Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹About this time another large crowd had gathered, and the people ran out of food again. Jesus called his disciples and told them,

²“I feel sorry for these people. They have been here with me for three days, and they have nothing left to eat.

³If I send them home hungry, they will faint along the way. For some of them have come a long distance.”

⁴His disciples replied, “How are we supposed to find enough food to feed them out here in the wilderness?”

⁵Jesus asked, “How much bread do you have?” “Seven loaves,” they replied.

⁶So Jesus told all the people to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves, thanked God for them, and broke them into pieces. He gave them to his disciples, who distributed the bread to the crowd.

⁷A few small fish were found, too, so Jesus also blessed these and told the disciples to distribute them.

⁸They ate as much as they wanted. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven large baskets of leftover food.

⁹There were about 4,000 men in the crowd that day, and Jesus sent them home after they had eaten.

¹⁰Immediately after this, he got into a boat with his disciples and crossed over to the region of Dalmanutha.

¹¹When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had arrived, they came and started to argue with him. Testing him, they demanded that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority.

¹²When he heard this, he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why do these people keep demanding a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, I will not give this generation any such sign.”

¹³So he got back into the boat and left them, and he crossed to the other side of the lake.

¹⁴But the disciples had forgotten to bring any food. They had only one loaf of bread with them in the boat.

¹⁵As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”

¹⁶At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread.

¹⁷Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in?

¹⁸‘You have eyes — can’t you see? You have ears — can’t you hear?’ Don’t you remember anything at all?

¹⁹When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?” “Twelve,” they said.

²⁰“And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?” “Seven,” they said.

²¹“Don’t you understand yet?” he asked them.

²²When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to Jesus, and they begged him to touch the man and heal him.

²³Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then, spitting on the man’s eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, “Can you see anything now?”

²⁴The man looked around. “Yes,” he said, “I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around.”

²⁵Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again, and his eyes were opened. His sight was completely restored, and he could see everything clearly.

²⁶Jesus sent him away, saying, “Don’t go back into the village on your way home.”

²⁷Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

²⁸“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets.”

²⁹Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah. ”

³⁰But Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.

³²As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things.

³³Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples, then reprimanded Peter. “Get away from me, Satan!” he said. “You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

³⁴Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.

³⁵If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.

³⁶And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?

³⁷Is anything worth more than your soul?

³⁸If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

¹“Do not make idols or set up carved images, or sacred pillars, or sculptured stones in your land so you may worship them. I am the LORD your God.

²You must keep my Sabbath days of rest and show reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.

³“If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,

⁴I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit.

⁵Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.

⁶“I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear. I will rid the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of your land.

⁷In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter them with your swords.

⁸Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand! All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.

⁹“I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people. And I will fulfill my covenant with you.

¹⁰You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!

¹¹I will live among you, and I will not despise you.

¹²I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be my people.

¹³I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery from your neck so you can walk with your heads held high.

¹⁴“However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands,

¹⁵and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands,

¹⁶I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you — wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will plant your crops in vain because your enemies will eat them.

¹⁷I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will run even when no one is chasing you!

¹⁸“And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins.

¹⁹I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as hard as bronze.

²⁰All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit.

²¹“If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey me, I will inflict disaster on you seven times over for your sins.

²²I will send wild animals that will rob you of your children and destroy your livestock. Your numbers will dwindle, and your roads will be deserted.

²³“And if you fail to learn the lesson and continue your hostility toward me,

²⁴then I myself will be hostile toward you. I will personally strike you with calamity seven times over for your sins.

²⁵I will send armies against you to carry out the curse of the covenant you have broken. When you run to your towns for safety, I will send a plague to destroy you there, and you will be handed over to your enemies.

²⁶I will destroy your food supply, so that ten women will need only one oven to bake bread for their families. They will ration your food by weight, and though you have food to eat, you will not be satisfied.

²⁷“If in spite of all this you still refuse to listen and still remain hostile toward me,

²⁸then I will give full vent to my hostility. I myself will punish you seven times over for your sins.

²⁹Then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.

³⁰I will destroy your pagan shrines and knock down your places of worship. I will leave your lifeless corpses piled on top of your lifeless idols, and I will despise you.

³¹I will make your cities desolate and destroy your places of pagan worship. I will take no pleasure in your offerings that should be a pleasing aroma to me.

³²Yes, I myself will devastate your land, and your enemies who come to occupy it will be appalled at what they see.

³³I will scatter you among the nations and bring out my sword against you. Your land will become desolate, and your cities will lie in ruins.

