Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The One Year Bible TLB (99 page)
Only a simpleton believes everything he’s told! A prudent man understands the need for proof.
16
A wise man is cautious and avoids danger; a fool plunges ahead with great confidence.
May 2Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a present to his wife, intending to sleep with her; but her father wouldn’t let him in.
2
“I really thought you hated her,” he explained, “so I married her to your best man. But look, her sister is prettier than she is. Marry her instead.”
3
Samson was furious. “You can’t blame me for whatever happens now,” he shouted.
4
So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together in pairs, with a torch between each pair.
5
Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the fields of the Philistines, burning the grain to the ground along with all the sheaves and shocks of grain, and destroying the olive trees.
6
“Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.
“Samson,” was the reply, “because his wife’s father gave her to another man.” So the Philistines came and got the girl and her father and burned them alive.
7
“Now my vengeance will strike again!” Samson vowed.
8
So he attacked them with great fury and killed many of them. Then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Etam.
9
The Philistines in turn sent a huge posse into Judah and raided Lehi.
10
“Why have you come here?” the men of Judah asked.
And the Philistines replied, “To capture Samson and do to him as he has done to us.”
11
So three thousand men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam.
“What are you doing to us?” they demanded of him. “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are our rulers?”
But Samson replied, “I only paid them back for what they did to me.”
12-13
“We have come to capture you and take you to the Philistines,” the men of Judah told him.
“All right,” Samson said, “but promise me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
“No,” they replied, “we won’t do that.”
So they tied him with two new ropes and led him away.
14
As Samson and his captors arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted with glee; but then the strength of the Lord came upon Samson, and the ropes with which he was tied snapped like thread and fell from his wrists!
15
Then he picked up a donkey’s jawbone that was lying on the ground and killed a thousand Philistines with it.
16-17
Tossing away the jawbone, he remarked,
“Heaps upon heaps,
All with a donkey’s jaw!
I’ve killed a thousand men,
All with a donkey’s jaw!”
(The place has been called “Jawbone Hill” ever since.)
18
But now he was very thirsty and he prayed to the Lord and said, “You have given Israel such a wonderful deliverance through me today! Must I now die of thirst and fall to the mercy of these heathen?”
19
So the Lord caused water to gush out from a hollow in the ground, and Samson’s spirit was revived as he drank. Then he named the place “The Spring of the Man Who Prayed,” and the spring is still there today.
20
Samson was Israel’s leader for the next twenty years, but the Philistines still controlled the land.
16:
1
One day Samson went to the Philistine city of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute.
2
Word soon spread that he had been seen in the city, so the police were alerted and many men of the city lay in wait all night at the city gate to capture him if he tried to leave.
“In the morning,” they thought, “when there is enough light, we’ll find him and kill him.”
3
Samson stayed in bed with the girl until midnight, then went out to the city gates and lifted them, with the two gateposts, right out of the ground. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the mountain across from Hebron!
4
Later on he fell in love with a girl named Delilah over in the valley of Sorek.
5
The five heads of the Philistine nation went personally to her and demanded that she find out from Samson what made him so strong, so that they would know how to overpower and subdue him and put him in chains.
“Each of us will give you a thousand dollars for this job,” they promised.
6
So Delilah begged Samson to tell her his secret.
“Please
tell me, Samson, why you are so strong,” she pleaded. “I don’t think anyone could ever capture you!”
7
“Well,” Samson replied, “if I were tied with seven raw-leather bowstrings, I would become as weak as anyone else.”
8
So they brought her the seven bowstrings, and while he slept
*
she tied him with them.
9
Some men were hiding in the next room, so as soon as she had tied him up she exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines are here!”
Then he snapped the bowstrings like cotton thread,
*
and so his secret was not discovered.
10
Afterward Delilah said to him, “You are making fun of me! You told me a lie!
Please
tell me how you can be captured!”
11
“Well,” he said, “if I am tied with brand new ropes which have never been used, I will be as weak as other men.”
12
So that time, as he slept,
*
Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. The men were hiding in the next room, as before. Again Delilah exclaimed, “Samson! The Philistines have come to capture you!”
But he broke the ropes from his arms like spiderwebs!
13
“You have mocked me again and told me more lies!” Delilah complained. “Now tell me how you can
really
be captured.”
“Well,” he said, “if you weave my hair into your loom . . . !”
14
So while he slept, she did just that and then screamed, “The Philistines have come, Samson!” And he woke up and yanked his hair away, breaking the loom.
15
“How can you say you love me when you don’t confide in me?” she whined. “You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what makes you so strong!”
16-17
She nagged at him every day until he couldn’t stand it any longer and finally told her his secret.
“My hair has never been cut,” he confessed, “for I’ve been a Nazirite to God since before my birth. If my hair were cut, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else.”
18
Delilah realized that he had finally told her the truth, so she sent for the five Philistine leaders.
“Come just this once more,” she said, “for this time he has told me everything.”
So they brought the money with them.
