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Old/New Testament

Each day includes a passage from both the Old Testament and New Testament.

Duration: 365 days

Genesis 10-12

Chapter 10

The Human Family.^[a] ¹These are the descendants of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth, to whom sons were born after the flood.

²The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meschech, and Tiras.

³The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.

⁴The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim, and the Rodanim.

⁵From these came the peoples of the islands and their territories, each clan in the nations with their own language.

⁶The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.

⁷The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.

The sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.

⁸Cush gave birth to Nimrod. He was the first of the mighty ones upon the earth. ⁹He was a great hunter before the Lord, for it is said, “Just like Nimrod, a great hunter before the Lord.” ¹⁰The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. ¹¹From that land he went to Asshur where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, ¹²and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, which is the main city.

¹³Mizraim gave birth to the Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, ¹⁴Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim (from whom came the Philistines).

¹⁵Canaan gave birth to Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, ¹⁶and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, ¹⁷the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, ¹⁸the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites.

Afterward the clans of the Canaanites spread outward. ¹⁹The boundaries of the Canaanites stretch from Sidon in the area of Gerar up to Gaza, and then go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, up to Lasha.

²⁰These were the sons of Ham according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their peoples.

²¹Shem, the ancestor of all of the sons of Eber and the older brother of Japheth, also had children.

²²The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram.

²³The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash.

²⁴Arpachshad gave birth to Shelah, and Shelah gave birth to Eber. ²⁵Eber had two sons: one named Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided) and the other named Joktan.

²⁶Joktan gave birth to Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, ²⁷Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, ²⁸Obal, Abimael, Sheba, ²⁹Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan.

³⁰They lived in the mountain region in the east, from Mesha on toward Sephar.

³¹These were the sons of Shem according to their clans and their languages, in their various territories and according to their languages.

³²These were the families of the sons of Noah in their various generations and clans. These divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood.

Chapter 11

An Attempt at Unity.^[b] ¹The whole world had only one language, everyone using the same words. ²Migrating from the east, men came upon a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled.

³They said to each other, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them in a fire.” These bricks were what they used instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement.^[c] ⁴Then they said, “Come, let us build a city and a tower so high that it touches the heavens.^[d] We shall make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all throughout the earth.”

⁵But the Lord came down and saw the city and the tower that these men were building. ⁶The Lord said, “Behold, they are a single people and they have only one language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. Now nothing that they think up will be impossible for them. ⁷Let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other when they speak.”

⁸The Lord scattered them over the whole earth^[e] and they ceased building their city. ⁹This is why it is called Babel,^[f] for there the Lord confused everyone’s language. It was also from there that the Lord scattered people over the whole earth.

¹⁰Genealogy of Abraham.^[g] The descendants of Shem are as follow:

Shem was one hundred years old when he had Arpachshad two years after the flood. ¹¹Shem, after he had Arpachshad, lived another five hundred years and had other sons and daughters.

¹²Arpachshad was thirty-five years old when he had Shelah. ¹³Arpachshad, after he had Shelah, lived another four hundred and three years and had other sons and daughters.

¹⁴Shelah was thirty years old when he had Eber. ¹⁵Shelah, after he had Eber, lived another four hundred and three years and had other sons and daughters.

¹⁶Eber was thirty-four years old when he had Peleg. ¹⁷Eber, after he had Peleg, lived another four hundred and thirty years and had other sons and daughters.

¹⁸Peleg was thirty years old when he had Reu. ¹⁹Peleg, after he had Reu, lived another two hundred and nine years and had other sons and daughters.

²⁰Reu was thirty-two years old when he had Serug. ²¹Reu, after he had Serug, lived another two hundred and seven years and had other sons and daughters.

²²Serug was thirty years old when he had Nahor. ²³Serug, after he had Nahor, lived another two hundred years and had other sons and daughters.

²⁴Nahor was twenty-nine years old when he had Terah. ²⁵Nahor, after he had Terah, lived one hundred and nineteen years and had other sons and daughters.

²⁶Terah was seventy years old when he had Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

²⁷These are the descendants of Terah.

Terah had Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran had Lot. ²⁸Haran then died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.^[h] ²⁹Abram and Nahor both married. The wife of Abram was Sarai, and the wife of Nahor was Milcah who was a daughter of Haran (the father of Milcah and Iscah). ³⁰Sarai was barren and did not have any children.

³¹Then Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law and the wife of Abram his son, and he left Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. They went as far as Haran where they settled.^[i]

³²Terah lived to be two hundred and five years old. Terah died in Haran.