³⁴Then at last the land will enjoy its neglected Sabbath years as it lies desolate while you are in exile in the land of your enemies. Then the land will finally rest and enjoy the Sabbaths it missed.

³⁵As long as the land lies in ruins, it will enjoy the rest you never allowed it to take every seventh year while you lived in it.

³⁶“And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you in the land of your enemies. You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by the wind will send you fleeing. You will run as though fleeing from a sword, and you will fall even when no one pursues you.

³⁷Though no one is chasing you, you will stumble over each other as though fleeing from a sword. You will have no power to stand up against your enemies.

³⁸You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies.

³⁹Those of you who survive will waste away in your enemies’ lands because of their sins and the sins of their ancestors.

⁴⁰“But at last my people will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors for betraying me and being hostile toward me.

⁴¹When I have turned their hostility back on them and brought them to the land of their enemies, then at last their stubborn hearts will be humbled, and they will pay for their sins.

⁴²Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

⁴³For the land must be abandoned to enjoy its years of Sabbath rest as it lies deserted. At last the people will pay for their sins, for they have continually rejected my regulations and despised my decrees.

⁴⁴“But despite all this, I will not utterly reject or despise them while they are in exile in the land of their enemies. I will not cancel my covenant with them by wiping them out, for I am the LORD their God.

⁴⁵For their sakes I will remember my ancient covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of all the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.”

⁴⁶These are the decrees, regulations, and instructions that the LORD gave through Moses on Mount Sinai as evidence of the relationship between himself and the Israelites.

¹God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it.

²For this good news — that God has prepared this rest — has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God.

³For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said, “In my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest,’” even though this rest has been ready since he made the world.

⁴We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.”

⁵But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.”

⁶So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God.

⁷So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

⁸Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come.

⁹So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.

¹⁰For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

¹¹So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

¹²For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

¹³Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

¹⁴So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.

¹⁵This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

¹⁶So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

¹This letter is from Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ.

²May God give you more and more mercy, peace, and love.

³Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people.

⁴I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

⁵So I want to remind you, though you already know these things, that Jesus first rescued the nation of Israel from Egypt, but later he destroyed those who did not remain faithful.

⁶And I remind you of the angels who did not stay within the limits of authority God gave them but left the place where they belonged. God has kept them securely chained in prisons of darkness, waiting for the great day of judgment.

⁷And don’t forget Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring towns, which were filled with immorality and every kind of sexual perversion. Those cities were destroyed by fire and serve as a warning of the eternal fire of God’s judgment.

⁸In the same way, these people — who claim authority from their dreams — live immoral lives, defy authority, and scoff at supernatural beings.

⁹But even Michael, one of the mightiest of the angels, did not dare accuse the devil of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (This took place when Michael was arguing with the devil about Moses’ body.)

¹⁰But these people scoff at things they do not understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them, and so they bring about their own destruction.

¹¹What sorrow awaits them! For they follow in the footsteps of Cain, who killed his brother. Like Balaam, they deceive people for money. And like Korah, they perish in their rebellion.

¹²When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord’s love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain. They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots.

¹³They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds. They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness.

¹⁴Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after Adam, prophesied about these people. He said, “Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones

¹⁵to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

¹⁶These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They brag loudly about themselves, and they flatter others to get what they want.

¹⁷But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted.

¹⁸They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires.

¹⁹These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.

²⁰But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit,

²¹and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love.

²²And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering.

²³Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives.

²⁴Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.

²⁵All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.

¹This is Solomon’s song of songs, more wonderful than any other.

²Kiss me and kiss me again, for your love is sweeter than wine.

³How pleasing is your fragrance; your name is like the spreading fragrance of scented oils. No wonder all the young women love you!

⁴Take me with you; come, let’s run! The king has brought me into his bedroom. Young Women of Jerusalem How happy we are for you, O king. We praise your love even more than wine. Young Woman How right they are to adore you.

⁵I am dark but beautiful, O women of Jerusalem — dark as the tents of Kedar, dark as the curtains of Solomon’s tents.

⁶Don’t stare at me because I am dark — the sun has darkened my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they forced me to care for their vineyards, so I couldn’t care for myself — my own vineyard.

⁷Tell me, my love, where are you leading your flock today? Where will you rest your sheep at noon? For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and their flocks?

⁸If you don’t know, O most beautiful woman, follow the trail of my flock, and graze your young goats by the shepherds’ tents.

⁹You are as exciting, my darling, as a mare among Pharaoh’s stallions.

¹⁰How lovely are your cheeks; your earrings set them afire! How lovely is your neck, enhanced by a string of jewels.

