Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,

²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.

³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;

⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)

⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

⁶He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;

⁷in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

⁹Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!

¹⁰For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’

¹¹But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God) —

¹²then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother,

¹³thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

¹⁴Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand:

¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

¹⁶

¹⁷When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.

¹⁸He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile,

¹⁹since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

²⁰And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles.

²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,

²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.

²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

²⁴From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,

²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.

²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go — the demon has left your daughter.”

³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.

³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him.

³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.

³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”

³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

¹Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines.

²The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle in the land that I shall show you.

³Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

⁴I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring,

⁵because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

⁶So Isaac settled in Gerar.

⁷When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister”; for he was afraid to say, “My wife,” thinking, “or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake of Rebekah, because she is attractive in appearance.”

⁸When Isaac had been there a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw him fondling his wife Rebekah.

⁹So Abimelech called for Isaac, and said, “So she is your wife! Why then did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought I might die because of her.”

¹⁰Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”

¹¹So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death.”

¹²Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him,

¹³and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he became very wealthy.

¹⁴He had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.

¹⁵(Now the Philistines had stopped up and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham.)

¹⁶And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us; you have become too powerful for us.”

¹⁷So Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there.

¹⁸Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham; for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the names that his father had given them.

¹⁹But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water,

²⁰the herders of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herders, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the well Esek, because they contended with him.

²¹Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also; so he called it Sitnah.

²²He moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he called it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

²³From there he went up to Beer-sheba.

²⁴And that very night the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

²⁵So he built an altar there, called on the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

²⁶Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army.

²⁷Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?”

²⁸They said, “We see plainly that the LORD has been with you; so we say, let there be an oath between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you

²⁹so that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD.”

³⁰So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.

³¹In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths; and Isaac set them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.

³²That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water!”

³³He called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day.

³⁴When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite;

³⁵and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

¹Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

²“Honor your father and mother” — this is the first commandment with a promise:

³“so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

⁴And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

⁵Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ;

⁶not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

⁷Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women,

⁸knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.

⁹And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.

¹⁰Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.

¹¹Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

¹²For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

¹³Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.

¹⁴Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.

¹⁵As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

¹⁶With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

¹⁷Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁸Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.

¹⁹Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

²⁰for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

²¹So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus will tell you everything. He is a dear brother and a faithful minister in the Lord.

²²I am sending him to you for this very purpose, to let you know how we are, and to encourage your hearts.

²³Peace be to the whole community, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

²⁴Grace be with all who have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you:

²proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.

³For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,

⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

⁵As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

⁶As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.

⁷I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

⁸From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

⁹Do your best to come to me soon,

¹⁰for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.

¹¹Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry.

¹²I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus.

¹³When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.

¹⁴Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will pay him back for his deeds.

¹⁵You also must beware of him, for he strongly opposed our message.

¹⁶At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them!

¹⁷But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

¹⁸The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

¹⁹Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.

²⁰Erastus remained in Corinth; Trophimus I left ill in Miletus.

²¹Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers and sisters.

²²The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.

¹Job again took up his discourse and said:

²“As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter,

³as long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils,

⁴my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.

⁵Far be it from me to say that you are right; until I die I will not put away my integrity from me.

⁶I hold fast my righteousness, and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.

⁷“May my enemy be like the wicked, and may my opponent be like the unrighteous.

⁸For what is the hope of the godless when God cuts them off, when God takes away their lives?

⁹Will God hear their cry when trouble comes upon them?

¹⁰Will they take delight in the Almighty? Will they call upon God at all times?

¹¹I will teach you concerning the hand of God; that which is with the Almighty I will not conceal.

¹²All of you have seen it yourselves; why then have you become altogether vain?

¹³“This is the portion of the wicked with God, and the heritage that oppressors receive from the Almighty:

¹⁴If their children are multiplied, it is for the sword; and their offspring have not enough to eat.

¹⁵Those who survive them the pestilence buries, and their widows make no lamentation.

¹⁶Though they heap up silver like dust, and pile up clothing like clay —

¹⁷they may pile it up, but the just will wear it, and the innocent will divide the silver.

¹⁸They build their houses like nests, like booths made by sentinels of the vineyard.