Origin of the People of God^[j]

Abraham, Man of Faith^[k]

Chapter 12

“Leave Your Country [and] Your People.”^[l]¹The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people, and the house of your father, and go to the land to which I will lead you.

²“I will make of you a great
    people and I will bless you.
I will make your name great
    and it will become a blessing.
³I will bless those who bless
    you and curse those who curse you.
And through you
    all the nations on the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴Abram therefore departed, just as the Lord had ordered him. Lot went along with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. ⁵Abram took his wife Sarai, Lot, the son of his brother, and all the possessions that they had accumulated in Haran, and all the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and left for the land of Canaan. Thus, they arrived in the land of Canaan.

⁶Abram traveled through the land until he arrived at Shechem near the oak of Moreh. In those days the Canaanites lived in that land. ⁷The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I will give this land to your descendants.” Abram therefore built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.

⁸From there he traveled into the mountain region to the east of Bethel and he pitched his tent so that Bethel was to the west and Ai was to his east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. ⁹Then Abram set out again, gradually traveling toward the Negeb.^[m]

¹⁰Abram a Refugee in Egypt.^[n] There was a famine in the land and Abram went down to Egypt to stay there for a time, for the famine was very serious in the land. ¹¹But, when he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, “Look, I realize that you are a very beautiful woman. ¹²When the Egyptians see you, they will think, ‘She is his wife,’ and they will kill me, leaving you alive. ¹³Therefore, say that you are my sister, so that they will treat me well and let me live because of you.”

¹⁴When Abram arrived in Egypt, the Egyptians saw that his wife was very beautiful. ¹⁵The stewards of Pharaoh saw her and told Pharaoh how beautiful she was. They took the woman and brought her to the house of Pharaoh. ¹⁶Because of her they treated Abram well. He received flocks and herds, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.

¹⁷But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with terrible plagues because of Sarai, the wife of Abram. ¹⁸Therefore, Pharaoh summoned Abram and said to him, “What have you done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? ¹⁹Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I ended up taking her as my wife? Here is your wife; take her and leave!” ²⁰Then Pharaoh entrusted him to some men who accompanied him to the borders along with his wife and all his belongings.

