M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

The Covenant Box among the Philistines

5 After the Philistines captured the Covenant Box, they carried it from Ebenezer to their city of Ashdod, ² took it into the temple of their god Dagon, and set it up beside his statue. ³ Early the next morning the people of Ashdod saw that the statue of Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground in front of the Lord's Covenant Box. So they lifted it up and put it back in its place. ⁴ Early the following morning they saw that the statue had again fallen down in front of the Covenant Box. This time its head and both its arms were broken off and were lying in the doorway; only the body was left. (⁵ That is why even today the priests of Dagon and all his worshipers in Ashdod step over that place and do not walk on it.)

⁶ The Lord punished the people of Ashdod severely and terrified them. He punished them and the people in the surrounding territory by causing them to have tumors.^{[a] 7} When they saw what was happening, they said, “The God of Israel is punishing us and our god Dagon. We can't let the Covenant Box stay here any longer.” ⁸ So they sent messengers and called together all five of the Philistine kings and asked them, “What shall we do with the Covenant Box of the God of Israel?”

“Take it over to Gath,” they answered; so they took it to Gath, another Philistine city. ⁹ But after it arrived there, the Lord punished that city too and caused a great panic. He punished them with tumors which developed in all the people of the city, young and old alike. ¹⁰ So they sent the Covenant Box to Ekron, another Philistine city; but when it arrived there, the people cried out, “They have brought the Covenant Box of the God of Israel here, in order to kill us all!” ¹¹ So again they sent for all the Philistine kings and said, “Send the Covenant Box of Israel back to its own place, so that it won't kill us and our families.” There was panic throughout the city because God was punishing them so severely. ¹² Even those who did not die developed tumors and the people cried out to their gods for help.

The Return of the Covenant Box

6 After the Lord's Covenant Box had been in Philistia for seven months, ² the people called the priests and the magicians and asked, “What shall we do with the Covenant Box of the Lord? If we send it back where it belongs, what shall we send with it?”

³ They answered, “If you return the Covenant Box of the God of Israel, you must, of course, send with it a gift to him to pay for your sin. The Covenant Box must not go back without a gift. In this way you will be healed, and you will find out why he has kept on punishing you.”

⁴ “What gift shall we send him?” the people asked.

They answered, “Five gold models of tumors and five gold mice, one of each for each Philistine king. The same plague was sent on all of you and on the five kings. ⁵ You must make these models of the tumors and of the mice that are ravaging your country, and you must give honor to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will stop punishing you, your gods, and your land. ⁶ Why should you be stubborn, as the king of Egypt and the Egyptians were? Don't forget how God made fools of them until they let the Israelites leave Egypt. ⁷ So prepare a new wagon and two cows that have never been yoked; hitch them to the wagon and drive their calves back to the barn. ⁸ Take the Lord's Covenant Box, put it on the wagon, and place in a box beside it the gold models that you are sending to him as a gift to pay for your sins. Start the wagon on its way and let it go by itself. ⁹ Then watch it go; if it goes toward the town of Beth Shemesh, this means that it is the God of the Israelites who has sent this terrible disaster on us. But if it doesn't, then we will know that he did not send the plague; it was only a matter of chance.”

¹⁰ They did what they were told: they took two cows and hitched them to the wagon, and shut the calves in the barn. ¹¹ They put the Covenant Box in the wagon, together with the box containing the gold models of the mice and of the tumors. ¹² The cows started off on the road to Beth Shemesh and headed straight toward it, without turning off the road. They were mooing as they went. The five Philistine kings followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.

¹³ The people of Beth Shemesh were reaping wheat in the valley, when suddenly they looked up and saw the Covenant Box. They were overjoyed at the sight. ¹⁴ The wagon came to a field belonging to a man named Joshua, who lived in Beth Shemesh, and it stopped there near a large rock. The people chopped up the wooden wagon and killed the cows and burned them as a burnt sacrifice to the Lord. ¹⁵ The Levites lifted off the Covenant Box of the Lord and the box with the gold models in it, and placed them on the large rock. Then the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt sacrifices and other sacrifices to the Lord. ¹⁶ The five Philistine kings watched them do this and then went back to Ekron that same day.

