Today's Reading

¹But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a young goat; and he said, "I will go in to my wife into the room." But her father wouldn't allow him to go in.

²Her father said, "I most certainly thought that you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Please take her, instead."

³Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I harm them."

⁴Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between every two tails.

⁵When he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.

⁶Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" They said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion." The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.

⁷Samson said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease."

⁸He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.

⁹Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.

¹⁰The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us."

¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them."

¹²They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves."

¹³They spoke to him, saying, "No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.

¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him: and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands.

¹⁵And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and reached down and took it, and struck a thousand men with it.

¹⁶Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men."

¹⁷It happened, when he had finished speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.

¹⁸He was very thirsty, and called on the Lord, and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?"

¹⁹And God split the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore its name was called En Hakore, which is in Lehi, to this day.

²⁰He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

¹Samson went to Gaza, and saw a prostitute there, and went in to her.

²The Gazites were told, "Samson is here!" They surrounded him, and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city, and were quiet all night, saying, "Wait until morning light, then we will kill him."

³Samson stayed in bed until midnight, and arose at midnight, and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is overlooking Hebron.

⁴It came to pass afterward, that he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

⁵The lords of the Philistines came up to her, and said to her, "Entice him, and see in which his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver."

⁶Delilah said to Samson, "Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you can be bound and subdued."

⁷Samson said to her, "If they bind me with seven green cords that were never dried, then shall I become weak, and be as another man."

⁸Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green cords which had not been dried, and she bound him with them.

⁹Now she had an ambush waiting in the inner room. She said to him, "The Philistines are on you, Samson!" He broke the cords, as a string of tow is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known.

¹⁰Delilah said to Samson, "Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies: now please tell me with which you might be bound."

¹¹He said to her, "If they only bind me with new ropes with which no work has been done, then shall I become weak, and be as another man."

¹²So Delilah took new ropes, and bound him therewith, and said to him, "The Philistines are on you, Samson!" The ambush was waiting in the inner room. He broke them off his arms like a thread.

¹³Delilah said to Samson, "Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound." He said to her, "If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web."

¹⁴She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, "The Philistines are on you, Samson!" He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam, and the web.

¹⁵She said to him, "How can you say, 'I love you,' when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies."

¹⁶It happened, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, that his soul was troubled to death.

¹⁷He told her all his heart, and said to her, "No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me, and I will become weak, and be like any other man."

¹⁸When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, "Come up this once, for he has told me all his heart." Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and brought the money in their hand.

¹⁹She made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man, and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him.

²⁰She said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" He awoke out of his sleep, and said, "I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free." But he didn't know that the Lord had departed from him.

²¹The Philistines seized him, and put out his eyes. And they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in the prison.

²²However the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaved.

²³The lords of the Philistines gathered them together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to celebrate; for they said, "Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hand."

²⁴When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, "Our god has delivered our enemy and the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us, into our hand."

²⁵It happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, "Call for Samson, that he may entertain us." They called for Samson out of the prison; and he performed before them. They set him between the pillars;

²⁶and Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, "Allow me to feel the pillars whereupon the house rests, that I may lean on them."

²⁷Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were on the roof about three thousand men and women, who saw while Samson made sport.

²⁸Samson called to the Lord, and said, "Lord God, please remember me, and please strengthen me only this once, God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes."

²⁹Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and leaned on them, the one with his right hand, and the other with his left.

³⁰Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" He bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell on the lords, and on all the people who were therein. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than those who he killed in his life.

³¹Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial site of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years.

¹There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. .

²He said to his mother, "The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it." His mother said, "Blessed be my son of the Lord."

³He restored the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother; and his mother said, "I most certainly dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make an engraved image and a molten image. Now therefore I will restore it to you."

⁴When he restored the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver, and gave them to the founder, who made of it an engraved image and a molten image: and it was in the house of Micah.

⁵The man Micah had a house of gods, and he made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.

⁶In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

⁷There was a young man out of Bethlehem Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite; and he lived there.

⁸The man departed out of the city, out of Bethlehem Judah, to live where he could find a place, and he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah, as he traveled.

⁹Micah said to him, "Where did you come from?" He said to him, "I am a Levite of Bethlehem Judah, and I am looking for a place to live."

¹⁰Micah said to him, Dwell with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver by the year, and a suit of clothing, and your food. So the Levite went in.

¹¹The Levite was content to dwell with the man; and the young man was to him as one of his sons.

¹²Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah.

¹³Then Micah said, "Now I know that the Lord will do good to me, seeing I have a Levite as my priest."

¹but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

²Now very early in the morning, he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him. He sat down, and taught them.

³The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman taken in adultery. Having set her in the midst,

⁴they told him, "Teacher, we found this woman in adultery, in the very act.

⁵Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such. What then do you say about her?"

⁶They said this testing him, that they might have something to accuse him of. But Jesus stooped down, and wrote on the ground with his finger.

⁷But when they continued asking him, he looked up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her."

⁸Again he stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground.

⁹They, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the oldest, even to the last. Jesus was left alone with the woman where she was, in the middle.

¹⁰Jesus, standing up, said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?"

¹¹She said, "No one, Lord." Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more."

¹²Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."

¹³The Pharisees therefore said to him, "You testify about yourself. Your testimony is not valid."

¹⁴Jesus answered them, "Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from, and where I am going; but you do not know where I came from, or where I am going.

¹⁵You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one.

¹⁶Even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me.

¹⁷It's also written in your Law that the testimony of two people is valid.

¹⁸I am one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me."

¹⁹They said therefore to him, "Where is your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither me, nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also."

