Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain by themselves.

²He was transfigured in front of them, and his face shone like the sun; his clothes became as white as the light.

³Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with him.

⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here. I will set up three shelters here: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him!”

⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown and were terrified.

⁷Jesus came up, touched them, and said, “Get up; don’t be afraid.”

⁸When they looked up they saw no one except Jesus alone.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anyone about the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

¹⁰So the disciples asked him, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

¹¹“Elijah is coming and will restore everything,” he replied.

¹²“But I tell you: Elijah has already come, and they didn’t recognize him. On the contrary, they did whatever they pleased to him. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.”

¹³Then the disciples understood that he had spoken to them about John the Baptist.

¹⁴When they reached the crowd, a man approached and knelt down before him.

¹⁵“Lord,” he said, “have mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire and often into the water.

¹⁶I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

¹⁷Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.”

¹⁸Then Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and from that moment the boy was healed.

¹⁹Then the disciples approached Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

²⁰“Because of your little faith,” he told them. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

²¹

²²As they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.

²³They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.” And they were deeply distressed.

²⁴When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

²⁵“Yes,” he said. When he went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes? From their sons or from strangers?”

²⁶“From strangers,” he said. “Then the sons are free,” Jesus told him.

²⁷“But, so we won’t offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fishhook, and take the first fish that you catch. When you open its mouth you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to them for me and you.”

¹“Now this is the law of the guilt offering; it is especially holy.

²The guilt offering is to be slaughtered at the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered, and the priest is to splatter its blood on all sides of the altar.

³The offerer is to present all the fat from it: the fat tail, the fat surrounding the entrails,

⁴and the two kidneys with the fat on them at the loins; he will also remove the fatty lobe of the liver with the kidneys.

⁵The priest will burn them on the altar as a fire offering to the LORD; it is a guilt offering.

⁶Any male among the priests may eat it. It is to be eaten in a holy place; it is especially holy.

⁷“The guilt offering is like the sin offering; the law is the same for both. It belongs to the priest who makes atonement with it.

⁸As for the priest who presents someone’s burnt offering, the hide of the burnt offering he has presented belongs to him; it is the priest’s.

⁹Any grain offering that is baked in an oven or prepared in a pan or on a griddle belongs to the priest who presents it; it is his.

¹⁰But any grain offering, whether dry or mixed with oil, belongs equally to all of Aaron’s sons.

¹¹“Now this is the law of the fellowship sacrifice that someone may present to the LORD:

¹²If he presents it for thanksgiving, in addition to the thanksgiving sacrifice, he is to present unleavened cakes mixed with olive oil, unleavened wafers coated with oil, and well-kneaded cakes of fine flour mixed with oil.

¹³He is to present as his offering cakes of leavened bread with his thanksgiving sacrifice of fellowship.

¹⁴From the cakes he is to present one portion of each offering as a contribution to the LORD. It will belong to the priest who splatters the blood of the fellowship offering; it is his.

¹⁵The meat of his thanksgiving sacrifice of fellowship must be eaten on the day he offers it; he may not leave any of it until morning.

¹⁶“If the sacrifice he offers is a vow or a freewill offering, it is to be eaten on the day he presents his sacrifice, and what is left over may be eaten on the next day.

¹⁷But what remains of the sacrificial meat by the third day must be burned.

¹⁸If any of the meat of his fellowship sacrifice is eaten on the third day, it will not be accepted. It will not be credited to the one who presents it; it is repulsive. The person who eats any of it will bear his iniquity.

¹⁹“Meat that touches anything unclean must not be eaten; it is to be burned. Everyone who is clean may eat any other meat.

²⁰But the one who eats meat from the LORD’s fellowship sacrifice while he is unclean, that person must be cut off from his people.

²¹If someone touches anything unclean, whether human uncleanness, an unclean animal, or any unclean, abhorrent creature, and eats meat from the LORD’s fellowship sacrifice, that person is to be cut off from his people.”

²²The LORD spoke to Moses:

²³“Tell the Israelites: You are not to eat any fat of an ox, a sheep, or a goat.

²⁴The fat of an animal that dies naturally or is mauled by wild beasts may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it.

²⁵If anyone eats animal fat from a fire offering presented to the LORD, the person who eats it is to be cut off from his people.

²⁶Wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal.

²⁷Whoever eats any blood is to be cut off from his people.”

²⁸The LORD spoke to Moses:

²⁹“Tell the Israelites: The one who presents a fellowship sacrifice to the LORD is to bring an offering to the LORD from his sacrifice.

³⁰His own hands will bring the fire offerings to the LORD. He will bring the fat together with the breast. The breast is to be presented as a presentation offering before the LORD.

³¹The priest is to burn the fat on the altar, but the breast belongs to Aaron and his sons.

³²You are to give the right thigh to the priest as a contribution from your fellowship sacrifices.

