M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Samuel’s Birth

1 There was a man named Elkanah son of Jeroham. He was from Ramathaim in the mountains of Ephraim. Elkanah was from the family of Zuph. (Jeroham was Elihu’s son. Elihu was Tohu’s son. And Tohu was the son of Zuph from the family group of Ephraim.) ² Elkanah had two wives. One was named Hannah, and the other was named Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.

³ Every year Elkanah left his town Ramah and went up to Shiloh. There he worshiped the Lord of heaven’s armies and offered sacrifices to him. Shiloh was where Hophni and Phinehas served as priests of the Lord. They were the sons of Eli. ⁴ When Elkanah offered sacrifices, he always gave a share of the meat to his wife Peninnah. He also gave shares of the meat to her sons and daughters. ⁵ But Elkanah always gave a special share of the meat to Hannah. He did this because he loved Hannah and because the Lord had made Hannah unable to have children. ⁶ Peninnah would upset Hannah and make her feel bad. She did this because the Lord had made Hannah unable to have children. ⁷ This happened every year when they went up to the Tent of the Lord at Shiloh. Peninnah would upset Hannah until Hannah would cry and not eat anything. ⁸ Her husband Elkanah would say to her, “Hannah, why are you crying? Why won’t you eat? Why are you sad? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”

⁹ Once, after they had eaten their meal in Shiloh, Hannah got up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair near the entrance to the Lord’s Holy Tent. ¹⁰ Hannah was very sad. She cried much and prayed to the Lord. ¹¹ She made a promise. She said, “Lord of heaven’s armies, see how bad I feel. Remember me! Don’t forget me. If you will give me a son, I will give him back to you all his life. And no one will ever use a razor to cut his hair.”^[a]

¹² While Hannah kept praying, Eli watched her mouth. ¹³ She was praying in her heart. Her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. ¹⁴ He said to her, “Stop getting drunk! Throw away your wine!”

¹⁵ Hannah answered, “No, master, I have not drunk any wine or beer. I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I was telling the Lord about all my problems. ¹⁶ Don’t think of me as an evil woman. I have been praying because of my many troubles and much sadness.”

¹⁷ Eli answered, “Go in peace. May the God of Israel give you what you asked of him.”

¹⁸ Hannah said, “I want to be pleasing to you always.” Then she left and ate something. She was not sad anymore.

¹⁹ Early the next morning Elkanah’s family got up and worshiped the Lord. Then they went back home to Ramah. Elkanah had intimate relations with his wife Hannah. And the Lord remembered her. ²⁰ So Hannah became pregnant, and in time she gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel.^[b] She said, “His name is Samuel because I asked the Lord for him.”

Hannah Gives Samuel to God

²¹ Every year Elkanah went to Shiloh to offer sacrifices. He went to keep the promise he had made to God. He brought his whole family with him. So once again he went up to Shiloh. ²² But Hannah did not go with him. She told him, “When the boy is old enough to eat solid food, I will take him to Shiloh. Then I will give him to the Lord. He will become a Nazirite. He will always live there at Shiloh.”

²³ Elkanah, Hannah’s husband, said to her, “Do what you think is best. You may stay home until the boy is old enough to eat. May the Lord do what you have said.” So Hannah stayed at home to nurse her son until he was old enough to eat.

²⁴ When Samuel was old enough to eat, Hannah took him to the Tent of the Lord at Shiloh. She also took a three-year-old bull, one-half bushel of flour and a leather bag filled with wine. ²⁵ They killed the bull for the sacrifice. Then Hannah brought Samuel to Eli. ²⁶ She said to Eli, “As surely as you live, my master, I am the same woman who stood near you praying to the Lord. ²⁷ I prayed for this child. The Lord answered my prayer and gave him to me. ²⁸ Now I give him back to the Lord. He will belong to the Lord all his life.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

A Prayer of Thanks

1 From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. God called me to be an apostle and chose me to tell the Good News.

² God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets. That promise is written in the Holy Scriptures. ^3-4 The Good News is about God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. As a man, he was born from the family of David. But through the Spirit of holiness he was declared to be God’s Son with great power by rising from death. ⁵ Through Christ, God gave me the special work of an apostle. This was to lead people of all nations to believe and obey. I do this work for Christ. ⁶ And you who are in Rome are also called to belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷ This letter is to all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his holy people.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ show you kindness and give you peace.

⁸ First I want to say that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. I thank God because people everywhere in the world are talking about your great faith. ^9-10 God knows that every time I pray I always mention you. God is the One I serve with my whole heart by telling the Good News about his Son. I pray that I will be allowed to come to you, and this will happen if God wants it. ¹¹ I want very much to see you, to give you some spiritual gift to make you strong. ¹² I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith that we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you. ¹³ Brothers, I want you to know that I planned many times to come to you. But this has not been possible. I wanted to come so that I could help you grow spiritually. I wanted to help you as I have helped the other non-Jewish people.

¹⁴ I must serve all people—Greeks and non-Greeks, the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵ That is why I want so much to preach the Good News to you in Rome.

