Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹“Do not judge, so that you will not be judged.

²For in the way you judge, you will be judged; andby your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

³Why do you look at thespeck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

⁴Or howcan you say to your brother, ‘Let me take thespeck out of your eye,’ and look, the log is in your own eye?

⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take thespeck out of your brother’s eye!

⁶“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

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 what person is there among youwho, when his son asks for a loaf of bread,will give him a stone?

¹⁰Orif he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?

¹¹So if you, despite beingevil, 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“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

¹³“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.

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

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

¹⁶You willknow them by their fruits.Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?

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

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

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

²⁰So then, you willknow 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 will enter.

²²Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform manymiracles?’

²³And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; LEAVE ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

²⁴“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

²⁵And the rain fell and thefloods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.

²⁶And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does notact on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

²⁷And the rain fell and thefloods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and its collapse was great.”

²⁸When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching;

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

¹“Listen, you heavens, and I will speak; And let the earth hear the words of my mouth!

²May my teaching drip as the rain, My speech trickle as the dew, As droplets on the fresh grass, And as the showers on the vegetation.

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

⁴The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and just is He.

⁵They have acted corruptly against Him, They are not His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation.

⁶Is this what you do to the LORD, You foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father who has purchased you? He has made you and established you.

⁷Remember the days of old, Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, Your elders, and they will tell you.

⁸When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of mankind, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.

⁹For the LORD’S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

¹⁰He found him in a desert land, And in the howling wasteland of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye.

¹¹As an eagle stirs up its nest, And hovers over its young, He spread His wings, He caught them, He carried them on His pinions.

¹²The LORD alone guided him, And there was no foreign god with him.

¹³He had him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field; And He had him suck honey from the rock, And oil from the flinty rock,

¹⁴Curds of the herd, and milk of the flock, With fat of lambs And rams, the breed of Bashan, and of goats, With the best of the wheat; And you drank wine of the blood of grapes.

¹⁵“But Jeshurun became fat and kicked— You have become fat, thick, and obstinate— Then he abandoned God who made him, And rejected the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They made Him jealous with strange gods; With abominations they provoked Him to anger.

¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, who were not God, To gods whom they have not known, New gods who came lately, Whom your fathers did not know.

¹⁸You forgot the Rock who fathered you, And forgot the God who gave you birth.

¹⁹“The LORD saw this, and spurned them Because of the provocation by His sons and daughters.

²⁰Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be; For they are a perverse generation, Sons in whom there is no faithfulness.

²¹They have made Me jealous with what is not God; They have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation,

²²For a fire has flared in My anger, And it burns to the lowest part of Sheol, And devours the earth with its yield, And sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

²³‘I will add misfortunes to them; I will use up My arrows on them.

²⁴They will be wasted by famine, and emaciated by plague And a bitter epidemic; And the teeth of beasts I will send against them, With the venom of crawling things of the dust.

²⁵Outside the sword will make them childless, And inside, terror— Both young man and virgin, The nursing child with the man of gray hair.

²⁶I would have said, “I will wipe them out, I will remove the mention of their name from humanity,”

²⁷Had I not feared the provocation by the enemy, That their adversaries would misjudge, That they would say, “Our hand is triumphant, And the LORD has not performed all this.” ’

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

²⁹If only they were wise and they understood this; If only they would discern their future!

³⁰How could one chase a thousand, And two put ten thousand to flight, Unless their Rock had sold them, And the LORD had given them up?

³¹Indeed, their rock is not like our Rock; Even our enemies themselves judge this.

³²For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, And from the fields of Gomorrah; Their grapes are grapes of poison, Their clusters, bitter.

³³Their wine is the venom of serpents, And the deadly poison of vipers.

³⁴‘Is it not stored up with Me, Sealed up in My treasuries?

³⁵Vengeance is Mine, and retribution; In due time their foot will slip. For the day of their disaster is near, And the impending things are hurrying to them.’

³⁶For the LORD will vindicate His people, And will have compassion on His servants, When He sees that their strength is gone, And there is none remaining, bond or free.

³⁷And He will say, ‘Where are their gods, The rock in which they took refuge?