¹⁹They go to bed with wealth, but will do so no more; they open their eyes, and it is gone.

²⁰Terrors overtake them like a flood; in the night a whirlwind carries them off.

²¹The east wind lifts them up and they are gone; it sweeps them out of their place.

²²It hurls at them without pity; they flee from its power in headlong flight.

²³It claps its hands at them, and hisses at them from its place.

¹O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

²So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

³Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

⁴So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

⁵My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

⁶when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

⁷for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

⁸My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

⁹But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth;

¹⁰they shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be prey for jackals.

¹¹But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

¹Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.

²Let another praise you, and not your own mouth — a stranger, and not your own lips.

³A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both.

⁴Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who is able to stand before jealousy?

⁵Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

⁶Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy.

⁷The sated appetite spurns honey, but to a ravenous appetite even the bitter is sweet.

⁸Like a bird that strays from its nest is one who strays from home.

⁹Perfume and incense make the heart glad, but the soul is torn by trouble.

¹⁰Do not forsake your friend or the friend of your parent; do not go to the house of your kindred in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is nearby than kindred who are far away.

¹¹Be wise, my child, and make my heart glad, so that I may answer whoever reproaches me.

¹²The clever see danger and hide; but the simple go on, and suffer for it.

¹³Take the garment of one who has given surety for a stranger; seize the pledge given as surety for foreigners.

¹⁴Whoever blesses a neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.

¹⁵A continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious wife are alike;

¹⁶to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in the right hand.

¹⁷Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another.

¹⁸Anyone who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and anyone who takes care of a master will be honored.

¹⁹Just as water reflects the face, so one human heart reflects another.

²⁰Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and human eyes are never satisfied.

²¹The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, so a person is tested by being praised.

²²Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, but the folly will not be driven out.

²³Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds;

²⁴for riches do not last forever, nor a crown for all generations.

²⁵When the grass is gone, and new growth appears, and the herbage of the mountains is gathered,

²⁶the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field;

²⁷there will be enough goats’ milk for your food, for the food of your household and nourishment for your servant-girls.

¹Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign; he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.

²He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.

³For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had pulled down, and erected altars to the Baals, made sacred poles, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them.

⁴He built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, “In Jerusalem shall my name be forever.”

⁵He built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.

⁶He made his son pass through fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom, practiced soothsaying and augury and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger.

⁷The carved image of the idol that he had made he set in the house of God, of which God said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever;

⁸I will never again remove the feet of Israel from the land that I appointed for your ancestors, if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them, all the law, the statutes, and the ordinances given through Moses.”

⁹Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that they did more evil than the nations whom the LORD had destroyed before the people of Israel.

¹⁰The LORD spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they gave no heed.

¹¹Therefore the LORD brought against them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh captive in manacles, bound him with fetters, and brought him to Babylon.

¹²While he was in distress he entreated the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors.

¹³He prayed to him, and God received his entreaty, heard his plea, and restored him again to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD indeed was God.

¹⁴Afterward he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon, in the valley, reaching the entrance at the Fish Gate; he carried it around Ophel, and raised it to a very great height. He also put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities in Judah.

¹⁵He took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the LORD and in Jerusalem, and he threw them out of the city.

¹⁶He also restored the altar of the LORD and offered on it sacrifices of well-being and of thanksgiving; and he commanded Judah to serve the LORD the God of Israel.

¹⁷The people, however, still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the LORD their God.

¹⁸Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, his prayer to his God, and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the LORD God of Israel, these are in the Annals of the Kings of Israel.

¹⁹His prayer, and how God received his entreaty, all his sin and his faithlessness, the sites on which he built high places and set up the sacred poles and the images, before he humbled himself, these are written in the records of the seers.

²⁰So Manasseh slept with his ancestors, and they buried him in his house. His son Amon succeeded him.

²¹Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; he reigned two years in Jerusalem.

²²He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his father Manasseh had done. Amon sacrificed to all the images that his father Manasseh had made, and served them.

²³He did not humble himself before the LORD, as his father Manasseh had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred more and more guilt.

²⁴His servants conspired against him and killed him in his house.

²⁵But the people of the land killed all those who had conspired against King Amon; and the people of the land made his son Josiah king to succeed him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.