Day 10 reading

Wisdom·Psalm 9:1–10

¹I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; I will recount all Your wonders. ²I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. ³When my enemies retreat, they stumble and perish before You. ⁴For You have upheld my just cause; You sit on Your throne judging righteously. ⁵You have rebuked the nations; You have destroyed the wicked; You have erased their name forever and ever. ⁶The enemy has come to eternal ruin, and You have uprooted their cities; the very memory of them has vanished. ⁷But the LORD abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment. ⁸He judges the world with justice; He governs the people with equity. ⁹The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. ¹⁰Those who know Your name trust in You, for You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You.

New Testament·Matthew 8:1–17

¹When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. ²Suddenly a leper came and knelt before Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” ³Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said. “Be clean!” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. ⁴Then Jesus instructed him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift prescribed by Moses, as a testimony to them.” ⁵When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came and pleaded with Him, ⁶“Lord, my servant lies at home, paralyzed and in terrible agony.” ⁷“I will go and heal him,” Jesus replied. ⁸The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have You come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell one to go, and he goes; and another to come, and he comes. I tell my servant to do something, and he does it.” ¹⁰When Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those following Him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. ¹¹I say to you that many will come from the east and the west to share the banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. ¹²But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ¹³Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! As you have believed, so will it be done for you.” And his servant was healed at that very hour. ¹⁴When Jesus arrived at Peter’s house, He saw Peter’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever. ¹⁵So He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to serve them. ¹⁶When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Jesus, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. ¹⁷This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases.”

Old Testament·Genesis 20–21

¹Now Abraham journeyed from there to the region of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he was staying in Gerar, ²Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar had Sarah brought to him. ³One night, however, God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman.” ⁴Now Abimelech had not gone near her, so he replied, “Lord, would You destroy a nation even though it is innocent? ⁵Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I have done this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.” ⁶Then God said to Abimelech in the dream, “Yes, I know that you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against Me. That is why I did not let you touch her. ⁷Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet; he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, be aware that you will surely die—you and all who belong to you.” ⁸Early the next morning Abimelech got up and summoned all his servants; and when he described to them all that had happened, the men were terrified. ⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham and asked, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such tremendous guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done.” ¹⁰Abimelech also asked Abraham, “What prompted you to do such a thing?” ¹¹Abraham replied, “I thought to myself, ‘Surely there is no fear of God in this place. They will kill me on account of my wife.’ ¹²Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father—though not the daughter of my mother—and she became my wife. ¹³So when God had me journey from my father’s house, I said to Sarah, ‘This is how you can show your loyalty to me: Wherever we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’” ¹⁴So Abimelech brought sheep and cattle, menservants and maidservants, and he gave them to Abraham and restored his wife Sarah to him. ¹⁵And Abimelech said, “Look, my land is before you. Settle wherever you please.” ¹⁶And he said to Sarah, “See, I am giving your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is your vindication before all who are with you; you are completely cleared.” ¹⁷Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maidservants, so that they could again bear children— ¹⁸for on account of Abraham’s wife Sarah, the LORD had completely closed all the wombs in Abimelech’s household.

21Now the LORD attended to Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised. ²So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised. ³And Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore to him. ⁴When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. ⁵Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. ⁶Then Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me.” ⁷She added, “Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” ⁸So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. ⁹But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking her son, ¹⁰and she said to Abraham, “Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac!” ¹¹Now this matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son Ishmael. ¹²But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to everything that Sarah tells you, for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned. ¹³But I will also make a nation of the slave woman’s son, because he is your offspring.” ¹⁴Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. ¹⁵When the water in the skin was gone, she left the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she said, “I cannot bear to watch the boy die!” And as she sat nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept. ¹⁷Then God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, “What is wrong, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he lies. ¹⁸Get up, lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰And God was with the boy, and he grew up and settled in the wilderness and became a great archer. ²¹And while he was dwelling in the Wilderness of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. ²²At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do. ²³Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you.” ²⁴And Abraham replied, “I swear it.” ²⁵But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized, ²⁶Abimelech replied, “I do not know who has done this. You did not tell me, so I have not heard about it until today.” ²⁷So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. ²⁸Abraham separated seven ewe lambs from the flock, ²⁹and Abimelech asked him, “Why have you set apart these seven ewe lambs?” ³⁰He replied, “You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well.” ³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath. ³²After they had made the covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up and returned to the land of the Philistines. ³³And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God. ³⁴And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for a long time.