Bible in 90 Days Plan

¹Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,

²saying, “I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.

³You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.

⁴Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’

⁵The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head

⁶at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God.

⁷As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

⁸Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.

⁹But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!”

¹⁰Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

¹The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,

²“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

³So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across.

⁴Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

⁵And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

⁶When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁷Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water.

⁸Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.

⁹Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

¹⁰When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

¹But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.

²He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.

³And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

⁴And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

⁵Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

⁶The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush.

⁷But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.

⁸When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

⁹But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”

¹⁰Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night.

¹¹And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

¹The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

²Hear, you peoples, all of you; listen, O earth, and all that is in it; and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.

³For lo, the LORD is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.

⁴Then the mountains will melt under him and the valleys will burst open, like wax near the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.

⁵All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour down her stones into the valley, and uncover her foundations.

⁷All her images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste; for as the wages of a prostitute she gathered them, and as the wages of a prostitute they shall again be used.

⁸For this I will lament and wail; I will go barefoot and naked; I will make lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches.

⁹For her wound is incurable. It has come to Judah; it has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.

¹⁰Tell it not in Gath, weep not at all; in Beth-leaphrah roll yourselves in the dust.

¹¹Pass on your way, inhabitants of Shaphir, in nakedness and shame; the inhabitants of Zaanan do not come forth; Beth-ezel is wailing and shall remove its support from you.

¹²For the inhabitants of Maroth wait anxiously for good, yet disaster has come down from the LORD to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹³Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish; it was the beginning of sin to daughter Zion, for in you were found the transgressions of Israel.

¹⁴Therefore you shall give parting gifts to Moresheth-gath; the houses of Achzib shall be a deception to the kings of Israel.

¹⁵I will again bring a conqueror upon you, inhabitants of Mareshah; the glory of Israel shall come to Adullam.

¹⁶Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair for your pampered children; make yourselves as bald as the eagle, for they have gone from you into exile.

¹Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power.

²They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance.

³Therefore thus says the LORD: Now, I am devising against this family an evil from which you cannot remove your necks; and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time.

⁴On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you, and wail with bitter lamentation, and say, “We are utterly ruined; the LORD alters the inheritance of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our fields.”

⁵Therefore you will have no one to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the LORD.

⁶“Do not preach” — thus they preach — “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.”

⁷Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the LORD’s patience exhausted? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to one who walks uprightly?

⁸But you rise up against my people as an enemy; you strip the robe from the peaceful, from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war.

⁹The women of my people you drive out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my glory forever.

¹⁰Arise and go; for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a grievous destruction.

¹¹If someone were to go about uttering empty falsehoods, saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” such a one would be the preacher for this people!

¹²I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob, I will gather the survivors of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture; it will resound with people.

¹³The one who breaks out will go up before them; they will break through and pass the gate, going out by it. Their king will pass on before them, the LORD at their head.

¹And I said: Listen, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Should you not know justice? —

²you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin off my people, and the flesh off their bones;

³who eat the flesh of my people, flay their skin off them, break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a kettle, like flesh in a caldron.

⁴Then they will cry to the LORD, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have acted wickedly.

⁵Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.

⁶Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them;

⁷the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.

⁸But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

⁹Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity,

¹⁰who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong!

¹¹Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the LORD and say, “Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.”

¹²Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

¹In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it,

²and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

³He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;

⁴but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

⁵For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.

⁶In that day, says the LORD, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away, and those whom I have afflicted.

⁷The lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off, a strong nation; and the LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion now and forevermore.

⁸And you, O tower of the flock, hill of daughter Zion, to you it shall come, the former dominion shall come, the sovereignty of daughter Jerusalem.

⁹Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, that pangs have seized you like a woman in labor?

¹⁰Writhe and groan, O daughter Zion, like a woman in labor; for now you shall go forth from the city and camp in the open country; you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued, there the LORD will redeem you from the hands of your enemies.

¹¹Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, “Let her be profaned, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.”

¹²But they do not know the thoughts of the LORD; they do not understand his plan, that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.

¹³Arise and thresh, O daughter Zion, for I will make your horn iron and your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples, and shall devote their gain to the LORD, their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

¹Now you are walled around with a wall; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek.

²But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

³Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.

⁴And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth;

⁵and he shall be the one of peace. If the Assyrians come into our land and tread upon our soil, we will raise against them seven shepherds and eight installed as rulers.

⁶They shall rule the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with the drawn sword; they shall rescue us from the Assyrians if they come into our land or tread within our border.

⁷Then the remnant of Jacob, surrounded by many peoples, shall be like dew from the LORD, like showers on the grass, which do not depend upon people or wait for any mortal.

⁸And among the nations the remnant of Jacob, surrounded by many peoples, shall be like a lion among the animals of the forest, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep, which, when it goes through, treads down and tears in pieces, with no one to deliver.

⁹Your hand shall be lifted up over your adversaries, and all your enemies shall be cut off.

¹⁰In that day, says the LORD, I will cut off your horses from among you and will destroy your chariots;

¹¹and I will cut off the cities of your land and throw down all your strongholds;

¹²and I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more soothsayers;

¹³and I will cut off your images and your pillars from among you, and you shall bow down no more to the work of your hands;

¹⁴and I will uproot your sacred poles from among you and destroy your towns.

¹⁵And in anger and wrath I will execute vengeance on the nations that did not obey.

¹Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.

²Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel.

³“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

⁴For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

⁵O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD.”

⁶“With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

⁷Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

⁸He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

⁹The voice of the LORD cries to the city (it is sound wisdom to fear your name): Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!

¹⁰Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed?

¹¹Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?

