Daily Bible GNT June 24 Scroll

The Teaching of the Ancestors
(Matthew 15.1-9)

Mark 7 Some Pharisees and teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus. ²They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean--that is, they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should.

( ³ For the Pharisees, as well as the rest of the Jews, follow the teaching they received from their ancestors: they do not eat unless they wash their hands in the proper way; ⁴nor do they eat anything that comes from the market unless they wash it first. And they follow many other rules which they have received, such as the proper way to wash cups, pots, copper bowls, and beds. )

⁵So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law asked Jesus, "Why is it that your disciples do not follow the teaching handed down by our ancestors, but instead eat with ritually unclean hands?"

⁶Jesus answered them, "How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! You are hypocrites, just as he wrote:

'These people, says God, honor me with their words,

but their heart is really far away from me.

⁷It is no use for them to worship me,

because they teach human rules

as though they were my laws!'

⁸"You put aside God's command and obey human teachings."

⁹And Jesus continued, "You have a clever way of rejecting God's law in order to uphold your own teaching. ¹⁰For Moses commanded, 'Respect your father and your mother,' and, 'If you curse your father or your mother, you are to be put to death.' ¹¹But you teach that if people have something they could use to help their father or mother, but say, 'This is Corban' (which means, it belongs to God), ¹²they are excused from helping their father or mother. ¹³In this way the teaching you pass on to others cancels out the word of God. And there are many other things like this that you do."

Hushai Misleads Absalom

2 Samuel 17 Not long after that, Ahithophel said to Absalom, "Let me choose twelve thousand men, and tonight I will set out after David. ²I will attack him while he is tired and discouraged. He will be frightened, and all his men will run away. I will kill only the king ³and then bring back all his men to you, like a bride returning to her husband. You want to kill only one man; the rest of the people will be safe." ⁴This seemed like good advice to Absalom and all the Israelite leaders.

⁵Absalom said, "Now call Hushai, and let us hear what he has to say." ⁶When Hushai arrived, Absalom said to him, "This is the advice that Ahithophel has given us; shall we follow it? If not, you tell us what to do."

⁷Hushai answered, "The advice Ahithophel gave you this time is no good. ⁸You know that your father David and his men are hard fighters and that they are as fierce as a mother bear robbed of her cubs. Your father is an experienced soldier and does not stay with his men at night. ⁹Right now he is probably hiding in a cave or some other place. As soon as David attacks your men, whoever hears about it will say that your men have been defeated. ¹⁰Then even the bravest men, as fearless as lions, will be afraid because everyone in Israel knows that your father is a great soldier and that his men are hard fighters. ¹¹My advice is that you bring all the Israelites together from one end of the country to the other, as many as the grains of sand on the seashore, and that you lead them personally in battle. ¹²We will find David wherever he is, and attack him before he knows what's happening. Neither he nor any of his men will survive. ¹³If he retreats into a city, our people will all bring ropes and just pull the city into the valley below. Not a single stone will be left there on top of the hill."

¹⁴Absalom and all the Israelites said, "Hushai's advice is better than Ahithophel's." The LORD had decided that Ahithophel's good advice would not be followed, so that disaster would come on Absalom.

David Is Warned and Escapes

¹⁵Then Hushai told the priests Zadok and Abiathar what advice he had given to Absalom and the Israelite leaders and what advice Ahithophel had given. ¹⁶Hushai added, "Quick, now! Send a message to David not to spend the night at the river crossings in the wilderness, but to cross the Jordan at once, so that he and his men won't all be caught and killed."

¹⁷Abiathar's son Jonathan and Zadok's son Ahimaaz were waiting at the spring of Enrogel, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, because they did not dare be seen entering the city. A servant woman would regularly go and tell them what was happening, and then they would go and tell King David. ¹⁸But one day a boy happened to see them, and he told Absalom; so they hurried off to hide in the house of a certain man in Bahurim. He had a well near his house, and they got down in it. ¹⁹The man's wife took a covering, spread it over the opening of the well and scattered grain over it, so that no one would notice anything. ²⁰Absalom's officials came to the house and asked the woman, "Where are Ahimaaz and Jonathan?"