¹¹We will make for you earrings of gold and beads of silver.

¹²The king is lying on his couch, enchanted by the fragrance of my perfume.

¹³My lover is like a sachet of myrrh lying between my breasts.

¹⁴He is like a bouquet of sweet henna blossoms from the vineyards of En-gedi.

¹⁵How beautiful you are, my darling, how beautiful! Your eyes are like doves.

¹⁶You are so handsome, my love, pleasing beyond words! The soft grass is our bed;

¹⁷fragrant cedar branches are the beams of our house, and pleasant smelling firs are the rafters.

¹O LORD, I have so many enemies; so many are against me.

²So many are saying, “God will never rescue him!” Interlude

³But you, O LORD, are a shield around me; you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.

⁴I cried out to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy mountain. Interlude

⁵I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the LORD was watching over me.

⁶I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies who surround me on every side.

⁷Arise, O LORD! Rescue me, my God! Slap all my enemies in the face! Shatter the teeth of the wicked!

⁸Victory comes from you, O LORD. May you bless your people. Interlude

¹Don’t envy evil people or desire their company.

²For their hearts plot violence, and their words always stir up trouble.

³A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense.

⁴Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables.

⁵The wise are mightier than the strong, and those with knowledge grow stronger and stronger.

⁶So don’t go to war without wise guidance; victory depends on having many advisers.

⁷Wisdom is too lofty for fools. Among leaders at the city gate, they have nothing to say.

⁸A person who plans evil will get a reputation as a troublemaker.

⁹The schemes of a fool are sinful; everyone detests a mocker.

¹⁰If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small.

¹¹Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to die; save them as they stagger to their death.

¹²Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “Look, we didn’t know.” For God understands all hearts, and he sees you. He who guards your soul knows you knew. He will repay all people as their actions deserve.

¹³My child, eat honey, for it is good, and the honeycomb is sweet to the taste.

¹⁴In the same way, wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it, you will have a bright future, and your hopes will not be cut short.

¹⁵Don’t wait in ambush at the home of the godly, and don’t raid the house where the godly live.

¹⁶The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked.

¹⁷Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall; don’t be happy when they stumble.

¹⁸For the LORD will be displeased with you and will turn his anger away from them.

¹⁹Don’t fret because of evildoers; don’t envy the wicked.

²⁰For evil people have no future; the light of the wicked will be snuffed out.

²¹My child, fear the LORD and the king. Don’t associate with rebels,

²²for disaster will hit them suddenly. Who knows what punishment will come from the LORD and the king?

²³Here are some further sayings of the wise: It is wrong to show favoritism when passing judgment.

²⁴A judge who says to the wicked, “You are innocent,” will be cursed by many people and denounced by the nations.

²⁵But it will go well for those who convict the guilty; rich blessings will be showered on them.

²⁶An honest answer is like a kiss of friendship.

²⁷Do your planning and prepare your fields before building your house.

²⁸Don’t testify against your neighbors without cause; don’t lie about them.

²⁹And don’t say, “Now I can pay them back for what they’ve done to me! I’ll get even with them!”

³⁰I walked by the field of a lazy person, the vineyard of one with no common sense.

³¹I saw that it was overgrown with nettles. It was covered with weeds, and its walls were broken down.

³²Then, as I looked and thought about it, I learned this lesson:

³³A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest —

³⁴then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

¹After the Philistines captured the Ark of God, they took it from the battleground at Ebenezer to the town of Ashdod.

²They carried the Ark of God into the temple of Dagon and placed it beside an idol of Dagon.

³But when the citizens of Ashdod went to see it the next morning, Dagon had fallen with his face to the ground in front of the Ark of the LORD! So they took Dagon and put him in his place again.

⁴But the next morning the same thing happened — Dagon had fallen face down before the Ark of the LORD again. This time his head and hands had broken off and were lying in the doorway. Only the trunk of his body was left intact.

⁵That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor anyone who enters the temple of Dagon in Ashdod will step on its threshold.

⁶Then the LORD’s heavy hand struck the people of Ashdod and the nearby villages with a plague of tumors.

⁷When the people realized what was happening, they cried out, “We can’t keep the Ark of the God of Israel here any longer! He is against us! We will all be destroyed along with Dagon, our god.”

⁸So they called together the rulers of the Philistine towns and asked, “What should we do with the Ark of the God of Israel?” The rulers discussed it and replied, “Move it to the town of Gath.” So they moved the Ark of the God of Israel to Gath.