¹²Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, with tongues of deceit in their mouths.

¹³Therefore I have begun to strike you down, making you desolate because of your sins.

¹⁴You shall eat, but not be satisfied, and there shall be a gnawing hunger within you; you shall put away, but not save, and what you save, I will hand over to the sword.

¹⁵You shall sow, but not reap; you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil; you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.

¹⁶For you have kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab, and you have followed their counsels. Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of hissing; so you shall bear the scorn of my people.

¹Woe is me! For I have become like one who, after the summer fruit has been gathered, after the vintage has been gleaned, finds no cluster to eat; there is no first-ripe fig for which I hunger.

²The faithful have disappeared from the land, and there is no one left who is upright; they all lie in wait for blood, and they hunt each other with nets.

³Their hands are skilled to do evil; the official and the judge ask for a bribe, and the powerful dictate what they desire; thus they pervert justice.

⁴The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge. The day of their sentinels, of their punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand.

⁵Put no trust in a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace;

⁶for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household.

⁷But as for me, I will look to the LORD, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.

⁸Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.

⁹I must bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he takes my side and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall see his vindication.

¹⁰Then my enemy will see, and shame will cover her who said to me, “Where is the LORD your God?” My eyes will see her downfall; now she will be trodden down like the mire of the streets.

¹¹A day for the building of your walls! In that day the boundary shall be far extended.

¹²In that day they will come to you from Assyria to Egypt, and from Egypt to the River, from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.

¹³But the earth will be desolate because of its inhabitants, for the fruit of their doings.

¹⁴Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old.

¹⁵As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, show us marvelous things.

¹⁶The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might; they shall lay their hands on their mouths; their ears shall be deaf;

¹⁷they shall lick dust like a snake, like the crawling things of the earth; they shall come trembling out of their fortresses; they shall turn in dread to the LORD our God, and they shall stand in fear of you.

¹⁸Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.

¹⁹He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

²⁰You will show faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors from the days of old.

¹An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

²A jealous and avenging God is the LORD, the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and rages against his enemies.

³The LORD is slow to anger but great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

⁴He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and he dries up all the rivers; Bashan and Carmel wither, and the bloom of Lebanon fades.

⁵The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who live in it.

⁶Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and by him the rocks are broken in pieces.

⁷The LORD is good, a stronghold in a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him,

⁸even in a rushing flood. He will make a full end of his adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

⁹Why do you plot against the LORD? He will make an end; no adversary will rise up twice.

¹⁰Like thorns they are entangled, like drunkards they are drunk; they are consumed like dry straw.

¹¹From you one has gone out who plots evil against the LORD, one who counsels wickedness.

¹²Thus says the LORD, “Though they are at full strength and many, they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.

¹³And now I will break off his yoke from you and snap the bonds that bind you.”

¹⁴The LORD has commanded concerning you: “Your name shall be perpetuated no longer; from the house of your gods I will cut off the carved image and the cast image. I will make your grave, for you are worthless.”

¹⁵Look! On the mountains the feet of one who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace! Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the wicked invade you; they are utterly cut off.

¹A shatterer has come up against you. Guard the ramparts; watch the road; gird your loins; collect all your strength.

²(For the LORD is restoring the majesty of Jacob, as well as the majesty of Israel, though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined their branches.)

³The shields of his warriors are red; his soldiers are clothed in crimson. The metal on the chariots flashes on the day when he musters them; the chargers prance.

⁴The chariots race madly through the streets, they rush to and fro through the squares; their appearance is like torches, they dart like lightning.

⁵He calls his officers; they stumble as they come forward; they hasten to the wall, and the mantelet is set up.

⁶The river gates are opened, the palace trembles.

⁷It is decreed that the city be exiled, its slave women led away, moaning like doves and beating their breasts.

⁸Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away. “Halt! Halt!” — but no one turns back.

⁹“Plunder the silver, plunder the gold! There is no end of treasure! An abundance of every precious thing!”

¹⁰Devastation, desolation, and destruction! Hearts faint and knees tremble, all loins quake, all faces grow pale!

¹¹What became of the lions’ den, the cave of the young lions, where the lion goes, and the lion’s cubs, with no one to disturb them?

¹²The lion has torn enough for his whelps and strangled prey for his lionesses; he has filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh.

¹³See, I am against you, says the LORD of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall be heard no more.

¹Ah! City of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of booty — no end to the plunder!

²The crack of whip and rumble of wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!

³Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, piles of dead, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end — they stumble over the bodies!

⁴Because of the countless debaucheries of the prostitute, gracefully alluring, mistress of sorcery, who enslaves nations through her debaucheries, and peoples through her sorcery,

⁵I am against you, says the LORD of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame.

⁶I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a spectacle.

⁷Then all who see you will shrink from you and say, “Nineveh is devastated; who will bemoan her?” Where shall I seek comforters for you?

⁸Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, water her wall?

⁹Ethiopia was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.

¹⁰Yet she became an exile, she went into captivity; even her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; lots were cast for her nobles, all her dignitaries were bound in fetters.

¹¹You also will be drunken, you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.

¹²All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs — if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.

¹³Look at your troops: they are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your foes; fire has devoured the bars of your gates.

¹⁴Draw water for the siege, strengthen your forts; trample the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold!

¹⁵There the fire will devour you, the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust, multiply like the grasshopper!

¹⁶You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust sheds its skin and flies away.

¹⁷Your guards are like grasshoppers, your scribes like swarms of locusts settling on the fences on a cold day — when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they have gone.

¹⁸Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with no one to gather them.

¹⁹There is no assuaging your hurt, your wound is mortal. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?