"They crossed the river," she answered.

The men looked for them but could not find them, and so they returned to Jerusalem. ²¹After they left, Ahimaaz and Jonathan came up out of the well and went and reported to King David. They told him what Ahithophel had planned against him and said, "Hurry up and cross the river." ²²So David and his men started crossing the Jordan, and by daybreak they had all gone across.

²³When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and went back to his hometown. After putting his affairs in order, he hanged himself. He was buried in the family grave.

²⁴David had reached the town of Mahanaim by the time Absalom and the Israelites had crossed the Jordan. ( ²⁵Absalom had put Amasa in command of the army in the place of Joab. Amasa was the son of Jether the Ishmaelite; his mother was Abigail, the daughter of Nahash and the sister of Joab's mother Zeruiah.) ²⁶Absalom and his men camped in the land of Gilead.

²⁷When David arrived at Mahanaim, he was met by Shobi son of Nahash, from the city of Rabbah in Ammon, and by Machir son of Ammiel, from Lodebar, and by Barzillai, from Rogelim in Gilead. ^28-29They brought bowls, clay pots, and bedding, and also food for David and his men: wheat, barley, meal, roasted grain, beans, peas, honey, cheese, cream, and some sheep. They knew that David and his men would get hungry, thirsty, and tired in the wilderness.

The Kingdoms of Egypt and Syria

>Daniel 11 The angel said, "Three more kings will rule over Persia, followed by a fourth, who will be richer than all the others. At the height of his power and wealth he will challenge the kingdom of Greece.

³"Then a heroic king will appear. He will rule over a huge empire and do whatever he wants. ⁴But at the height of his power his empire will break up and be divided into four parts. Kings not descended from him will rule in his place, but they will not have the power that he had.

⁵"The king of Egypt will be strong. One of his generals, however, will be even stronger and rule a greater kingdom. ⁶After a number of years the king of Egypt will make an alliance with the king of Syria and give him his daughter in marriage. But the alliance will not last, and she, her husband, her child, and the servants who went with her will all be killed. ⁷Soon afterward one of her relatives will become king. He will attack the army of the king of Syria, enter their fortress, and defeat them. ⁸He will carry back to Egypt the images of their gods and the articles of gold and silver dedicated to those gods. After several years of peace ⁹the king of Syria will invade Egypt, but he will be forced to retreat.

¹⁰"The sons of the king of Syria will prepare for war and gather a large army. One of them will sweep on like a flood and attack an enemy fortress. ¹¹In his anger the king of Egypt will go to war against the king of Syria and capture his huge army. ¹²He will be proud of his victory and of the many soldiers he has killed, but he will not continue to be victorious.

¹³"The king of Syria will go back and gather a larger army than he had before. When the proper time comes, he will return with a large, well-equipped army. ¹⁴Then many people will rebel against the king of Egypt. And some violent people from your nation, Daniel, will rebel because of a vision they have seen, but they will be defeated. ¹⁵So the king of Syria will lay siege to a fortified city and capture it. The soldiers of Egypt will not continue to fight; even the best of them will not have enough strength. ¹⁶The Syrian invader will do with them as he pleases, without opposition. He will stand in the Promised Land and have it completely in his power.

¹⁷"The king of Syria will plan an expedition, using his whole army. Then, in order to destroy his enemy's kingdom, he will make an alliance with him and offer him his daughter in marriage; but his plan will not succeed. ¹⁸After that he will attack the nations by the sea and conquer many of them. But a foreign leader will defeat him and put an end to his arrogance; indeed he will turn the arrogance of Syria's king back on him. ¹⁹The king will return to the fortresses of his own land, but he will be defeated, and that will be the end of him.

²⁰"He will be followed by another king, who will send an officer to oppress the people with taxes in order to increase the wealth of his kingdom. In a short time that king will be killed, but not publicly and not in battle."

This reading is from The Holy Bible, Today's English Version, Second Edition copyright © American Bible Society, 1992;
Old Testament copyright © American Bible Society, 1976, 1992; New Testament © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992.

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