M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

25 Sh’mu’el died. All of Isra’el assembled to mourn him and bury him at his home in Ramah.

Then David set out and went down to the Pa’ran Desert. ² Now there was a man in Ma‘on who had property in Karmel. He was very rich, having three thousand sheep and a thousand goats; and he was shearing his sheep in Karmel. ³ The man’s name was Naval, and his wife was named Avigayil. The woman was intelligent and attractive, but the man was surly and mean in his actions; he belonged to the clan of Kalev. ⁴ David, there in the desert, heard that Naval was shearing his sheep. ⁵ David sent off ten young men with these orders: “Go up to Naval in Karmel, and bring him greetings from me. ⁶ Say, ‘Long life and shalom to you, shalom to your household, and shalom to everything that is yours! ⁷ I’ve heard that you now have shearers. Your shepherds were with us [for a while], we did them no harm, and they found nothing missing all the time they were in Karmel. ⁸ Ask your own men; they’ll tell you. Therefore, receive my men favorably, since we have come on a festive day. Please give what you can to your servants and to your son David.’”

⁹ On arrival, David’s men said all these things to Naval in David’s name. When they had finished, ¹⁰ Naval answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Yishai? There are many servants nowadays running away from their masters. ¹¹ Am I supposed to take my bread, my water and my meat that I slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men coming from who knows where?” ¹² So David’s men turned around, went back and came and told him everything Naval had said. ¹³ David said to his men, “Buckle your swords on, all of you!” Each one buckled on his sword, David too; and there went up after David about four hundred men, while two hundred stayed with the equipment.

¹⁴ But one of Naval’s men told Avigayil his wife, “David sent messengers from the desert to greet our master, and he flew on them in a rage, ¹⁵ even though the men had been very good to us — they didn’t harm us, and we found nothing missing during the entire time we went with them, while we were out in the countryside. ¹⁶ They served as a wall protecting us day and night all the time we were with them caring for the sheep. ¹⁷ So now decide what you are going to do, for clearly harm is on its way to our master and all his household, but he’s so mean that no one can tell him anything.”

¹⁸ Avigayil wasted no time in taking 200 loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep already prepared, six quarts of roasted grain, a hundred clusters of raisins and 200 fig cakes, and having them loaded on donkeys. ¹⁹ Then she said to her young men, “Go on ahead of me, and I’ll come along after you.” But she didn’t tell her husband Naval.

²⁰ She was riding her donkey down past the hiding-place in the mountain, when David and his men descended toward her, and she met them. ²¹ David had said, “What a waste it has been guarding everything this fellow has in the desert, so that nothing of his was missing! He has repaid me bad for good!” ²² Then he swore, “May God do the same and more to David’s enemies if I leave alive even one male of everything he owns.”

²³ When Avigayil saw David, she hurried to dismount from her donkey, fell on her face in front of David and bowed down to the ground. ²⁴ Having fallen at his feet, she said, “It’s all my fault, my lord, all my fault! Please let your servant speak in your ears, and listen to what your servant says. ²⁵ Please! My lord shouldn’t pay any attention to this worthless fellow Naval, because he’s just like his name — ‘Naval’ means ‘boor,’ and his boorishness stays with him. But I, your servant, did not see my lord’s men, whom you sent. ²⁶ Therefore, my lord, as Adonai lives, and as you live, inasmuch as Adonai has kept you from the guilt of shedding blood and from taking vengeance into your own hands — therefore, may your enemies and anyone seeking your harm be [as worthless] as Naval. ²⁷ Meanwhile, let this present which your servant has brought to my lord be given to the men in my lord’s service. ²⁸ And please forgive the offense your servant has caused; because Adonai will certainly establish my lord’s dynasty, for my lord fights Adonai’s battles, and nothing bad has been found in you all your life long. ²⁹ Even if someone comes along searching for you and seeking your life, your life will be bound in the bundle of life with Adonai your God. But the lives of your enemies he will fling away as if from the pouch of a slingshot. ³⁰ Then, when Adonai has done all the good to my lord that he has said about you and made you ruler over Isra’el, ³¹ what happens here will not have become an obstacle to you or a cause for remorse to my lord, neither that you shed blood without cause nor that my lord took vengeance into his own hands. Finally, when Adonai has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.”

³² David said to Avigayil, “Blessed be Adonai the God of Isra’el, who sent you today to meet me; ³³ and blessed be your tactfulness, and blessed be yourself for having kept me today from the guilt of shedding blood and taking vengeance into my own hands. ³⁴ For as Adonai the God of Isra’el, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you hadn’t rushed to meet me, not even one male would have been left to Naval by morning!” ³⁵ So David received from her what she had brought him, then said to her, “Go up in peace to your home. I have listened to what you said and granted your request.”

