¹Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lᴏʀᴅ, and the Lᴏʀᴅ delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years. ²Now there was a certain man from Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children. ³And the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. ⁴Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean. ⁵For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” ⁶So the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A Man of God came to me, and His countenance was like the countenance of the Angel of God, very awesome; but I did not ask Him where He was from, and He did not tell me His name. ⁷And He said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now drink no wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ ” ⁸Then Manoah prayed to the Lᴏʀᴅ, and said, “O my Lord, please let the Man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born.” ⁹And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the Angel of God came to the woman again as she was sitting in the field; but Manoah her husband was not with her. ¹⁰Then the woman ran in haste and told her husband, and said to him, “Look, the Man who came to me the other day has just now appeared to me!” ¹¹So Manoah arose and followed his wife. When he came to the Man, he said to Him, “Are You the Man who spoke to this woman?” And He said, “I am.” ¹²Manoah said, “Now let Your words come to pass! What will be the boy’s rule of life, and his work?” ¹³So the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful. ¹⁴She may not eat anything that comes from the vine, nor may she drink wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean. All that I commanded her let her observe.” ¹⁵Then Manoah said to the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ, “Please let us detain You, and we will prepare a young goat for You.” ¹⁶And the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ said to Manoah, “Though you detain Me, I will not eat your food. But if you offer a burnt offering, you must offer it to the Lᴏʀᴅ.” (For Manoah did not know He was the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ.) ¹⁷Then Manoah said to the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ, “What is Your name, that when Your words come to pass we may honor You?” ¹⁸And the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ said to him, “Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?” ¹⁹So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it upon the rock to the Lᴏʀᴅ. And He did a wondrous thing while Manoah and his wife looked on— ²⁰it happened as the flame went up toward heaven from the altar—the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ ascended in the flame of the altar! When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground. ²¹When the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ appeared no more to Manoah and his wife, then Manoah knew that He was the Angel of the Lᴏʀᴅ. ²²And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” ²³But his wife said to him, “If the Lᴏʀᴅ had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would He have shown us all these things, nor would He have told us such things as these at this time.” ²⁴So the woman bore a son and called his name Samson; and the child grew, and the Lᴏʀᴅ blessed him. ²⁵And the Spirit of the Lᴏʀᴅ began to move upon him at Mahaneh Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.

¹Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. ²Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, ³explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.” ⁴And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. ⁵But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. ⁶But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too. ⁷Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus.” ⁸And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. ⁹So when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. ¹⁰Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. ¹¹These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. ¹²Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. ¹³But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds. ¹⁴Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away, to go to the sea; but both Silas and Timothy remained there. ¹⁵So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed. ¹⁶Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. ¹⁷Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? ²⁰For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” ²¹For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. ²²Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; ²³for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ²⁴God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ ²⁹Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. ³⁰Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, ³¹because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” ³²And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” ³³So Paul departed from among them. ³⁴However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

¹In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the Lᴏʀᴅ, saying, ²“Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ: ‘Stand in the court of the Lᴏʀᴅ’s house, and speak to all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lᴏʀᴅ’s house, all the words that I command you to speak to them. Do not diminish a word. ³Perhaps everyone will listen and turn from his evil way, that I may relent concerning the calamity which I purpose to bring on them because of the evil of their doings.’ ⁴And you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ: “If you will not listen to Me, to walk in My law which I have set before you, ⁵to heed the words of My servants the prophets whom I sent to you, both rising up early and sending them (but you have not heeded), ⁶then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” ‘ ” ⁷So the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ. ⁸Now it happened, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lᴏʀᴅ had commanded him to speak to all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You will surely die! ⁹Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without an inhabitant’?” And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ. ¹⁰When the princes of Judah heard these things, they came up from the king’s house to the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ and sat down in the entry of the New Gate of the Lᴏʀᴅ’s house. ¹¹And the priests and the prophets spoke to the princes and all the people, saying, “This man deserves to die! For he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your ears.” ¹²Then Jeremiah spoke to all the princes and all the people, saying: “The Lᴏʀᴅ sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city with all the words that you have heard. ¹³Now therefore, amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lᴏʀᴅ your God; then the Lᴏʀᴅ will relent concerning the doom that He has pronounced against you. ¹⁴As for me, here I am, in your hand; do with me as seems good and proper to you. ¹⁵But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will surely bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and on its inhabitants; for truly the Lᴏʀᴅ has sent me to you to speak all these words in your hearing.” ¹⁶So the princes and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, “This man does not deserve to die. For he has spoken to us in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ our God.” ¹⁷Then certain of the elders of the land rose up and spoke to all the assembly of the people, saying: ¹⁸“Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts: “Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, And the mountain of the temple Like the bare hills of the forest.” ’ ¹⁹Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah ever put him to death? Did he not fear the Lᴏʀᴅ and seek the Lᴏʀᴅ’s favor? And the Lᴏʀᴅ relented concerning the doom which He had pronounced against them. But we are doing great evil against ourselves.” ²⁰Now there was also a man who prophesied in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath Jearim, who prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah. ²¹And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men and all the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death; but when Urijah heard it, he was afraid and fled, and went to Egypt. ²²Then Jehoiakim the king sent men to Egypt: Elnathan the son of Achbor, and other men who went with him to Egypt. ²³And they brought Urijah from Egypt and brought him to Jehoiakim the king, who killed him with the sword and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people. ²⁴Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, so that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.

¹Then He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. ²Now at vintage-time he sent a servant to the vinedressers, that he might receive some of the fruit of the vineyard from the vinedressers. ³And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴Again he sent them another servant, and at him they threw stones, wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully treated. ⁵And again he sent another, and him they killed; and many others, beating some and killing some. ⁶Therefore still having one son, his beloved, he also sent him to them last, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ⁷But those vinedressers said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸So they took him and killed him and cast him out of the vineyard. ⁹Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vinedressers, and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰Have you not even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. ¹¹This was the Lord’s doing, And it is marvelous in our eyes’?” ¹²And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitude, for they knew He had spoken the parable against them. So they left Him and went away. ¹³Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. ¹⁴When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? ¹⁵Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” ¹⁶So they brought it. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” ¹⁷And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him. ¹⁸Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: ¹⁹“Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁰Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. ²¹And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. ²²So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. ²³Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.” ²⁴Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? ²⁵For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. ²⁶But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? ²⁷He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.” ²⁸Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” ²⁹Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. ³¹And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” ³²So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. ³³And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him. ³⁵Then Jesus answered and said, while He taught in the temple, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? ³⁶For David himself said by the Holy Spirit: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” ’ ³⁷Therefore David himself calls Him ‘Lord’; how is He then his Son?” And the common people heard Him gladly. ³⁸Then He said to them in His teaching, “Beware of the scribes, who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, ³⁹the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, ⁴⁰who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.” ⁴¹Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. ⁴²Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. ⁴³So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; ⁴⁴for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.”