³³The son of Aaron who presents the blood of the fellowship offering and the fat will have the right thigh as a portion.

³⁴I have taken from the Israelites the breast of the presentation offering and the thigh of the contribution from their fellowship sacrifices, and have assigned them to the priest Aaron and to his sons as a permanent portion from the Israelites.”

³⁵This is the portion from the fire offerings to the LORD for Aaron and his sons since the day they were presented to serve the LORD as priests.

³⁶The LORD commanded this to be given to them by the Israelites on the day he anointed them. It is a permanent portion throughout their generations.

³⁷This is the law for the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the ordination offering, and the fellowship sacrifice,

³⁸which the LORD commanded Moses on Mount Sinai on the day he commanded the Israelites to present their offerings to the LORD in the Wilderness of Sinai.

¹For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

²Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all.

³Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law.

⁴You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.

⁵For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness.

⁶For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

⁷You were running well. Who prevented you from being persuaded regarding the truth?

⁸This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.

⁹A little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough.

¹⁰I myself am persuaded in the Lord you will not accept any other view. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty.

¹¹Now brothers and sisters, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.

¹²I wish those who are disturbing you might also let themselves be mutilated!

¹³For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.

¹⁴For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.

¹⁵But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.

¹⁶I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh.

¹⁷For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want.

¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

¹⁹Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity,

²⁰idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions,

²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things — as I warned you before — that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

²³gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

²⁴Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

²⁶Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

¹My brothers and sisters, do not show favoritism as you hold on to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

²For if someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and a poor person dressed in filthy clothes also comes in,

³if you look with favor on the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Sit here in a good place,” and yet you say to the poor person, “Stand over there,” or “Sit here on the floor by my footstool,”

⁴haven’t you made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

⁵Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Didn’t God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

⁶Yet you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the rich oppress you and drag you into court?

⁷Don’t they blaspheme the good name that was invoked over you?

⁸Indeed, if you fulfill the royal law prescribed in the Scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.

⁹If, however, you show favoritism, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

¹⁰For whoever keeps the entire law, and yet stumbles at one point, is guilty of breaking it all.

¹¹For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder. So if you do not commit adultery, but you murder, you are a lawbreaker.

¹²Speak and act as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom.

¹³For judgment is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?

¹⁵If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food

¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?

¹⁷In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.

¹⁸But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works.

¹⁹You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe — and they shudder.

²⁰Senseless person! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless?

²¹Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar?

²²You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete,

²³and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.

²⁴You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

²⁵In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route?

²⁶For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

¹Then Elihu continued, saying:

²Be patient with me a little longer, and I will inform you, for there is still more to be said on God’s behalf.

³I will get my knowledge from a distant place and ascribe justice to my Maker.

⁴Indeed, my words are not false; one who has complete knowledge is with you.

⁵Yes, God is mighty, but he despises no one; he understands all things.

⁶He does not keep the wicked alive, but he gives justice to the oppressed.

⁷He does not withdraw his gaze from the righteous, but he seats them forever with enthroned kings, and they are exalted.

⁸If people are bound with chains and trapped by the cords of affliction,

⁹God tells them what they have done and how arrogantly they have transgressed.

¹⁰He opens their ears to correction and tells them to repent from iniquity.

¹¹If they listen and serve him, they will end their days in prosperity and their years in happiness.

¹²But if they do not listen, they will cross the river of death and die without knowledge.

¹³Those who have a godless heart harbor anger; even when God binds them, they do not cry for help.

¹⁴They die in their youth; their life ends among male cult prostitutes.

¹⁵God rescues the afflicted by their affliction; he instructs them by their torment.

¹⁶Indeed, he lured you from the jaws of distress to a spacious and unconfined place. Your table was spread with choice food.

¹⁷Yet now you are obsessed with the judgment due the wicked; judgment and justice have seized you.

¹⁸Be careful that no one lures you with riches; do not let a large ransom lead you astray.

¹⁹Can your wealth or all your physical exertion keep you from distress?

²⁰Do not long for the night when nations will disappear from their places.

²¹Be careful that you do not turn to iniquity, for that is why you have been tested by affliction.

²²Look, God shows himself exalted by his power. Who is a teacher like him?

²³Who has appointed his way for him, and who has declared, “You have done wrong”?

²⁴Remember that you should praise his work, which people have sung about.

²⁵All mankind has seen it; people have looked at it from a distance.

²⁶Yes, God is exalted beyond our knowledge; the number of his years cannot be counted.

²⁷For he makes waterdrops evaporate; they distill the rain into its mist,

²⁸which the clouds pour out and shower abundantly on mankind.

²⁹Can anyone understand how the clouds spread out or how the thunder roars from God’s pavilion?

³⁰See how he spreads his lightning around him and covers the depths of the sea.

³¹For he judges the nations with these; he gives food in abundance.

