M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

8 “All the mitzvot I am giving you today you are to take care to obey, so that you will live, increase your numbers, enter and take possession of the land Adonai swore about to your ancestors. ² You are to remember everything of the way in which Adonai led you these forty years in the desert, humbling and testing you in order to know what was in your heart — whether you would obey his mitzvot or not. ³ He humbled you, allowing you to become hungry, and then fed you with man, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, to make you understand that a person does not live on food alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of Adonai. ⁴ During these forty years the clothing you were wearing didn’t grow old, and your feet didn’t swell up. ⁵ Think deeply about it: Adonai was disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his child. ⁶ So obey the mitzvot of Adonai your God, living as he directs and fearing him. ⁷ For Adonai your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams, springs and water welling up from the depths in valleys and on hillsides. ⁸ It is a land of wheat and barley, grapevines, fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food in abundance and lack nothing in it; a land where the stones contain iron and the hills can be mined for copper. ¹⁰ So you will eat and be satisfied, and you will bless Adonai your God for the good land he has given you.

(ii) ¹¹ “Be careful not to forget Adonai your God by not obeying his mitzvot, rulings and regulations that I am giving you today. ¹² Otherwise, after you have eaten and are satisfied, built fine houses and lived in them, ¹³ and increased your herds, flocks, silver, gold and everything else you own, ¹⁴ you will become proud-hearted. Forgetting Adonai your God — who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves; ¹⁵ who led you through the vast and fearsome desert, with its poisonous snakes, scorpions and waterless, thirsty ground; who brought water out of flint rock for you; ¹⁶ who fed you in the desert with man, unknown to your ancestors; all the while humbling and testing you in order to do you good in the end — ¹⁷ you will think to yourself, ‘My own power and the strength of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ No, you are to remember Adonai your God, because it is he who is giving you the power to get wealth, in order to confirm his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as is happening even today. ¹⁹ If you forget Adonai your God, follow other gods and serve and worship them, I am warning you in advance today that you will certainly perish. ²⁰ You will perish just like the nations that Adonai is causing to perish ahead of you, because you will not have heeded the voice of Adonai your God.”

36 It was in the fourteenth year of King Hizkiyahu that Sancheriv king of Ashur advanced against all the fortified cities of Y’hudah and captured them. ² From Lakhish the king of Ashur sent Rav-Shakeh to Hizkiyahu in Yerushalayim with a large army. He positioned himself by the aqueduct from the Upper Pool, which is by the road to the Launderers’ Field. ³ Elyakim the son of Hilkiyahu, who was in charge of the household, Shevnah the general secretary and Yo’ach the son of Asaf the foreign minister went out to meet him.

⁴ Rav-Shakeh addressed them: “Tell Hizkiyahu: ‘Here is what the great king, the king of Ashur, says: “What makes you so confident? ⁵ I say: do mere words constitute strategy and strength for battle? In whom, then, are you trusting when you rebel against me like this? ⁶ Look! Relying on Egypt is like using a broken stick as a staff — when you lean on it, it punctures your hand. That’s what Pharaoh king of Egypt is like for anyone who puts his trust in him. ⁷ But if you tell me, ‘We trust in Adonai our God,’ then isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hizkiyahu has removed, telling Y’hudah and Yerushalayim, ‘You must worship before this altar’? ⁸ All right, then, make a wager with my lord the king of Ashur: I will give you two thousand horses if you can find enough riders for them. ⁹ How then can you repulse even one of my master’s lowest-ranked army officers? Yet you are relying on Egypt for chariots and riders! ¹⁰ Do you think I have come up to this land to destroy it without Adonai’s approval? Adonai said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!’ ” ’ ”

¹¹ Elyakim, Shevnah and Yo’ach said to Rav-Shakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it; don’t speak to us in Hebrew while the people on the wall are listening.” ¹² But Rav-Shakeh answered, “Did my master send me to deliver my message just to your master and yourselves? Didn’t he send me to address the men sitting on the wall, who, like you, are going to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?” ¹³ Then Rav-Shakeh stood up and, speaking loudly in Hebrew, said: “Hear what the great king, the king of Ashur, says! ¹⁴ This is what the king says: ‘Don’t let Hizkiyahu deceive you, because he won’t be able to save you. ¹⁵ And don’t let Hizkiyahu make you trust in Adonai by saying, “Adonai will surely save us; this city will not be given over to the king of Ashur.” ¹⁶ Don’t listen to Hizkiyahu.’ For this is what the king says: ‘Make peace with me, surrender to me. Then every one of you can eat from his vine and fig tree and drink the water in his own cistern, ¹⁷ until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land with grain and wine, a land with bread and vineyards. ¹⁸ Beware of Hizkiyahu; he is only deluding you when he says, “Adonai will save us.” Has any god of any nation ever saved his land from the power of the king of Ashur? ¹⁹ Where are the gods of Hamat and Arpad? Where are the gods of S’farvayim? Did they save Shomron from my power? ²⁰ Where is the god of any of these countries that has saved its country from my power, so that Adonai might be able to save Yerushalayim from my power?’” ²¹ But they kept still and didn’t answer him so much as a word, for the king’s order was, “Don’t answer him.”

²² Then Elyakim the son of Hilkiyahu, who was in charge of the household, Shevnah the general secretary and Yo’ach the son of Asaf the foreign minister went to Hizkiyahu with their clothes torn and reported to him what Rav-Shakeh had said.

6 Next I watched as the Lamb broke the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living beings say in a thundering voice, “Go!” ² I looked, and there in front of me was a white horse; its rider had a bow and was given a crown; and he rode off as a conqueror to conquer.

³ When he broke the second seal, I heard the second living being say, “Go!” ⁴ Another horse went out, a red one; and its rider was given the power to take peace away from the earth and make people slaughter each other. He was given a great sword.

⁵ When he broke the third seal, I heard the third living being say, “Go!” I looked, and there in front of me was a black horse, and its rider held in his hand a pair of scales. ⁶ Then I heard what sounded like a voice from among the four living beings say, “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages! Six pounds of barley for the same price! But don’t damage the oil or the wine!”

⁷ When he broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being say, “Go!” ⁸ I looked, and there in front of me was a pallid, sickly-looking horse. Its rider’s name was Death, and Sh’ol followed behind him. They were given authority to kill one-quarter of the world by war, by famine, by plagues and with the wild animals of the earth.

⁹ When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been put to death for proclaiming the Word of God, that is, for bearing witness. ¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, “Sovereign Ruler, HaKadosh, the True One, how long will it be before you judge the people living on earth and avenge our blood?” ¹¹ Each of them was given a white robe; and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow-servants should be reached, of their brothers who would be killed, just as they had been.

¹² Then I watched as he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, the sun turned black as sackcloth worn in mourning, and the full moon became blood-red. ¹³ The stars fell from heaven to earth just as a fig tree drops its figs when shaken by a strong wind. ¹⁴ The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place. ¹⁵ Then the earth’s kings, the rulers, the generals, the rich and the mighty — indeed, everyone, slave and free — hid himself in caves and among the rocks in the mountains, ¹⁶ and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us^[a] from the face of the One sitting on the throne and from the fury of the Lamb! ¹⁷ For the Great Day of their fury has come, and who can stand?”