²⁰Jesus spoke these words in the treasury, as he taught in the temple. Yet no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

²¹Jesus said therefore again to them, "I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sins. Where I go, you cannot come."

²²The Jewish leaders therefore said, "Will he kill himself, that he says, 'Where I am going, you cannot come?'"

²³He said to them, "You are from beneath. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world.

²⁴I said therefore to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins."

²⁵They said therefore to him, "Who are you?" Jesus said to them, "Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.

²⁶I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you. However he who sent me is true; and the things which I heard from him, these I say to the world."

²⁷They did not understand that he spoke to them about the Father.

²⁸Jesus therefore said to them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I say these things.

²⁹He who sent me is with me. The Father hasn't left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him."

³⁰As he spoke these things, many believed in him.

³¹Jesus therefore said to those Judeans who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples.

³²You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

³³They answered him, "We are Abraham's seed, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, 'You will be made free?'"

³⁴Jesus answered them, "Truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin.

³⁵A bondservant does not live in the house forever. A son remains forever.

³⁶If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

³⁷I know that you are Abraham's seed, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you.

³⁸I say the things which I have seen with my Father; and you also do the things which you have heard from your father."

³⁹They answered him, "Our father is Abraham." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham.

⁴⁰But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this.

⁴¹You do the works of your father." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, God."

⁴²Therefore Jesus said to them, "If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I have not come of myself, but he sent me.

⁴³Why do you not understand my speech? Because you cannot hear my word.

⁴⁴You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father.

⁴⁵But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

⁴⁶Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?

⁴⁷He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you do not hear, because you are not of God."

⁴⁸Then the Judeans answered him, "Do not we say well that you are a Samaritan, and have a demon?"

⁴⁹Jesus answered, "I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.

⁵⁰But I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks and judges.

⁵¹Truly, truly, I tell you, if a person keeps my word, he will never see death."

⁵²Then the Judeans said to him, "Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets; and you say, 'If a man keeps my word, he will never taste of death.'

⁵³Are you greater than our father, Abraham, who died? The prophets died. Who do you make yourself out to be?"

⁵⁴Jesus answered, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say 'He is our God.'

⁵⁵You have not known him, but I know him. If I said, 'I do not know him,' I would be like you, a liar. But I know him, and keep his word.

⁵⁶Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it, and was glad."

⁵⁷The Judeans therefore said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?"

⁵⁸Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM."

⁵⁹Therefore they took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden, and went out of the temple.

¹ In Judah, God is known. His name is great in Israel.

²His tabernacle is also in Salem; His dwelling place in Zion.

³There he broke the flaming arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the weapons of war. Selah.

⁴Glorious are you, and excellent, more than mountains of game.

⁵Valiant men lie plundered, they have slept their last sleep. None of the men of war can lift their hands.

⁶At your rebuke, God of Jacob, both chariot and horse are cast into a deep sleep.

⁷You, even you, are to be feared. Who can stand in your sight when you are angry?

⁸You pronounced judgment from heaven. The earth feared, and was silent,

⁹when God arose to judgment, to save all the afflicted ones of the earth. Selah.

¹⁰Surely the wrath of man praises you. The survivors of your wrath are restrained.

¹¹Make vows to the Lord your God, and fulfill them! Let all of his neighbors bring presents to him who is to be feared.

¹²He will cut off the spirit of princes. He is feared by the kings of the earth.

¹Every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands.

²He who walks in his uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is perverse in his ways despises him.

³The fool's talk brings a rod to his back, but the lips of the wise protect them.

⁴Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by the strength of the ox.

⁵A truthful witness will not lie, but a false witness pours out lies.

⁶A scoffer seeks wisdom, and doesn't find it, but knowledge comes easily to a discerning person.

⁷Stay away from a foolish man, for you won't find knowledge on his lips.

⁸The wisdom of the prudent is to think about his way, but the folly of fools is deceit.

⁹Fools mock at making atonement for sins, but among the upright there is good will.

¹⁰The heart knows its own bitterness and joy; he will not share these with a stranger.

¹¹The house of the wicked will be overthrown, but the tent of the upright will flourish.

¹²There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

¹³Even in laughter the heart may be sorrowful, and mirth may end in heaviness.

¹⁴The unfaithful will be repaid for his own ways; likewise a good man will be rewarded for his ways.

¹⁵A simple man believes everything, but the prudent man carefully considers his ways.

¹⁶A wise man fears, and shuns evil, but the fool is hotheaded and reckless.

¹⁷He who is quick to become angry will commit folly, and a crafty man is hated.

¹⁸The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.

¹⁹The evil bow down before the good, and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.

²⁰The poor person is shunned even by his own neighbor, but the rich person has many friends.

²¹He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who has pity on the poor.

²²Do they not go astray who plot evil? But love and faithfulness belong to those who plan good.

²³In all hard work there is profit, but the talk of the lips leads only to poverty.

²⁴The crown of the wise is their riches, but the folly of fools crowns them with folly.

²⁵A truthful witness saves souls, but a false witness is deceitful.

²⁶In the fear of the Lord is a secure fortress, and he will be a refuge for his children.

²⁷The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning people from the snares of death.

²⁸In the multitude of people is the king's glory, but in the lack of people is the destruction of the prince.

²⁹He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a quick temper displays folly.

³⁰The life of the body is a heart at peace, but envy rots the bones.

³¹He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for his Maker, but he who is kind to the needy honors him.

³²The wicked is brought down in his calamity, but in death, the righteous has a refuge.

³³Wisdom rests in the heart of one who has understanding, and is even made known in the inward part of fools.

³⁴Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.

³⁵The king's favor is toward a servant who deals wisely, but his wrath is toward one who causes shame.