³²He covers his hands with lightning and commands it to hit its mark.

³³The thunder declares his presence; the cattle also, the approaching storm.

¹A song of ascents. [1] Now bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD who stand in the LORD’s house at night!

²Lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the LORD!

³May the LORD, Maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion.

¹My son, pay attention to my wisdom; listen closely to my understanding

²so that you may maintain discretion and your lips safeguard knowledge.

³Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her words are smoother than oil,

⁴in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword.

⁵Her feet go down to death; her steps head straight for Sheol.

⁶She doesn’t consider the path of life; she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable.

⁷So now, sons, listen to me, and don’t turn away from the words from my mouth.

⁸Keep your way far from her. Don’t go near the door of her house.

⁹Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel;

¹⁰strangers will drain your resources, and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner’s house.

¹¹At the end of your life, you will lament when your physical body has been consumed,

¹²and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and how my heart despised correction.

¹³I didn’t obey my teachers or listen closely to my instructors.

¹⁴I am on the verge of complete ruin before the entire community.”

¹⁵Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well.

¹⁶Should your springs flow in the streets, streams in the public squares?

¹⁷They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.

¹⁸Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.

¹⁹A loving deer, a graceful doe  — let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.

²⁰Why, my son, would you lose yourself with a forbidden woman or embrace a wayward woman?

²¹For a man’s ways are before the LORD’s eyes, and he considers all his paths.

²²A wicked man’s iniquities will trap him; he will become tangled in the ropes of his own sin.

²³He will die because there is no discipline, and be lost because of his great stupidity.

¹Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute, and Gilead was his father.

²Gilead’s wife bore him sons, and when they grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You will have no inheritance in our father’s family, because you are the son of another woman.”

³So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Then some worthless men joined Jephthah and went on raids with him.

⁴Some time later, the Ammonites fought against Israel.

⁵When the Ammonites made war with Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob.

⁶They said to him, “Come, be our commander, and let’s fight the Ammonites.”

⁷Jephthah replied to the elders of Gilead, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me out of my father’s family? Why then have you come to me now when you’re in trouble?”

⁸They answered Jephthah, “That’s true. But now we turn to you. Come with us, fight the Ammonites, and you will become leader of all the inhabitants of Gilead.”

⁹So Jephthah said to them, “If you are bringing me back to fight the Ammonites and the LORD gives them to me, I will be your leader.”

¹⁰The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, “The LORD is our witness if we don’t do as you say.”

¹¹So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead. The people made him their leader and commander, and Jephthah repeated all his terms in the presence of the LORD at Mizpah.

¹²Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, asking, “What do you have against me that you have come to fight me in my land?”

¹³The king of the Ammonites said to Jephthah’s messengers, “When Israel came from Egypt, they seized my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and the Jordan. Now restore it peaceably.”

¹⁴Jephthah again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites

¹⁵to tell him, “This is what Jephthah says: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites.

¹⁶But when they came from Egypt, Israel traveled through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh.

¹⁷Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom, saying, ‘Please let us travel through your land,’ but the king of Edom would not listen. They also sent messengers to the king of Moab, but he refused. So Israel stayed in Kadesh.

¹⁸“Then they traveled through the wilderness and around the lands of Edom and Moab. They came to the east side of the land of Moab and camped on the other side of the Arnon but did not enter into the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab.

¹⁹“Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, king of Heshbon. Israel said to him, ‘Please let us travel through your land to our country,’

²⁰but Sihon would not trust Israel to pass through his territory. Instead, Sihon gathered all his troops, camped at Jahaz, and fought with Israel.

²¹Then the LORD God of Israel handed over Sihon and all his troops to Israel, and they defeated them. So Israel took possession of the entire land of the Amorites who lived in that country.

²²They took possession of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan.

²³“The LORD God of Israel has now driven out the Amorites before his people Israel, and will you now force us out?

²⁴Isn’t it true that you can have whatever your god Chemosh conquers for you, and we can have whatever the LORD our God conquers for us?

²⁵Now are you any better than Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever contend with Israel or fight against them?

²⁶While Israel lived three hundred years in Heshbon and Aroer and their surrounding villages, and in all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon, why didn’t you take them back at that time?

²⁷I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by fighting against me. Let the LORD who is the judge decide today between the Israelites and the Ammonites.”

²⁸But the king of the Ammonites would not listen to Jephthah’s message that he sent him.

²⁹The Spirit of the LORD came on Jephthah, who traveled through Gilead and Manasseh, and then through Mizpah of Gilead. He crossed over to the Ammonites from Mizpah of Gilead.

³⁰Jephthah made this vow to the LORD: “If you in fact hand over the Ammonites to me,

³¹whoever comes out the doors of my house to greet me when I return safely from the Ammonites will belong to the LORD, and I will offer that person as a burnt offering.”

³²Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD handed them over to him.