³⁸Those who 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!

³⁹See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can save anyone from My hand.

⁴⁰Indeed, I raise My hand to heaven, And say, as I live forever,

⁴¹If I have sharpened My flashing sword, And My hand has taken hold of justice, I will return vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me.

⁴²I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword will devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the long-haired leaders of the enemy.’

⁴³Rejoice, you nations, with His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And will return vengeance on His adversaries, And will atone for His land and His people.”

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

⁴⁵When Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel,

⁴⁶he said to them, “Take to your heart all the words with which I am warning you today, which you will command your sons to follow carefully, all the words of this Law.

⁴⁷For it is not a trivial matter for you; indeed it is your life. And by this word you will prolong your days in the land, which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.”

⁴⁸Now the LORD spoke to Moses that very same day, saying,

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

⁵⁰Then you are to die on the mountain where you ascend, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people,

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

⁵²For you will see the land at a distance but you will not go there, into the land which I am giving the sons of Israel.”

¹If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

²If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

³And if I give away all my possessions to charity, and if I surrender my body so that I may glory, but do not have love, it does me no good.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.

⁵It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,

⁶it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

⁷it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away with; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with.

⁹For we know in part and prophesy in part;

¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with.

¹¹When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

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

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

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

²and she was pregnant and she *cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth.

³Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven crowns.

⁴And his tail *swept away a third of the stars of heaven and hurled them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her Child.

⁵And she gave birth to a Son, a male, who is going to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her Child was caught up to God and to His throne.

⁶Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she *had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for 1,260 days.

⁷And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war,

⁸and they did not prevail, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.

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

¹⁰Then 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 and sisters has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God day and night.

¹¹And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

¹²For this reason, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.”

¹³And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child.

¹⁴But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she *was nourished for a time, times, and half a time, away from the presence of the serpent.

¹⁵And the serpent hurled water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.

¹⁶But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon had hurled out of his mouth.

¹⁷So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

¹“How beautiful are your feet in sandals, Prince’s daughter! The curves of your hips are like jewels, The work of the hands of an artist.

²Your navel is like a round goblet That never lacks mixed wine; Your belly is like a heap of wheat, Surrounded with lilies.

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

⁴Your neck is like a tower of ivory, Your eyes like the pools in Heshbon By the gate of Bath-rabbim; Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon, Which looks toward Damascus.

⁵Your head crowns you like Carmel, And the flowing hair of your head is like purple threads; The king is captivated by your tresses.

⁶How beautiful and how delightful you are, My love, with all your delights!

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

⁸I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree, I will grasp its fruit stalks.’ Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, And the fragrance of your breath like apples,

⁹And your mouth like the best wine!” “It goes down smoothly for my beloved, Flowing gently through the lips of those who are asleep.

¹⁰“I am my beloved’s, And his desire is for me.

¹¹Come, my beloved, let’s go out to the country, Let’s spend the night in the villages.

¹²Let’s rise early and go to the vineyards; Let’s see whether the vine has grown And its buds have opened, And whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love.

¹³The mandrakes have given forth fragrance; And over our doors are all delicious fruits, New as well as old, Which I have saved for you, my beloved.

¹Contend, LORD, with those who contend with me; Fight against those who fight against me.

²Take hold of buckler and shield And rise up as my help.

³Draw also the spear and the battle-axe to meet those who pursue me; Say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”

⁴Let those be ashamed and dishonored who seek my life; Let those be turned back and humiliated who devise evil against me.

⁵Let them be like chaff before the wind, With the angel of the LORD driving them on.

⁶Let their way be dark and slippery, With the angel of the LORD pursuing them.

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

⁸Let destruction come upon him when he is unaware, And let the net which he hid catch him; Let him fall into that very destruction.

⁹So my soul shall rejoice in the LORD; It shall rejoice in His salvation.

¹⁰All my bones will say, “LORD, who is like You, Who rescues the afflicted from one who is too strong for him, And the afflicted and the poor from one who robs him?”

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

¹²They repay me evil for good, To the bereavement of my soul.

¹³But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth; I humbled my soul with fasting, But my prayer kept returning to me.