19
She lulled him to sleep with his head in her lap, and they brought in a barber and cut off his hair. Delilah began to hit him, but she could see that his strength was leaving him.
20
Then she screamed, “The Philistines are here to capture you, Samson!” And he woke up and thought, “I will do as before; I’ll just shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize that the Lord had left him.
21
So the Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes and took him to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze chains and made to grind grain in the prison.
22
But before long his hair began to grow again.
23-24
The Philistine leaders declared a great festival to celebrate the capture of Samson. The people made sacrifices to their god Dagon and excitedly praised him.
“Our god has delivered our enemy Samson to us!” they gloated as they saw him there in chains. “The scourge of our nation who killed so many of us is now in our power!”
25-26
Half drunk by now, the people demanded, “Bring out Samson so we can have some fun with him!”
So he was brought from the prison and made to stand at the center of the temple, between the two pillars supporting the roof. Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, “Place my hands against the two pillars. I want to rest against them.”
27
By then the temple was completely filled with people. The five Philistine leaders were there as well as three thousand people in the balconies
*
who were watching Samson and making fun of him.
28
Then Samson prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord Jehovah, remember me again—please strengthen me one more time, so that I may pay back the Philistines for the loss of at least one of my eyes.”
29
Then Samson pushed against the pillars with all his might.
30
“Let me die with the Philistines,” he prayed.
And the temple crashed down upon the Philistine leaders and all the people. So those he killed at the moment of his death were more than those he had killed during his entire lifetime.
31
Later, his brothers and other relatives came down to get his body, and they brought him back home and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, where his father, Manoah, was buried. He had led Israel for twenty years.
Two days later Jesus’ mother was a guest at a wedding in the village of Cana in Galilee,
2
and Jesus and his disciples were invited too.
3
The wine supply ran out during the festivities, and Jesus’ mother came to him with the problem.
4
“I can’t help you now,”
he said.
*
“It isn’t yet my time for miracles.”
5
But his mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you to.”
6
Six stone waterpots were standing there; they were used for Jewish ceremonial purposes and held perhaps twenty to thirty gallons each.
7-8
Then Jesus told the servants to fill them to the brim with water. When this was done he said,
“Dip some out and take it to the master of ceremonies.”
9
When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from (though, of course, the servants did), he called the bridegroom over.
10
“This is wonderful stuff!” he said. “You’re different from most. Usually a host uses the best wine first, and afterwards, when everyone is full and doesn’t care, then he brings out the less expensive brands. But you have kept the best for the last!”
11
This miracle at Cana in Galilee was Jesus’ first public demonstration of his heaven-sent power. And his disciples believed that he really was the Messiah.
*
12
After the wedding he left for Capernaum for a few days with his mother, brothers, and disciples.
13
Then it was time for the annual Jewish Passover celebration, and Jesus went to Jerusalem.
14
In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices, and moneychangers behind their counters.
15
Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out, and drove out the sheep and oxen, scattering the moneychangers’ coins over the floor and turning over their tables!
16
Then, going over to the men selling doves, he told them,
“Get these things out of here. Don’t turn my Father’s House into a market!”
17
Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Concern for God’s House will be my undoing.”
18
“What right have you to order them out?” the Jewish leaders
*
demanded. “If you have this authority from God, show us a miracle to prove it.”
19
“All right,”
Jesus replied,
“this is the miracle I will do for you: Destroy this sanctuary and in three days I will raise it up!”
20
“What!” they exclaimed. “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can do it in three days?”
21
But by “this sanctuary” he meant his body.
22
After he came back to life again, the disciples remembered his saying this and realized that what he had quoted from the Scriptures really did refer to him, and had all come true!
23
Because of the miracles he did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many people were convinced that he was indeed the Messiah.
24-25
But Jesus didn’t trust them, for he knew mankind to the core. No one needed to tell him how changeable human nature is!
I bless the holy name of God with all my heart.
2
Yes, I will bless the Lord and not forget the glorious things he does for me.
3
He forgives all my sins. He heals me.
4
He ransoms me from hell. He surrounds me with loving-kindness and tender mercies.
5
He fills my life with good things! My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
6
He gives justice to all who are treated unfairly.
7
He revealed his will and nature to Moses and the people of Israel.
8
He is merciful and tender toward those who don’t deserve it; he is slow to get angry and full of kindness and love.
9
He never bears a grudge, nor remains angry forever.
10
He has not punished us as we deserve for all our sins,
11
for his mercy toward those who fear and honor him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
12
He has removed our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west.
13
He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him.
14
For he knows we are but dust
15
and that our days are few and brief, like grass, like flowers,
16
blown by the wind and gone forever.
17-18
But the loving-kindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to those who reverence him; his salvation is to children’s children of those who are faithful to his covenant and remember to obey him!
19
The Lord has made the heavens his throne; from there he rules over everything there is.
20
Bless the Lord, you mighty angels of his who carry out his orders, listening for each of his commands.
21
Yes, bless the Lord, you armies of his angels who serve him constantly.
22
Let everything everywhere bless the Lord. And how I bless him too!