¹⁷ The Philistines sent the five gold tumors to the Lord as a gift to pay for their sins, one each for the cities of Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. ¹⁸ They also sent gold mice, one for each of the cities ruled by the five Philistine kings, both the fortified towns and the villages without walls. The large rock in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, on which they placed the Lord's Covenant Box, is still there as a witness to what happened.

¹⁹ The Lord killed seventy of the men of Beth Shemesh because they looked inside the Covenant Box. And the people mourned because the Lord had caused such a great slaughter among them.

The Covenant Box at Kiriath Jearim

²⁰ So the men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God? Where can we send him to get him away from us?” ²¹ They sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim to say, “The Philistines have returned the Lord's Covenant Box. Come down and get it.”

Right with God

5 Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have^[a] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace, in which we now live. And so we boast^[b] of the hope we have of sharing God's glory! ³ We also boast^[c] of our troubles, because we know that trouble produces endurance, ⁴ endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope. ⁵ This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.

⁶ For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. ⁷ It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. ⁸ But God has shown us how much he loves us—it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! ⁹ By his blood^[d] we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God's anger! ¹⁰ We were God's enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God's friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ's life! ¹¹ But that is not all; we rejoice because of what God has done through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has now made us God's friends.

Adam and Christ

^12 (A)Sin came into the world through one man, and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race because everyone has sinned. ¹³ There was sin in the world before the Law was given; but where there is no law, no account is kept of sins. ¹⁴ But from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, death ruled over all human beings, even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam did when he disobeyed God's command.

Adam was a figure of the one who was to come. ¹⁵ But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. ¹⁶ And there is a difference between God's gift and the sin of one man. After the one sin, came the judgment of “Guilty”; but after so many sins, comes the undeserved gift of “Not guilty!” ¹⁷ It is true that through the sin of one man death began to rule because of that one man. But how much greater is the result of what was done by the one man, Jesus Christ! All who receive God's abundant grace and are freely put right with him will rule in life through Christ.

^18 (B)So then, as the one sin condemned all people, in the same way the one righteous act sets all people free and gives them life. ¹⁹ And just as all people were made sinners as the result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way they will all be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.

²⁰ Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing; but where sin increased, God's grace increased much more. ²¹ So then, just as sin ruled by means of death, so also God's grace rules by means of righteousness, leading us to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Jeremiah Is Taken to Egypt

43 I finished telling the people everything that the Lord their God had sent me to tell them. ² Then Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the other arrogant men said to me, “You are lying. The Lord our God did not send you to tell us not to go and live in Egypt. ³ Baruch son of Neriah has stirred you up against us, so that the Babylonians will gain power over us and can either kill us or take us away to Babylonia.” ⁴ So neither Johanan nor any of the army officers nor any of the people would obey the Lord's command to remain in the land of Judah. ^5 (A)Then Johanan and all the army officers took everybody left in Judah away to Egypt, together with all the people who had returned from the nations where they had been scattered: ⁶ the men, the women, the children, and the king's daughters. They took everyone whom Nebuzaradan the commanding officer had left under the care of Gedaliah, including Baruch and me. ⁷ They disobeyed the Lord's command and went into Egypt as far as the city of Tahpanhes.

⁸ There the Lord said to me, ⁹ “Get some large stones and bury them in the mortar of the pavement^[a] in front of the entrance to the government building here in the city, and let some of the Israelites see you do it. ¹⁰ Then tell them that I, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, am going to bring my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to this place, and he^[b] will put his throne over these stones that you^[c] buried, and will spread the royal tent over them. ¹¹ Nebuchadnezzar will come and defeat Egypt. Those people who are doomed to die of disease will die of disease, those doomed to be taken away as prisoners will be taken away as prisoners, and those doomed to be killed in war will be killed in war. ¹² I will set fire to the temples of Egypt's gods, and the king of Babylonia will either burn their gods or carry them off. As shepherds pick their clothes clean of lice, so the king of Babylonia will pick the land of Egypt clean and then leave victorious. ¹³ He will destroy the sacred stone monuments at Heliopolis in Egypt and will burn down the temples of the Egyptian gods.”

God's Glory in Creation^[a]

The Law of the Lord