¹⁴I went about as though it were my friend or brother; I bowed down in mourning, like one who mourns for a mother.

¹⁵But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered themselves together; The afflicted people whom I did not know gathered together against me, They slandered me without ceasing.

¹⁶Like godless jesters at a feast, They gnashed at me with their teeth.

¹⁷Lord, how long will You look on? Rescue my soul from their ravages, My only life from the lions.

¹⁸I will give You thanks in the great congregation; I will praise You among a mighty people.

¹⁹Do not let those who are wrongfully my enemies rejoice over me; Nor let those who hate me for no reason wink maliciously.

²⁰For they do not speak peace, But they devise deceitful words against those who are quiet in the land.

²¹They opened their mouth wide against me; They said, “Aha, aha! Our eyes have seen it!”

²²You have seen it, LORD, do not keep silent; Lord, do not be far from me.

²³Stir Yourself, and awake to my right And to my cause, my God and my Lord.

²⁴Judge me, LORD my God, according to Your righteousness, And do not let them rejoice over me.

²⁵Do not let them say in their heart, “Aha, our desire!” Do not let them say, “We have swallowed him up!”

²⁶May those be ashamed and altogether humiliated who rejoice at my distress; May those who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and dishonor.

²⁷May those shout for joy and rejoice, who take delight in my vindication; And may they say continually, “The LORD be exalted, Who delights in the prosperity of His servant.”

²⁸And my tongue shall proclaim Your righteousness And Your praise all day long.

¹The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the pronouncement. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal:

²I am certainly more stupid than any man, And I do not have the understanding of a man;

³Nor have I learned wisdom, Nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One.

⁴Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name or His Son’s name? Surely you know!

⁵Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.

⁶Do not add to His words Or He will rebuke you, and you will be proved a liar.

⁷Two things I have asked of You; Do not refuse me before I die:

⁸Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion,

⁹So that I will not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the LORD?” And that I will not become impoverished and steal, And profane the name of my God.

¹⁰Do not slander a slave to his master, Or he will curse you and you will be found guilty.

¹¹There is a kind of person who curses his father And does not bless his mother.

¹²There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness.

¹³There is a kind—oh how lofty are his eyes! And his eyelids are raised in arrogance.

¹⁴There is a kind of person whose teeth are like swords And his jaw teeth like knives, To devour the poor from the earth And the needy from among mankind.

¹⁵The leech has two daughters: “Give” and “Give.” There are three things that will not be satisfied, Four that will not say, “Enough”:

¹⁶Sheol, the infertile womb, Earth that is never satisfied with water, And fire that never says, “Enough.”

¹⁷The eye that mocks a father And scorns a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And the young eagles will eat it.

¹⁸There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Four which I do not understand:

¹⁹The way of the eagle in the sky, The way of a snake on a rock, The way of a ship in the middle of the sea, And the way of a man with a virgin.

²⁰This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth, And says, “I have done no wrong.”

²¹Under three things the earth quakes, And under four, it cannot endure:

²²Under a slave when he becomes king, And a fool when he is satisfied with food,

²³Under an unloved woman when she gets a husband, And a female servant when she dispossesses her mistress.

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

²⁵The ants are not a strong people, But they prepare their food in the summer;

²⁶The rock hyraxes are not a mighty people, Yet they make their houses in the rocks;

²⁷The locusts have no king, Yet all of them go out in ranks;

²⁸The lizard you may grasp with the hands, Yet it is in kings’ palaces.

²⁹There are three things which are stately in their march, Even four which are stately when they walk:

³⁰The lion, which is mighty among animals And does not retreat from anything,

³¹The strutting rooster or the male goat, And a king when his army is with him.

³²If you have been foolish in exalting yourself, Or if you have plotted evil, put your hand on your mouth.

³³For the churning of milk produces butter, And pressing the nose produces blood; So the churning of anger produces strife.

¹So all the work that Solomon performed for the house of the LORD was finished. And Solomon brought in the things that his father David had dedicated, the silver, the gold, and all the utensils, and he put them in the treasuries of the house of God.

