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Daily Readings for September 4
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2Kings 9
1.Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets, and said to him, "Put your belt on your waist, take this vial of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth Gilead. 2.When you come there, find Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go in, and make him arise up from among his brothers, and carry him to an inner room. 3.Then take the vial of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, 'Thus says Yahweh, "I have anointed you king over Israel."' Then open the door, flee, and don't wait."
4.So the young man, even the young man the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. 5.When he came, behold, the captains of the army were sitting. Then he said, "I have a message for you, captain."
Jehu said, "To which of us all?"
He said, "To you, O captain." 6.He arose, and went into the house. Then he poured the oil on his head, and said to him, "Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, 'I have anointed you king over the people of Yahweh, even over Israel. 7.You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of Yahweh, at the hand of Jezebel. 8.For the whole house of Ahab shall perish. I will cut off from Ahab everyone who urinates against a wall,4 both him who is shut up and him who is left at large in Israel. 9.I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah. 10.The dogs will eat Jezebel on the plot of ground of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.'" He opened the door, and fled.
11.Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and one said to him, "Is all well? Why did this mad fellow come to you?"
He said to them, "You know the man and what his talk was." 12.They said, "That is a lie. Tell us now."
He said, "He said to me, 'Thus says Yahweh, I have anointed you king over Israel.'"
13.Then they hurried, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew the trumpet, saying, "Jehu is king."
14.So Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired against Joram. (Now Joram was keeping Ramoth Gilead, he and all Israel, because of Hazael king of Syria; 15.but king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria.) Jehu said, "If this is your thinking, then let no one escape and go out of the city, to go to tell it in Jezreel." 16.So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there. Ahaziah king of Judah had come down to see Joram. 17.Now the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, "I see a company."
Joram said, "Take a horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, 'Is it peace?'"
18.So there went one on horseback to meet him, and said, "Thus says the king, 'Is it peace?'"
Jehu said, "What do you have to do with peace? Fall in behind me!"
The watchman said, "The messenger came to them, but he isn't coming back."
19.Then he sent out a second on horseback, who came to them, and said, "Thus says the king, 'Is it peace?'"
Jehu answered, "What do you have to do with peace? Fall in behind me!"
20.The watchman said, "He came to them, and isn't coming back. The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he drives furiously."
21.Joram said, "Get ready!"
They got his chariot ready. Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out, each in his chariot, and they went out to meet Jehu, and found him in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite. 22.It happened, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, "Is it peace, Jehu?"
He answered, "What peace, so long as the prostitution of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft abound?"
23.Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, "There is treason, Ahaziah!"
24.Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and struck Joram between his arms; and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. 25.Then Jehu said to Bidkar his captain, "Pick him up, and throw him in the plot of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember how, when you and I rode together after Ahab his father, Yahweh laid this burden on him: 26.'Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons,' says Yahweh; 'and I will repay you in this plot of ground,' says Yahweh. Now therefore take and cast him onto the plot of ground, according to the word of Yahweh."
27.But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. Jehu followed after him, and said, "Strike him also in the chariot!" They struck him at the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam. He fled to Megiddo, and died there. 28.His servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in the city of David. 29.In the eleventh year of Joram the son of Ahab began Ahaziah to reign over Judah. 30.When Jehu had come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her eyes, and attired her head, and looked out at the window. 31.As Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, "Do you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master?"
32.He lifted up his face to the window, and said, "Who is on my side? Who?"
Two or three eunuchs looked out at him.
33.He said, "Throw her down!"
So they threw her down; and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses. Then he trampled her under foot. 34.When he had come in, he ate and drink; and he said, "See now to this cursed woman, and bury her; for she is a king's daughter."
35.They went to bury her; but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands. 36.Therefore they came back, and told him.
He said, "This is the word of Yahweh, which he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 'The dogs will eat the flesh of Jezebel on the plot of Jezreel, 37.and the body of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel, so that they shall not say, "This is Jezebel."'"
Lamentations 5
1.Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us: Look, and see our reproach. 2.Our inheritance is turned to strangers, Our houses to aliens. 3.We are orphans and fatherless; Our mothers are as widows. 4.We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold to us. 5.Our pursuers are on our necks: We are weary, and have no rest. 6.We have given the hand to the Egyptians, To the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. 7.Our fathers sinned, and are no more; We have borne their iniquities. 8.Servants rule over us: There is none to deliver us out of their hand. 9.We get our bread at the peril of our lives, Because of the sword of the wilderness. 10.Our skin is black like an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine. 11.They ravished the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. 12.Princes were hanged up by their hand: The faces of elders were not honored. 13.The young men bare the mill; The children stumbled under the wood. 14.The elders have ceased from the gate, The young men from their music. 15.The joy of our heart is ceased; Our dance is turned into mourning. 16.The crown is fallen from our head: Woe to us! for we have sinned. 17.For this our heart is faint; For these things our eyes are dim; 18.For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: The foxes walk on it.
19.You, Yahweh, remain forever; Your throne is from generation to generation. 20.Why do you forget us forever, [And] forsake us so long time? 21.Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old. 22.But you have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us.
2Corinthians 3
1.Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as do some, letters of commendation to you or from you? 2.You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3.being revealed that you are a letter of Christ, served by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets that are hearts of flesh. 4.Such confidence we have through Christ toward God; 5.not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; 6.who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7.But if the service of death, written engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly on the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which was passing away: 8.won't service of the Spirit be with much more glory? 9.For if the service of condemnation has glory, the service of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 10.For most certainly that which has been made glorious has not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasses. 11.For if that which passes away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
12.Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech, 13.and not as Moses, who put a veil on his face, that the children of Israel wouldn't look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away. 14.But their minds were hardened, for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains, because in Christ it passes away. 15.But to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. 16.But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17.Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18.But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2Corinthians 4
1.Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we don't faint. 2.But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3.Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who perish; 4.in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them. 5.For we don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake; 6.seeing it is God who said, "Light will shine out of darkness,"2 who has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7.But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves. 8.We are pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not to despair; 9.pursued, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed; 10.always carrying in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11.For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh. 12.So then death works in us, but life in you. 13.But having the same spirit of faith, according to that which is written, "I believed, and therefore I spoke."3 We also believe, and therefore also we speak; 14.knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will present us with you. 15.For all things are for your sakes, that the grace, being multiplied through the many, may cause the thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. 16.Therefore we don't faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. 17.For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; 18.while we don't look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.