Footnotes

Genesis 10:1 For the ancient Semites, a person’s genealogy was not a strictly historical document, but a juridical one, meant to show the transmission of rights. For this reason, physical generation often serves as an image pointing to a legal generation, as, for example, adoption. The genealogical tree had, of course, to be composed of historical persons so as to determine a juridical succession.
The genealogy of peoples or cities is an image derived from the preceding and can signify ties of derivation or affinity between one people and another on the ethnic, geographical, historical, political, sociological, cultural, and other planes. Since the whole matter was flexible and since we are dealing only with an image, it is obvious that one and the same people could locate themselves, from different points of view, in various genealogical lineages, including some far removed from modern-day scientific genealogies.
On the basis of historical and geographical data, the Priestly tradition, here incorporating Yahwist features, in this chapter compiles a genealogical tree for peoples known in the second millennium B.C. The picture, in which an historical and religious intention is at work, asserts the substantial unity of the human race, which is divided into various peoples and languages. All human beings are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Creator God and heirs of his blessings, and all are meant to be saved.
Given its purpose, the picture does not provide a basis for resolving the anthropological question of monogenism or polygenism, nor the historical question of the extent of the flood. In this “list of peoples” the Semites come in last place because the writer takes them as his starting point for the continuation of his story, while from this point on the descendants of Japheth and Ham cease to be of direct concern to the biblical story.
Genesis 11:1 After having presented in the list of peoples what might be called the mission field of the People of God, the biblical narrative dwells on a fundamental aspect of this field, one that is always alive in the various human groups, namely, the insistent need for unity. The passage, from the Yahwist source, makes use of an ancient popular story that seems to copy in an ironic way Mesopotamian texts on the dedication of its well-known temple towers.
The story concerns a migrating people who come down from the mountains into a vast plain and feel the need of establishing a city center with a skyscraper tower that will guarantee the maintenance of their unity. Make a name for ourselves means to establish a power that will foster their cohesion and their own political identity. But, as happens in human undertakings, a moment comes in which intentions diverge, so that the unity of the people is broken, as if they were speaking different languages. The tradition sees in this occurrence an explicit manifestation of God, the author of human nature. The direction events take always depends on God.
Genesis 11:3 Bricks . . . instead of stone, and bitumen in place of cement: stone and cement were used as building materials in Canaan. Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, however, so bricks and bitumen were used (as indicated by archaeological excavations).
Genesis 11:4 Tower so high that it touches the heavens: this is a direct reference to the most important temple tower (ziggurat) found in Babylon, which goes by the name of “the house that lifts high its head.” Scholars regard the ziggurats of Babylonia as the earliest skyscrapers.
Genesis 11:8 Scattered them over the whole earth: God countered their prideful rebellion at its very origin. They had chosen to settle, but he forced them to scatter. This account relates how it was that the families of the earth were separated, “each clan in the nations with their own language” (Gen 10:5) and were “divided up to become all the nations on the earth after the flood” (Gen 10:32).
Genesis 11:9 Babel (i.e., Babylonia), according to a popular etymology, meant “gate of god” or “gate of the gods.” The sacred writer, having told of the failure of the human undertaking (and the failure also of the gods who wanted to be worshiped on the Mesopotamian towers), asks us to read the name “Babel” as a reminder of that failure: he suggests a connection with the root bll, “to confuse,” from which the form balbel and then, by contraction, babel, would supposedly be derived.
Genesis 11:10 These verses are from the Priestly tradition, a continuation of the genealogy begun in chapter 5, except for verses 28-30, which are Yahwist. Beginning perhaps with Arpachshad, named as son of Shem, the list of names here is a real genealogy, a document of the family of Abraham; only the numbers continue to be symbolic and conventional, without any strictly historical value. Abraham comes from a seminomadic family or clan that has settled in the city of Ur, at that time on the shores of the Persian Gulf and already rich and powerful, especially in the 21st and 20th centuries B.C.
Abraham and his family travel up the valley of the Euphrates and settle in upper Mesopotamia. The period of these events may be around 1850 B.C.
Genesis 11:28 Ur of the Chaldeans: Ur was an ancient city of the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia as well as a populous and prosperous one. In this case, the phrase is an anachronism, because the Chaldeans were not known to history until some thousand years after Abraham.
Genesis 11:31 Abraham traveled along the Euphrates to Haran, a trading town in northern Mesopotamia or Syria. This was the best route from which to reach Canaan and bypass the great desert with its people and animals (see Gen 12:4; Acts 7:2-4).
Genesis 12:1 The second part of Genesis gathers and arranges the memories that Israel has preserved regarding its distant origins (which can be dated to between the 19th and 17th centuries B.C.). These memories reduce to a few essential traits the life of the ancestors of the chosen people.
Genesis 12:1 God has never abandoned the human race that he created; the universe and nature speak of him to human beings (Wis 13; Rom 1:20), but the human conscience, blinded by self-centeredness and pride, reaches out to him only in a groping way (Acts 17:27).
This is the reason why God enters our history, chooses Abraham, forms a people for himself, progressively reveals himself to them, and remotely prepares them to welcome someday the true descendants of Abraham, Christ the Savior and the Church. Abraham is the father and model of believers (Gal 3; Rom 4) because he promptly responds to the voice of God.
Genesis 12:1 Chapters 12–13 are from the Yahwist tradition. We do not know how the true God made himself known to the heart of Abraham.
It is certain that the Israelite tradition, diligent in safeguarding the memory of the Patriarch, has preserved the knowledge that his ancestors were pagans (Jos 24:2) and that at a certain moment Abraham’s family came to know the true God and abandoned the religion of their fathers (Jud 5:7-8).
Genesis 12:9 Negeb: the desert region south of Palestine.
Genesis 12:10 Having followed the Lord’s lead, Abraham encounters a famine. The momentary temptation would be to return to his home, but Abraham respects God’s command and takes refuge in another country. However, the Patriarch is human and concerned for his life. The expedient he chooses is not a lie because Sarai is in fact his half-sister (see Gen 20:12).

Matthew 4

Chapter 4

Jesus Is Tempted by the Devil.^[a]¹Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was famished.

³Then the tempter approached him and said, “If you are the Son of God,^[b] command these stones to be transformed into loaves of bread.” ⁴Jesus answered, “As it is written:

‘Man does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’ ”^[c]

⁵Next the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the summit of the temple.^[d] ⁶^[e]Then he said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written:

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and with their hands they will raise you up
lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

⁷Jesus said to him, “It is also written:

‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

⁸Finally, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor. ⁹Then he said to him, “All these will I give you if you kneel down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him in reply, “Depart from me, Satan! It is written:

‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him alone shall you serve.’ ”^[f]

¹¹Then the devil departed from him, and suddenly angels came and ministered to him.