³³He defeated twenty of their cities with a great slaughter from Aroer all the way to the entrance of Minnith and to Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

³⁴When Jephthah went to his home in Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with tambourines and dancing! She was his only child; he had no other son or daughter besides her.

³⁵When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “No! Not my daughter! You have devastated me! You have brought great misery on me. I have given my word to the LORD and cannot take it back.”

³⁶Then she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me as you have said, for the LORD brought vengeance on your enemies, the Ammonites.”

³⁷She also said to her father, “Let me do this one thing: Let me wander two months through the mountains with my friends and mourn my virginity.”

³⁸“Go,” he said. And he sent her away two months. So she left with her friends and mourned her virginity as she wandered through the mountains.

³⁹At the end of two months, she returned to her father, and he kept the vow he had made about her. And she had never been intimate with a man. Now it became a custom in Israel

⁴⁰that four days each year the young women of Israel would commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

¹You nations, come here and listen; you peoples, pay attention! Let the earth and all that fills it hear, the world and all that comes from it.

²The LORD is angry with all the nations, furious with all their armies. He will set them apart for destruction, giving them over to slaughter.

³Their slain will be thrown out, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.

⁴All the stars in the sky will dissolve. The sky will roll up like a scroll, and its stars will all wither as leaves wither on the vine, and foliage on the fig tree.

⁵When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, it will then come down on Edom and on the people I have set apart for destruction.

⁶The LORD’s sword is covered with blood. It drips with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

⁷The wild oxen will be struck down with them, and young bulls with the mighty bulls. Their land will be soaked with blood, and their soil will be saturated with fat.

⁸For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a time of paying back Edom for its hostility against Zion.

⁹Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch, her soil into sulfur; her land will become burning pitch.

¹⁰It will never go out — day or night. Its smoke will go up forever. It will be desolate, from generation to generation; no one will pass through it forever and ever.

¹¹Eagle owls and herons will possess it, and long-eared owls and ravens will dwell there. The LORD will stretch out a measuring line and a plumb line over her for her destruction and chaos.

¹²No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing.

¹³Her palaces will be overgrown with thorns; her fortified cities, with thistles and briers. She will become a dwelling for jackals, an abode for ostriches.

¹⁴The desert creatures will meet hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. Indeed, the night birds will stay there and will find a resting place.

¹⁵Sand partridges will make their nests there; they will lay and hatch their eggs and will gather their broods under their shadows. Indeed, the birds of prey will gather there, each with its mate.

¹⁶Search and read the scroll of the LORD: Not one of them will be missing, none will be lacking its mate, because he has ordered it by my mouth, and he will gather them by his Spirit.

¹⁷He has cast the lot for them; his hand allotted their portion with a measuring line. They will possess it forever; they will dwell in it from generation to generation.

¹While they were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple police, and the Sadducees confronted them,

²because they were annoyed that they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

³So they seized them and took them into custody until the next day since it was already evening.

⁴But many of those who heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

⁵The next day, their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem

⁶with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and all the members of the high-priestly family.

⁷After they had Peter and John stand before them, they began to question them: “By what power or in what name have you done this?”

⁸Then Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders:

⁹If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a disabled man, by what means he was healed,

¹⁰let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead — by him this man is standing here before you healthy.

¹¹This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone.

¹²There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”

¹³When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and recognized that they had been with Jesus.

¹⁴And since they saw the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

¹⁵After they ordered them to leave the Sanhedrin, they conferred among themselves,

¹⁶saying, “What should we do with these men? For an obvious sign has been done through them, clear to everyone living in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

¹⁷But so that this does not spread any further among the people, let’s threaten them against speaking to anyone in this name again.”

¹⁸So they called for them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

¹⁹Peter and John answered them, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide;

²⁰for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

²¹After threatening them further, they released them. They found no way to punish them because the people were all giving glory to God over what had been done.

²²For this sign of healing had been performed on a man over forty years old.

²³After they were released, they went to their own people and reported everything the chief priests and the elders had said to them.

²⁴When they heard this, they raised their voices together to God and said, “Master, you are the one who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them.

²⁵You said through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David your servant: Why do the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot futile things?

²⁶The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers assemble together against the Lord and against his Messiah.

²⁷“For, in fact, in this city both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed,

²⁸to do whatever your hand and your will had predestined to take place.

²⁹And now, Lord, consider their threats, and grant that your servants may speak your word with all boldness,

³⁰while you stretch out your hand for healing, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

³¹When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly.

³²Now the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common.

³³With great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on all of them.

³⁴For there was not a needy person among them because all those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the proceeds of what was sold,

³⁵and laid them at the apostles’ feet. This was then distributed to each person as any had need.

³⁶Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus by birth, the one the apostles called Barnabas (which is translated Son of Encouragement),

³⁷sold a field he owned, brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.