⁹But when the Ark arrived at Gath, the LORD’s heavy hand fell on its men, young and old; he struck them with a plague of tumors, and there was a great panic.

¹⁰So they sent the Ark of God to the town of Ekron, but when the people of Ekron saw it coming they cried out, “They are bringing the Ark of the God of Israel here to kill us, too!”

¹¹The people summoned the Philistine rulers again and begged them, “Please send the Ark of the God of Israel back to its own country, or it will kill us all.” For the deadly plague from God had already begun, and great fear was sweeping across the town.

¹²Those who didn’t die were afflicted with tumors; and the cry from the town rose to heaven.

¹Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?

²My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.

³He was despised and rejected — a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

⁴Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!

⁵But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.

⁶All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.

⁷He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.

⁸Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream. But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.

⁹He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.

¹⁰But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands.

¹¹When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.

¹²I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.

¹Gazing intently at the high council, Paul began: “Brothers, I have always lived before God with a clear conscience!”

²Instantly Ananias the high priest commanded those close to Paul to slap him on the mouth.

³But Paul said to him, “God will slap you, you corrupt hypocrite! What kind of judge are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that?”

⁴Those standing near Paul said to him, “Do you dare to insult God’s high priest?”

⁵“I’m sorry, brothers. I didn’t realize he was the high priest,” Paul replied, “for the Scriptures say, ‘You must not speak evil of any of your rulers.’ ”

⁶Paul realized that some members of the high council were Sadducees and some were Pharisees, so he shouted, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, as were my ancestors! And I am on trial because my hope is in the resurrection of the dead!”

⁷This divided the council — the Pharisees against the Sadducees —

⁸for the Sadducees say there is no resurrection or angels or spirits, but the Pharisees believe in all of these.

⁹So there was a great uproar. Some of the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees jumped up and began to argue forcefully. “We see nothing wrong with him,” they shouted. “Perhaps a spirit or an angel spoke to him.”

¹⁰As the conflict grew more violent, the commander was afraid they would tear Paul apart. So he ordered his soldiers to go and rescue him by force and take him back to the fortress.

¹¹That night the Lord appeared to Paul and said, “Be encouraged, Paul. Just as you have been a witness to me here in Jerusalem, you must preach the Good News in Rome as well.”

¹²The next morning a group of Jews got together and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.

¹³There were more than forty of them in the conspiracy.

¹⁴They went to the leading priests and elders and told them, “We have bound ourselves with an oath to eat nothing until we have killed Paul.

¹⁵So you and the high council should ask the commander to bring Paul back to the council again. Pretend you want to examine his case more fully. We will kill him on the way.”

¹⁶But Paul’s nephew — his sister’s son — heard of their plan and went to the fortress and told Paul.

¹⁷Paul called for one of the Roman officers and said, “Take this young man to the commander. He has something important to tell him.”

¹⁸So the officer did, explaining, “Paul, the prisoner, called me over and asked me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”

¹⁹The commander took his hand, led him aside, and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”

²⁰Paul’s nephew told him, “Some Jews are going to ask you to bring Paul before the high council tomorrow, pretending they want to get some more information.

²¹But don’t do it! There are more than forty men hiding along the way ready to ambush him. They have vowed not to eat or drink anything until they have killed him. They are ready now, just waiting for your consent.”

²²“Don’t let anyone know you told me this,” the commander warned the young man.

²³Then the commander called two of his officers and ordered, “Get 200 soldiers ready to leave for Caesarea at nine o’clock tonight. Also take 200 spearmen and 70 mounted troops.

²⁴Provide horses for Paul to ride, and get him safely to Governor Felix.”

²⁵Then he wrote this letter to the governor:

²⁶“From Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings!

²⁷“This man was seized by some Jews, and they were about to kill him when I arrived with the troops. When I learned that he was a Roman citizen, I removed him to safety.

²⁸Then I took him to their high council to try to learn the basis of the accusations against him.

²⁹I soon discovered the charge was something regarding their religious law — certainly nothing worthy of imprisonment or death.

³⁰But when I was informed of a plot to kill him, I immediately sent him on to you. I have told his accusers to bring their charges before you.”

³¹So that night, as ordered, the soldiers took Paul as far as Antipatris.

³²They returned to the fortress the next morning, while the mounted troops took him on to Caesarea.

³³When they arrived in Caesarea, they presented Paul and the letter to Governor Felix.

³⁴He read it and then asked Paul what province he was from. “Cilicia,” Paul answered.

³⁵“I will hear your case myself when your accusers arrive,” the governor told him. Then the governor ordered him kept in the prison at Herod’s headquarters.