¹⁶ I am not ashamed of the Good News. It is the power God uses to save everyone who believes—to save the Jews first, and then to save the non-Jews. ¹⁷ The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself. God’s way of making people right with him begins and ends with faith. As the Scripture says, “The person who is made right with God by faith will live forever.”^[a]

All People Have Done Wrong

¹⁸ God’s anger is shown from heaven against all the evil and wrong things that people do. By their own evil lives they hide the truth. ¹⁹ God shows his anger because everything that may be known about God has been made clear. Yes, God has clearly shown them everything that may be known about him. ²⁰ There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all the things that make him God. But since the beginning of the world those things have been easy to understand. They are made clear by what God has made. So people have no excuse for the bad things they do. ²¹ They knew God. But they did not give glory to God, and they did not thank him. Their thinking became useless. Their foolish minds were filled with darkness. ²² They said they were wise, but they became fools. ²³ They gave up the glory of God who lives forever. They traded that glory for the worship of idols made to look like earthly people. They traded God’s glory for things that look like birds, animals, and snakes.

²⁴ People were full of sin, wanting only to do evil. So God left them to follow their evil desires, and they made one another’s bodies impure by what they did. ²⁵ They traded the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served things that were made by man. But they did not worship and serve the God who made those things. God should be praised forever. Amen.

²⁶ Because people did those things, God left them and let them do the shameful things they wanted to do. Women stopped having natural physical relations with men for what is unnatural. ²⁷ In the same way, men stopped having natural physical relations with women and began wanting each other. Men did shameful things with other men. And in their bodies they received the punishment for those wrongs.

²⁸ People did not think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking. And so those people do the things that they should not do. ²⁹ They are filled with every kind of sin, evil, selfishness, and hatred. They are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, lying, and thinking the worst about each other. They gossip ³⁰ and say evil things about each other. They hate God. They are rude and conceited and brag about themselves. They invent ways of doing evil. They do not obey their parents. ³¹ They are foolish, they do not keep their promises, and they show no kindness or mercy to other people. ³² They know God’s law says that those who live like this should die. But they continue to do these evil things. And they also feel that those who do these things are doing right.

The Fall of Jerusalem

39 This is how Jerusalem was captured: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He surrounded the city to attack it. This was during the tenth month of the ninth year Zedekiah was king of Judah. ² This lasted until the ninth day of the fourth month in Zedekiah’s eleventh year. Then the city wall was broken through. ³ And all the officers of the king of Babylon came into Jerusalem. They sat down at the Middle Gate. They were Nergal-Sharezer of the district of Samgar; Nebo-Sarsekim, a chief officer; Nergal-Sharezer, an important leader; and all the other important officers.

⁴ When Zedekiah king of Judah and all his soldiers saw them, they ran away. They left Jerusalem at night and went out from the king’s garden. They went through the gate that was between the two walls. Then they headed toward the Jordan Valley. ⁵ But the Babylonian army chased them. They caught up with Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. They captured him and took him to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar was at Riblah in the land of Hamath. There Nebuchadnezzar passed his sentence on Zedekiah. ⁶ There at Riblah the king of Babylon killed Zedekiah’s sons as he watched. And Nebuchadnezzar killed all the important officers of Judah as Zedekiah watched. ⁷ Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes. He put bronze chains on Zedekiah and took him to Babylon.

⁸ The Babylonians set fire to the palace. And they set fire to the houses of the people of Jerusalem. And they broke down the walls around Jerusalem. ⁹ Nebuzaradan was commander of the king’s special guards. He took the people left in Jerusalem as captives. He also took those captives who had surrendered to him earlier. And he took the rest of the people of Jerusalem. He carried them all away to Babylon. ¹⁰ But Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard, left some of the poor people of Judah behind. They were the people who owned nothing. So on that day he gave them vineyards and fields.

¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar had given these orders about Jeremiah through Nebuzaradan, commander of the guard: ¹² “Find Jeremiah and take care of him. Do not hurt him. Give him whatever he asks for.” ¹³ So these men sent for Jeremiah: Nebuzaradan, commander of the guards; Nebushazban, a chief officer; Nergal-Sharezer, an important leader; and all the other officers of the king of Babylon. ¹⁴ They had Jeremiah taken out of the courtyard of the guard. They turned him over to Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan. Gedaliah had orders to take Jeremiah back home. So they took him home, and he stayed among his own people.

¹⁵ While Jeremiah was guarded in the courtyard, the Lord spoke his word to him: ¹⁶ “Jeremiah, go and tell Ebed-Melech the Cushite this message: ‘This is what the Lord of heaven’s armies, the God of Israel, says: Very soon I will make my words about Jerusalem come true. They will come true through disaster, not through good times. You will see everything come true with your own eyes. ¹⁷ But I will save you on that day, Ebed-Melech, says the Lord. You will not be handed over to the people you fear. ¹⁸ I will surely save you, Ebed-Melech. You will not die from a sword. But you will escape and live. This will happen because you have trusted in me, says the Lord.’”

A Prayer for God to Be Near

For the director of music. A song of David.

The Unbelieving Fool

For the director of music. Of David.