Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹ “Judge not, that you be not judged.

² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

³Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

⁴Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?

⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

⁶ “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

⁷ “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

⁸For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

⁹Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

¹⁰Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?

¹¹If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

¹²“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

¹³ “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

¹⁵ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

¹⁶You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

¹⁷So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

¹⁸A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

²⁰Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’

²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

²⁵And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

²⁷And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

²⁸And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching,

²⁹for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

¹“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

²May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb.

³For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God!

⁴“The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.

⁵They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation.

⁶Do you thus repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?

⁷Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.

⁸When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

⁹But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

¹⁰“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

¹¹Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions,

¹²the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him.

¹³He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.

¹⁴Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of Bashan and goats, with the very finest of the wheat — and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.

¹⁵“But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger.

¹⁷They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.

¹⁸You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹“The LORD saw it and spurned them, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

²⁰And he said, ‘I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.

²¹They have made me jealous with what is no god; they have provoked me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are no people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

²²For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

²³“‘And I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend my arrows on them;

²⁴they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.

²⁵Outdoors the sword shall bereave, and indoors terror, for young man and woman alike, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.

²⁶I would have said, “I will cut them to pieces; I will wipe them from human memory,”

²⁷had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant, it was not the LORD who did all this.”’

²⁸“For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

²⁹If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their latter end!

³⁰How could one have chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had given them up?

³¹For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves.

³²For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison; their clusters are bitter;

³³their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.

³⁴“‘Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries?

³⁵Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’

³⁶For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free.

³⁷Then he will say, ‘Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,

³⁸who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you; let them be your protection!

³⁹“‘See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

⁴⁰For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever,

⁴¹if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me.

⁴²I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh — with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired heads of the enemy.’

⁴³“Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people's land.”

⁴⁴Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun.

⁴⁵And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel,

⁴⁶he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law.

⁴⁷For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

⁴⁸That very day the LORD spoke to Moses,

⁴⁹“Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel for a possession.

⁵⁰And die on the mountain which you go up, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died in Mount Hor and was gathered to his people,

⁵¹because you broke faith with me in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, and because you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the people of Israel.

⁵²For you shall see the land before you, but you shall not go there, into the land that I am giving to the people of Israel.”

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

⁷Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

¹And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

²She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

³And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.

⁴His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.

⁵She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,

⁶and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

⁷Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back,

⁸but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

⁹And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

¹⁰And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

¹¹And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

¹²Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

¹³And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.

¹⁴But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.

¹⁵The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood.

¹⁶But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.

¹⁷Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

¹How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.

²Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies.

³Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.

⁴Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus.

⁵Your head crowns you like Carmel, and your flowing locks are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.

⁶How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!

⁷Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.

⁸I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples,

⁹and your mouth like the best wine. She It goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding over lips and teeth.

¹⁰I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me.

¹¹Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages;

¹²let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love.

¹³The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.

¹Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me!

²Take hold of shield and buckler and rise for my help!

³Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers! Say to my soul, “I am your salvation!”

⁴Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life! Let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me!

⁵Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away!

⁶Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them!

⁷For without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for my life.

⁸Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it! And let the net that he hid ensnare him; let him fall into it — to his destruction!

⁹Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD, exulting in his salvation.

¹⁰All my bones shall say, “O LORD, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?”

¹¹Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know.

¹²They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft.

¹³But I, when they were sick — I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

¹⁴I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning.

¹⁵But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing;

¹⁶like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth.

¹⁷How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions!

¹⁸I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you.

¹⁹Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes, and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause.

²⁰For they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land they devise words of deceit.

²¹They open wide their mouths against me; they say, “Aha, Aha! Our eyes have seen it!”

²²You have seen, O LORD; be not silent! O Lord, be not far from me!

²³Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication, for my cause, my God and my Lord!

²⁴Vindicate me, O LORD, my God, according to your righteousness, and let them not rejoice over me!

²⁵Let them not say in their hearts, “Aha, our heart's desire!” Let them not say, “We have swallowed him up.”

²⁶Let them be put to shame and disappointed altogether who rejoice at my calamity! Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me!

²⁷Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, “Great is the LORD, who delights in the welfare of his servant!”

²⁸Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.

¹The words of Agur son of Jakeh. The oracle. The man declares, I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, and worn out.

²Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man.

³I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.

⁴Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know!

⁵Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

⁶Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.

⁷Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die:

⁸Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me,

⁹lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

¹⁰Do not slander a servant to his master, lest he curse you, and you be held guilty.

¹¹There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers.

¹²There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.

¹³There are those — how lofty are their eyes, how high their eyelids lift!

¹⁴There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind.

¹⁵The leech has two daughters: Give and Give. Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough”:

¹⁶Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.”

¹⁷The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.

¹⁸Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand:

¹⁹the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

²⁰This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”

²¹Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up:

²²a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is filled with food;

²³an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.

²⁴Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise:

²⁵the ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in the summer;

²⁶the rock badgers are a people not mighty, yet they make their homes in the cliffs;

²⁷the locusts have no king, yet all of them march in rank;

²⁸the lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings' palaces.

²⁹Three things are stately in their tread; four are stately in their stride:

³⁰the lion, which is mightiest among beasts and does not turn back before any;

³¹the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king whose army is with him.

³²If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth.

³³For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife.

¹Thus all the work that Solomon did for the house of the LORD was finished. And Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, and stored the silver, the gold, and all the vessels in the treasuries of the house of God.

²Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers' houses of the people of Israel, in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion.

³And all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast that is in the seventh month.

⁴And all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites took up the ark.

⁵And they brought up the ark, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent; the Levitical priests brought them up.

⁶And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered.

⁷Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Most Holy Place, underneath the wings of the cherubim.

⁸The cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering above the ark and its poles.

⁹And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the Holy Place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside. And they are there to this day.

¹⁰There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt.

¹¹And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, without regard to their divisions,

¹²and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters;

¹³and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud,

¹⁴so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God.

¹Say to your brothers, “You are my people,” and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”

²“Plead with your mother, plead — for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband — that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts;

³lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.

⁴Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom.

⁵For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

⁶Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths.

⁷She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’

⁸And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.

⁹Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

¹¹And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts.

¹²And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, ‘These are my wages, which my lovers have given me.’ I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall devour them.

¹³And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the LORD.

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶“And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’

¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.

¹⁸And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.

¹⁹And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

²⁰I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.

²¹“And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth,

²²and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel,

²³and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

¹Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

²And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

³explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”

⁴And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

⁵But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd.

⁶And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also,

⁷and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

⁸And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things.

⁹And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

¹⁰The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue.

¹¹Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

¹²Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

¹³But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

¹⁴Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there.

¹⁵Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

¹⁶Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

¹⁸Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities” — because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

²⁰For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”

²¹Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

²²So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

²³For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

²⁵nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

²⁶And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

²⁷that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

²⁸for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

²⁹Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

³⁰The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

³¹because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

³²Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”

³³So Paul went out from their midst.

³⁴But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.