²Then Solomon assembled at Jerusalem the elders of Israel, all the heads of the tribes, and the leaders of the fathers’ households of the sons of Israel, to bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD up from the city of David, which is Zion.

³All the men of Israel assembled themselves before the king at the feast, that is in the seventh month.

⁴Then all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites picked up the ark.

⁵They brought up the ark, the tent of meeting, and all the holy utensils that were in the tent. The Levitical priests brought them up.

⁶And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled with him before the ark were 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, into the inner sanctuary of the house, to the Most Holy Place, under the wings of the cherubim.

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

⁹The poles were so long that the ends of the poles of the ark could be seen in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen outside; and they are there to this day.

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

¹¹When the priests came out from the holy place (for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves, without regard to divisions),

¹²and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and kinsmen, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, standing east of the altar, and with them 120 priests blowing trumpets

¹³in unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the LORD, and when they raised their voices accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and other musical instruments, and when they praised the LORD saying, “He indeed is good for His kindness is everlasting,” then the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud,

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

¹Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”

²“Dispute with your mother, dispute, Because she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; But she must remove her infidelity from her face And her adultery from between her breasts,

³Otherwise, I will strip her naked And expose her as on the day she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land, And put her to death with thirst.

⁴Also, I will take no pity on her children, Because they are children of infidelity.

⁵For their mother has committed prostitution; 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, behold, I will obstruct her way with thorns, And I will build a stone wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

⁷And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not reach them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, Because it was better for me then than now!’

⁸“Yet she does not know that it was I myself who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, And lavished on her silver and gold, Which they used for Baal.

⁹Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time And My new wine in its season. I will also take away My wool and My flax That I gave to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰So now I will uncover her lewdness Before the eyes of her lovers, And no one will rescue her from My hand.

¹¹I will also put an end to all her joy, Her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, And all her festivals.

¹²And I will destroy her vines and fig trees, Of which she said, ‘They are my wages for prostitution Which my lovers have given me.’ And I will turn them into a forest, And the animals of the field will devour them.

¹³I will punish her for the days of the Baals When she used to offer sacrifices to them And adorn herself with her nose ring and jewelry, And follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me,” declares the LORD.

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, I am going to persuade her, Bring her into the wilderness, And speak kindly to her.

¹⁵Then I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will respond there as in the days of her youth, As in the day when she went up from the land of Egypt.

¹⁶And it will come about on that day,” declares the LORD, “That you will call Me my husband And no longer call Me my Baal.

¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, So that they will no longer be mentioned by their names.

¹⁸On that day I will also make a covenant for them With the animals of the field, The birds of the sky, And the crawling things of the ground. And I will eliminate the bow, the sword, and war from the land, And will let them lie down in safety.

¹⁹I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In favor and in compassion,

²⁰And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.

²¹“And it will come about on that day that I will respond,” declares the LORD. “I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth,

²²And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine, and to the oil, And they will respond to Jezreel.

²³I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, And I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they will say, ‘You are my God!’ ”

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

²And according to Paul’s custom, he visited them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

³explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.”

⁴And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a significant number of the leading women.

⁵But the Jews, becoming jealous and taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob and set the city in an uproar; and they attacked the house of Jason and were seeking to bring them out to the people.

⁶When they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have upset the world have come here also;

⁷and Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

⁸They stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things.

⁹And when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them.

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

¹¹Now these people were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

¹²Therefore, many of them believed, along with a significant number of prominent Greek women and men.

¹³But when the Jews of Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Berea also, they came there as well, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

¹⁴Then immediately the brothers sent Paul out to go as far as the sea; and Silas and Timothy remained there.

¹⁵Now those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they left.

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

¹⁷So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be present.

¹⁸And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as well were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What could this scavenger of tidbits want to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”—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 which you are proclaiming?

²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.”

²¹(Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)

²²So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects.

²³For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and everything that is in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hands;

²⁵nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;

²⁶and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

²⁷that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

²⁸for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His descendants.’

²⁹Therefore, since we are the descendants of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by human skill and thought.

³⁰So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent,

³¹because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead.”

³²Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We shall hear from you again concerning this.”

³³So Paul went out from among them.

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