconciled. 9 Any gift offering from all the sacred donations that the Israelites offer will be the property of the priest. 10 The sacred donations belong to each person alone; whatever anyone gives to the priest will be his.
A woman accused of adultery
11 The Lord spoke to Moses: 12 Speak to the Israelites and say to them: A man may suspect that his wife has had an affair[a] and has broken faith with him, 13 that a man has had intercourse with her unknown to her husband and that she has defiled herself in secret—even though there are no witnesses and she isn’t caught. 14 If jealousy overcomes him and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, or if jealousy overcomes him and he is jealous of his wife who hasn’t defiled herself, 15 then the man will bring his wife to the priest. He will bring the offering required for her, one-tenth of an ephah[b] of barley flour. He will not pour oil on it, nor offer frankincense with it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a grain offering for recognition in order to recognize guilt. 16 The priest will bring her close and make her stand before the Lord. 17 The priest will take holy water in a clay jar, and taking dust from the floor of the dwelling, the priest will place it in the water. 18 The priest will make the woman stand before the Lord, let the hair of the woman hang down, and place the grain offering for recognition, that is, the grain offering for jealousy, in her hands. The water of bitterness that brings the curse will be in the hands of the priest.
19 Then the priest will make her swear a solemn pledge, saying to the woman, “If no man has slept with you and if you haven’t had an affair, becoming defiled while married to your husband, then be immune from the water of bitterness that brings these curses. 20 But if you have had an affair while married to your husband, if you have defiled yourself, and a man other than your husband has had intercourse with you”— 21 then the priest must make the woman utter the curse and say to the woman, “May the Lord make you a curse and a harmful pledge among your people, when the Lord induces a miscarriage and your womb discharges. 22 And may the water that brings these curses enter your stomach and make your womb discharge and make you miscarry.”
And the woman will say, “I agree, I agree.”
23 The priest will write these curses in the scroll and wipe them off into the water of bitterness. 24 Then he will make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse. And the water that brings the curse will enter her, causing bitterness. 25 The priest will take the grain offering for jealousy from the woman’s hands, elevate the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest will take a handful of the grain offering as a token part of it and turn it into smoke on the altar. And afterward he will make the woman drink the water. 27 When he has made her drink the water, if she has defiled herself and has broken faith with her husband, then the water that brings the curse will enter her, causing bitterness, and her womb will discharge and she will miscarry. The woman will be a curse among her people. 28 But if the woman hasn’t defiled herself and she is pure, then she will be immune and able to conceive.
29 These are the instructions about jealousy, when a wife has an affair while married to her husband and defiles herself, 30 or when jealousy overcomes a man and he is jealous of his wife. The priest will make the woman stand before the Lord and will follow all these instructions concerning her. 31 The man will be free from guilt, but the woman will bear her guilt.
Psalm 39
For the music leader. To Jeduthun. A psalm of David.
39 I promised I would watch my steps
so as not to sin with my tongue;
promised to keep my mouth shut
as long as the wicked were in my presence.
2 So I was completely quiet, silent.
I kept my peace, but it did no good.
My pain got worse.
3 My heart got hot inside me;
while stewing over it, the fire burned.
Then I spoke out with my tongue:
4 “Let me know my end, Lord.
How many days do I have left?
I want to know how brief my time is.”
5 You’ve made my days so short;
my lifetime is like nothing in your eyes.
Yes, a human life is nothing but a puff of air! Selah
6 Yes, people wander around like shadows;
yes, they hustle and bustle, but pointlessly;
they don’t even know who will get the wealth they’ve amassed.
7 So now, Lord, what should I be waiting for?
My hope is set on you.
8 Deliver me from all my sins;
don’t make me some foolish person’s joke.
9 I am completely silent; I won’t open my mouth
because you have acted.
10 Get this plague of yours off me!
I’m being destroyed by the blows from your fist.
11 You discipline people for their sin, punishing them;
like a moth, you ruin what they treasure.
Yes, a human life is just a puff of air! Selah
12 Hear my prayer, Lord!
Listen closely to my cry for help!
Please don’t ignore my tears!
I’m just a foreigner—
an immigrant staying with you,
just like all my ancestors were.
13 Look away from me
so I can be happy again
before I pass away and am gone.
The search
[Woman]
3 Upon my bed, night after night,
I looked for the one whom I love with all my heart.
I looked for him but couldn’t find him.[a]
2 “I will rise now and go all around the city,
through the streets and the squares.
I will look for the one whom I love with all my heart.”
I looked for him but couldn’t find him.
3 The guards found me,
those who make their rounds in the city.
“The one whom I love with all my heart—
have you seen him?”
4 No sooner did I depart from them
than I found the one whom I love with all my heart.
I held on to him and now I won’t let him go,
until I’ve brought him to my mother’s house,
to the chamber of the one who conceived me.
5 I place you under oath, daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the wild deer:
don’t rouse, don’t arouse love
until it desires.
Visions of grandeur
6 Who is this, coming up from the wilderness,
like pillars of smoke?
She is perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,
selected from all the spice merchant’s powders.
7 Picture Solomon’s bed—
sixty heroic men round about it,
all from the heroes of Israel,
8 all of them skilled with the sword,
expert in warfare,
each with his sword ready at his thigh
against terrors that come by night.
9 King Solomon made a canopied couch for himself
from the trees of Lebanon.
10 Its pillars he made of silver,
its covering, cloth of gold,
its cushions, royal purple;
its interior inlaid with love.
Daughters of Jerusalem, 11 go forth!
Look, daughters of Zion—
on King Solomon wearing the crown
with which his mother crowned him
on the day of his wedding,
on the day of his heart’s joy.
We are Jesus’ house
3 Therefore, brothers and sisters who are partners in the heavenly calling, think about Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. 2 Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him just like Moses was faithful in God’s house. 3 But he deserves greater glory than Moses in the same way that the builder of the house deserves more honor than the house itself. 4 Every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant in order to affirm the things that would be spoken later. 6 But Jesus was faithful over God’s house as a Son. We are his house if we hold on to the confidence and the pride that our hope gives us.
Respond to Jesus’ voice now
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says,
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 don’t have stubborn hearts
as they did in the rebellion,
on the day when they tested me in the desert.
9 That is where your ancestors challenged and tested me,
though they had seen my work for forty years.
10 So I was angry with them.
I said, “Their hearts always go off course,
and they don’t know my ways.”
11 Because of my anger I swore:
“They will never enter my rest!”[a]
12 Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that none of you have an evil, unfaithful heart that abandons the living God. 13 Instead, encourage each other every day, as long as it’s called “today,” so that none of you become insensitive to God because of sin’s deception. 14 We are partners with Christ, but only if we hold on to the confidence we had in the beginning until the end.
15 When it says,
Today, if you hear his voice, don’t have stubborn hearts
as they did in the rebellion.[b]
16 Who was it who rebelled when they heard his voice? Wasn’t it all of those who were brought out of Egypt by Moses? 17 And with whom was God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it with the ones who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And against whom did he swear that they would never enter his rest, if not against the ones who were disobedient? 19 We see that they couldn’t enter because of their lack of faith.
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible