Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

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

²For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

³Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

⁴Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while 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 the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

⁶“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

⁷“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

⁸For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

⁹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?

¹⁰Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?

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

¹²“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

¹³“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.

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

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

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

¹⁷In the same way, 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.

²⁰Thus you will know them by their fruits.

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

²²On 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 deeds of power in your name?’

²³Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’

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

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

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

²⁷The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!”

²⁸Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching,

²⁹for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

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

²May my teaching drop like the rain, my speech condense like the dew; like gentle rain on grass, like showers on new growth.

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

⁴The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he;

⁵yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation.

⁶Do you thus repay the LORD, O 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 long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you.

⁸When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods;

⁹the LORD’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.

¹⁰He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.

¹¹As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions,

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

¹³He set him atop the heights of the land, and fed him with produce of the field; he nursed him with honey from the crags, with oil from flinty rock;

¹⁴curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams; Bashan bulls and goats, together with the choicest wheat — you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

¹⁵Jacob ate his fill; Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You grew fat, bloated, and gorged! He abandoned God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They made him jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him.

¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared.

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

¹⁹The LORD saw it, and was jealous; he spurned his sons and daughters.

²⁰He 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 there is no faithfulness.

²¹They made me jealous with what is no god, provoked me with their idols. So I will make them jealous with what is no people, provoke them with a foolish nation.

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

²³I will heap disasters upon them, spend my arrows against them:

²⁴wasting hunger, burning consumption, bitter pestilence. The teeth of beasts I will send against them, with venom of things crawling in the dust.

²⁵In the street the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers terror, for young man and woman alike, nursing child and old gray head.

²⁶I thought to scatter them and blot out the memory of them from humankind;

²⁷but I feared provocation by the enemy, for their adversaries might misunderstand and say, “Our hand is triumphant; it was not the LORD who did all this.”

²⁸They are a nation void of sense; there is no understanding in them.

²⁹If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern what the end would be.

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

³¹Indeed their rock is not like our Rock; our enemies are fools.

³²Their vine comes from the vinestock of Sodom, from the vineyards of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter;

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

³⁴Is 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; because the day of their calamity is at hand, their doom comes swiftly.

³⁶Indeed the LORD will vindicate his people, have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, neither bond nor free remaining.

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 libations? Let them rise up and help you, let them be your protection!

³⁹See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.

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

⁴¹when I whet 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 enemy.

⁴³Praise, O heavens, his people, worship him, all you gods! For he will avenge the blood of his children, and take vengeance on his adversaries; he will repay those who hate him, and cleanse the land for his people.

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

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

⁴⁶he said to them: “Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law.

⁴⁷This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.”

⁴⁸On that very day the LORD addressed Moses as follows:

⁴⁹“Ascend this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for a possession;

⁵⁰you shall die there on the mountain that you ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin;

⁵¹because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to maintain my holiness among the Israelites.

⁵²Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it — the land that I am giving to the Israelites.”

¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have 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 do not have love, I am nothing.

³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant

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

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

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

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

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

¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

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

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

¹A great portent 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 pangs, in the agony of giving birth.

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

⁴His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.

⁵And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne;

⁶and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.

⁷And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back,

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

⁹The 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.

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

¹¹But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.

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

¹³So 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 could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.

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

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

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

¹⁸Then the dragon took his stand on the sand of the seashore.

¹How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden! 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, overlooking Damascus.

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

⁶How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden!

⁷You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.

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

⁹and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth.

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

¹¹Come, my beloved, let us go forth 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 over 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 up to help me!

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

⁸Let ruin come on them unawares. And let the net that they hid ensnare them; let them fall in it — to their ruin.

⁹Then my soul shall rejoice in the LORD, exulting in his deliverance.

¹⁰All my bones shall say, “O LORD, who is like you? You deliver the weak from those too strong for them, the weak and needy from those who despoil them.”

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

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

¹³But as for me, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting. I prayed with head bowed on my bosom,

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

¹⁵But at my stumbling they gathered in glee, they gathered together against me; ruffians whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing;

¹⁶they impiously mocked more and more, gnashing at me with their teeth.

¹⁷How long, O LORD, will you look on? Rescue me from their ravages, my life from the lions!

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

¹⁹Do not let my treacherous enemies rejoice over me, or those who hate me without cause wink the eye.

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

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

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

²³Wake up! Bestir yourself for my defense, for my cause, my God and my Lord!

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

²⁵Do not let them say to themselves, “Aha, we have our heart’s desire.” Do not let them say, “We have swallowed you up.”

²⁶Let all those who rejoice at my calamity be put to shame and confusion; let those who exalt themselves against me be clothed with shame and dishonor.

²⁷Let those who desire my vindication 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 day long.

¹The words of Agur son of Jakeh. An oracle. Thus says the man: I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God. How can I prevail?

²Surely I am too stupid to be human; I do not have human understanding.

³I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the holy ones.

⁴Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in the hollow of the hand? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is the person’s name? And what is the name of the person’s child? 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, or else he will rebuke you, and you will be found a liar.

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

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

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

¹⁰Do not slander a servant to a master, or the servant will curse you, and you will be held guilty.

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

¹²There are those who are pure in their own eyes yet are not cleansed of their filthiness.

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

¹⁴there are those whose teeth are swords, whose teeth are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mortals.

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

¹⁶Sheol, the barren womb, the earth ever thirsty for water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.”

¹⁷The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be pecked 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 snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a girl.

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 glutted with food;

²³an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maid when she succeeds her mistress.

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

²⁵the ants are a people without strength, yet they provide their food in the summer;

²⁶the badgers are a people without power, yet they make their homes in the rocks;

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

²⁸the lizard can be grasped in the hand, yet it is found in kings’ palaces.

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

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

³¹the strutting rooster, the he-goat, and a king striding before his people.

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

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

¹Thus all the work that Solomon did for the house of the LORD was finished. Solomon brought in the things that his father David 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 ancestral 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 Israelites assembled before the king at the festival that is in the seventh month.

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

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

⁶King 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 numbered or counted.

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.

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

⁹The poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary; but they could not be seen from outside; 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 after they came out of Egypt.

¹¹Now when the priests came out of the holy place (for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves, without regard to their divisions),

¹²all the levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kindred, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with one hundred twenty priests who were trumpeters.

¹³It 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 brother, Ammi, and to your sister, Ruhamah.

²Plead 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,

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

⁴Upon her children also I will have no pity, 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; they 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 with me then than now.”

⁸She did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and gold that 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 shame in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

¹¹I will put an end to all her mirth, her festivals, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed festivals.

¹²I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “These are my pay, which my lovers have given me.” I will make them a forest, and the wild animals shall devour them.

¹³I will punish her for the festival days of the Baals, when she offered incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the LORD.

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

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

¹⁶On that day, says 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 mentioned by name no more.

¹⁸I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, 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 take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy.

²⁰I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.

²¹On that day I will answer, says 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 him for myself in the land. And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, “You are my people”; and he shall say, “You are my God.”

¹After Paul and Silas 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 argued with them from the scriptures,

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

⁴Some 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 became jealous, and with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar. While they were searching for Paul and Silas to bring them out to the assembly, they attacked Jason’s house.

⁶When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities, shouting, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also,

⁷and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.”

⁸The people and the city officials were disturbed when they heard this,

⁹and after they had taken bail from Jason and the others, they let them go.

¹⁰That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas off to Beroea; and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue.

¹¹These Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so.

¹²Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing.

¹³But when the Jews of Thessalonica learned that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Beroea as well, they came there too, to stir up and incite the crowds.

¹⁴Then the believers immediately sent Paul away to the coast, but Silas and Timothy remained behind.

¹⁵Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and after receiving instructions to have Silas and Timothy join him as soon as possible, they left him.

¹⁶While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

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

¹⁸Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.)

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

²⁰It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.”

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

²²Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.

²³For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,

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

²⁶From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,

²⁷so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is 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 too are his offspring.’

²⁹Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.

³⁰While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

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

³²When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.”

³³At that point Paul left them.

³⁴But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.