³⁶ Avigayil came to Naval; there he was in his house, holding a feast fit for a king. He was in high spirits, because he was very drunk. So she told him nothing whatever until the next morning. ³⁷ In the morning, when he was sober and his wife told him what had happened, he had a stroke and became as motionless as a stone. ³⁸ Some ten days later Adonai struck Naval, and he died.

³⁹ When David heard that Naval was dead, he said, “Blessed be Adonai for having taken my side in the matter of Naval’s insult and for having prevented his servant from doing anything bad. On the contrary, Adonai has caused Naval’s bad deeds to return on his own head.” Then David sent a message that he wanted to make Avigayil his own wife. ⁴⁰ When David’s servants reached Avigayil in Karmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to bring you to him to be his wife.” ⁴¹ She got up, bowed with her face to the ground, and said, “Your servant is here to serve you, to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.” ⁴² Avigayil then hurried, set out and rode off on a donkey, with five of her female servants following her; she went after David’s messengers; and she became his wife. ⁴³ David also took Achino‘am of Yizre‘el; both of them became his wives.

⁴⁴ Meanwhile, Sha’ul had given Mikhal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Layish, who came from Gallim.

6 How dare one of you with a complaint against another go to court before pagan judges and not before God’s people? ² Don’t you know that God’s people are going to judge the universe? If you are going to judge the universe, are you incompetent to judge these minor matters? ³ Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention affairs of everyday life? ⁴ So if you require judgments about matters of everyday life, why do you put them in front of men who have no standing in the Messianic Community? ⁵ I say, shame on you! Can it be that there isn’t one person among you wise enough to be able to settle a dispute between brothers? ⁶ Instead, a brother brings a lawsuit against another brother, and that before unbelievers!

⁷ Actually, if you are bringing lawsuits against each other, it is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? ⁸ Instead, you yourselves wrong and cheat; and you do it to your own brothers! ⁹ Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality, ¹⁰ who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God. ¹¹ Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.

¹² You say, “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but as far as I am concerned, I am not going to let anything gain control over me. ¹³ “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”? Maybe, but God will put an end to both of them. Anyhow, the body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. ¹⁴ God raised up the Lord, and he will raise us up too by his power.

¹⁵ Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of the Messiah? So, am I to take parts of the Messiah and make them parts of a prostitute? Heaven forbid! ¹⁶ Don’t you know that a man who joins himself to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? For the Tanakh says, “The two will become one flesh”;^{[a] 17} but the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. ¹⁸ Run from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. ¹⁹ Or don’t you know that your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God? The fact is, you don’t belong to yourselves; ²⁰ for you were bought at a price. So use your bodies to glorify God.

4 “As for you, human being, take a clay slab, lay it down in front of you, and draw on it the city of Yerushalayim. ² Show it under siege — build towers against it, raise earthworks against it, set up camps against it, and surround it with battering rams. ³ Then take an iron griddle and put it in place as a wall of iron between yourself and the city, and fix your gaze on it — the city is under siege, and you are the one besieging it. This will be a sign for the house of Isra’el.

⁴ “Next, you are to lie on your left side, and have it bear the guilt of the house of Isra’el — for as many days as you lie on your side, you will bear their guilt. ⁵ For I am assigning you one day for each year of their guilt; thus you are to bear the guilt of the house of Isra’el for 390 days. ⁶ Then, when you have finished that, you are to lie on your right side and bear the guilt of the house of Y’hudah for forty days, each day corresponding to a year; this is what I am assigning you. ⁷ You are to fix your gaze on the siege of Yerushalayim, and, with your arm bared, prophesy against it. ⁸ I am tying you down with ropes, and you are not to turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

⁹ “Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and buckwheat; put them together in one bowl; and make bread from it. For as long as you lie on your side, 390 days, this is what you are to eat. ¹⁰ Each day the food you eat must weigh only three-quarters of a pound; you may eat it from time to time [during the day]. ¹¹ You are also to drink a limited amount of water, two-thirds of a quart; you may drink it from time to time [during the day]. ¹² [The bread] you eat is to be baked like barley cakes; you are to bake it before their eyes, using human dung as fuel.” ¹³ Adonai said, “This is how the people of Isra’el will eat their food — unclean — in the nations where I am driving them.” ¹⁴ I objected: “No, Adonai Elohim! I have never defiled myself — from my youth until now I have never eaten anything that died by itself or was killed by wild animals; no such disgusting food has ever entered my mouth.” ¹⁵ He answered, “All right, I will give you cow dung to use instead of human dung, and you can prepare your bread on it.”

¹⁶ He then said to me, “Human being, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Yerushalayim, so that they will anxiously weigh out bread to eat, and, horrified, ration water to drink. ¹⁷ Finally, due to lack of bread and water, they will stare at each other in shock, wasting away because of their guilt.”