Day 355 reading

Wisdom·Proverbs 28:18–28

¹⁸He who walks with integrity will be kept safe, but whoever is perverse in his ways will suddenly fall. ¹⁹The one who works his land will have plenty of food, but whoever chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty. ²⁰A faithful man will abound with blessings, but one eager to be rich will not go unpunished. ²¹To show partiality is not good, yet a man will do wrong for a piece of bread. ²²A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty awaits him. ²³He who rebukes a man will later find more favor than one who flatters with his tongue. ²⁴He who robs his father or mother, saying, “It is not wrong,” is a companion to the man who destroys. ²⁵A greedy man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the LORD will prosper. ²⁶He who trusts in himself is a fool, but one who walks in wisdom will be safe. ²⁷Whoever gives to the poor will not be in need, but he who hides his eyes will receive many curses. ²⁸When the wicked come to power, people hide themselves; but when they perish, the righteous flourish.

New Testament·Revelation 10–11

¹Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head. His face was like the sun, and his legs were like pillars of fire. ²He held in his hand a small scroll, which lay open. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. ³Then he cried out in a loud voice like the roar of a lion. And when he cried out, the seven thunders sounded their voices. ⁴When the seven thunders had spoken, I was about to put it in writing. But I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” ⁵Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to heaven. ⁶And he swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it, the earth and everything in it, and the sea and everything in it: “There will be no more delay! ⁷But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, just as He proclaimed to His servants the prophets.” ⁸Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the small scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel standing on the sea and on the land.” ⁹And I went to the angel and said, “Give me the small scroll.” “Take it and eat it,” he said. “It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” ¹⁰So I took the small scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it; and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned bitter. ¹¹And they told me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.”

11Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers there. ²But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months. ³And I will empower my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” ⁴These witnesses are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. ⁵If anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone who wants to harm them must be killed. ⁶These witnesses have power to shut the sky so that no rain will fall during the days of their prophecy, and power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they wish. ⁷When the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with them, and will overpower and kill them. ⁸Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city—figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where their Lord was also crucified. ⁹For three and a half days all peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will view their bodies and will not permit them to be laid in a tomb. ¹⁰And those who dwell on the earth will gloat over them, and will celebrate and send one another gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them. ¹¹But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered the two witnesses, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell upon those who saw them. ¹²And the witnesses heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies watched them. ¹³And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand were killed in the quake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. ¹⁴The second woe has passed. Behold, the third woe is coming shortly. ¹⁵Then the seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and loud voices called out in heaven: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.” ¹⁶And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, ¹⁷saying: “We give thanks to You, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign. ¹⁸The nations were enraged, and Your wrath has come. The time has come to judge the dead and to reward Your servants the prophets, as well as the saints and those who fear Your name, both small and great— and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” ¹⁹Then the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple. And there were flashes of lightning, and rumblings, and peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.

Old Testament·Jonah 2–4; Micah 1–2

¹From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the LORD his God, ²saying: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and He answered me. From the belly of Sheol I called for help, and You heard my voice. ³For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me; all Your breakers and waves swept over me. ⁴At this, I said, ‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look once more toward Your holy temple.’ ⁵The waters engulfed me to take my life; the watery depths closed around me; the seaweed wrapped around my head. ⁶To the roots of the mountains I descended; the earth beneath me barred me in forever! But You raised my life from the pit, O LORD my God! ⁷As my life was fading away, I remembered the LORD. My prayer went up to You, to Your holy temple. ⁸Those who cling to worthless idols forsake His loving devotion. ⁹But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation is from the LORD!” ¹⁰And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

3Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: ²“Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message that I give you.” ³This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, in accordance with the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, requiring a three-day journey. ⁴On the first day of his journey, Jonah set out into the city and proclaimed, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!” ⁵And the Ninevites believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. ⁶When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let no man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink. ⁸Furthermore, let both man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and have everyone call out earnestly to God. Let each one turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands. ⁹Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.” ¹⁰When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.

4Jonah, however, was greatly displeased, and he became angry. ²So he prayed to the LORD, saying, “O LORD, is this not what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I was so quick to flee toward Tarshish. I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion—One who relents from sending disaster. ³And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” ⁴But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?” ⁵Then Jonah left the city and sat down east of it, where he made himself a shelter and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. ⁶So the LORD God appointed a vine, and it grew up to provide shade over Jonah’s head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. ⁷When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. ⁸As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.” ⁹Then God asked Jonah, “Have you any right to be angry about the plant?” “I do,” he replied. “I am angry enough to die!” ¹⁰But the LORD said, “You cared about the plant, which you neither tended nor made grow. It sprang up in a night and perished in a night. ¹¹So should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well?”

1This is the word of the LORD that came to Micah the Moreshite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—what he saw regarding Samaria and Jerusalem: ²Hear, O peoples, all of you; listen, O earth, and everyone in it! May the Lord GOD bear witness against you, the Lord from His holy temple. ³For behold, the LORD comes forth from His dwelling place; He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth. ⁴The mountains will melt beneath Him, and the valleys will split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope. ⁵All this is for the transgression of Jacob and the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? ⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble in the open field, a planting area for a vineyard. I will pour her stones into the valley and expose her foundations. ⁷All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; all her wages will be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols. Since she collected the wages of a prostitute, they will be used again on a prostitute. ⁸Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich. ⁹For her wound is incurable; it has reached even Judah; it has approached the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem itself. ¹⁰Do not tell it in Gath; do not weep at all. Roll in the dust in Beth-leaphrah. ¹¹Depart in shameful nakedness, O dwellers of Shaphir. The dwellers of Zaanan will not come out. Beth-ezel is in mourning; its support is taken from you. ¹²For the dwellers of Maroth pined for good, but calamity came down from the LORD, even to the gate of Jerusalem. ¹³Harness your chariot horses, O dweller of Lachish. You were the beginning of sin to the Daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in you. ¹⁴Therefore, send farewell gifts to Moresheth-gath; the houses of Achzib will prove deceptive to the kings of Israel. ¹⁵I will again bring a conqueror against you, O dweller of Mareshah. The glory of Israel will come to Adullam. ¹⁶Shave yourselves bald and cut off your hair in mourning for your precious children; make yourselves as bald as an eagle, for they will go from you into exile.

2Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands. ²They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance. ³Therefore this is what the LORD says: “I am planning against this nation a disaster from which you cannot free your necks. Then you will not walk so proudly, for it will be a time of calamity. ⁴In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’” ⁵Therefore, you will have no one in the assembly of the LORD to divide the land by lot. ⁶“Do not preach,” they preach. “Do not preach these things; disgrace will not overtake us.” ⁷Should it be said, O house of Jacob, “Is the Spirit of the LORD impatient? Are these the things He does?” Do not My words bring good to him who walks uprightly? ⁸But of late My people have risen up like an enemy: You strip off the splendid robe from unsuspecting passersby like men returning from battle. ⁹You drive the women of My people from their pleasant homes. You take away My blessing from their children forever. ¹⁰Arise and depart, for this is not your place of rest, because its defilement brings destruction— a grievous destruction! ¹¹If a man of wind were to come and say falsely, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” he would be just the preacher for this people! ¹²I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will collect the remnant of Israel. I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in the midst of its pasture— a noisy throng. ¹³One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate, and go out by it. Their King will pass through before them, the LORD as their leader.