¹²Jesus Begins His Ministry in Galilee.^[g]When Jesus learned that John had been arrested,^[h] he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³Departing from Nazareth, he settled in Capernaum^[i] by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴in order that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

¹⁵“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
    the passageway to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles:
¹⁶The people who lived in darkness
    have seen a great light,
    and for those who dwell in a land darkened by the shadow of death
    light has dawned.”

¹⁷From that day forward Jesus began to proclaim the message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”

¹⁸Jesus Calls the First Disciples.^[j] As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the water, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹He said to them, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” ²⁰Immediately, they abandoned their nets and followed him.

²¹As he proceeded farther, he saw two more brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately, they left their boat and their father and followed him.

²³Jesus Proclaims the Message and Heals the Sick.^[k] Jesus traveled all throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every type of disease and illness among the people. ²⁴His reputation spread throughout Syria,^[l] and they brought to him all those who were sick, afflicted with various diseases, racked with pain, or possessed by demons, as well as those who were stricken with epilepsy or paralyzed, and he healed them. ²⁵Great throngs from Galilee, the Decapolis,^[m] Jerusalem, and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan, followed him.

Footnotes

Matthew 4:1 This important passage is again filled with echoes and citations of the Old Testament. The intention is to show the experience and struggles of the Messiah, the new head of the People of God. Just as Moses remained forty days on Sinai, so the Messiah remains forty days in the wilderness (Ex 34:28), forty days being symbolic of a time of preparation for divinely planned activities. Jesus refuses to make use of his miraculous power simply to relieve human need (v. 3f), or to satisfy requests of unbelievers (v. 5ff), or to embrace a Messianic role that would be purely political. The basic theme is the obedience of Jesus to God as he is known through the Old Testament. He rebuffs all three temptations with Scriptural truth from Deuteronomy.
Matthew 4:3 If you are the Son of God: in the sense of the Messianic King of Ps 2.
Matthew 4:4 A citation of Deut 8:3, indicating that the miracles of the Exodus were signs of God’s religious care for Israel.
Matthew 4:5 Summit of the temple: the southeast corner of the wall of the Jerusalem temple, projecting over a ravine.
Matthew 4:6 The devil applies Ps 91:11-12 to the Messiah since it deals with God’s protection of the righteous. Jesus declares (through the words of Deut 6:16) that we should not demand miracles from God as evidence of his care for us.
Matthew 4:10 The citation (Deut 6:13) used by Jesus calls for the basic attitude of worship that everyone should have toward God.
Matthew 4:12 By action and word Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of heaven. The phrase means the kingdom of God, but, like the Jews of his time, Matthew avoids naming God and says, instead, “heaven.” This kingdom or reign is a power that will continue to make its way into the world from now on. Jesus begins his activity in Galilee, a northern province, which some, thinking of Isa 8:23 and 9:1, regarded as the Messiah’s land. It was a region in which different populations and religions lived side by side. The faithful followers of Yahweh, who were pretty much cut off from Jerusalem and its temple, gathered in the synagogues. Different populations, even in the pagan Decapolis (a confederation of ten independent Greek cities, beyond the Jordan), acknowledge the Messiah.
Matthew 4:12 John had been arrested: after John’s arrest (v. 12), Jesus makes Capernaum the center of his activity (v. 13) and preaching (v. 17). The citation from Isa 9:1-2 identifies the ministry of Jesus as fulfilling the prophecy of the restoration of the northern kingdom defeated by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. See notes on Mk 1:14 and Lk 3:20.
Matthew 4:13 Capernaum: on the shore of the Lake (in Hebrew: Sea) of Galilee (v. 18), also known as the Lake of Tiberias or Gennesaret, in territory that had belonged to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali.
Matthew 4:18 We see the first Church being born; disciples follow the Lord not only to share intimacy with him but to be fishers of men, to be witnesses to him and gather together people in his name—for he is the Messiah. Three of the four (Simon, James, and John) will go on to hold a closer relationship with Jesus (see Mt 17:1; 26:37; Lk 8:51).
Matthew 4:23 As a conclusion to the first part of his Gospel, Matthew gives a summary of Jesus’ ministry, which consisted in teaching, preaching, and healing (v. 23; see also Mt 9:35).
Matthew 4:24 Syria: the area north of Galilee, between Damascus and the Mediterranean Sea.
Matthew 4:25 Decapolis (i.e., the Ten Cities): a league of Greek cities; all were east of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River except Sythcopolis (Beth Shan).

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Old/New Testament

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Origin of the People of God[j]

Abraham, Man of Faith[k]

Chapter 12

Footnotes

Chapter 4

Footnotes

Origin of the People of God^[j]

Abraham, Man of Faith^[k]