Daily Text and Bible Reading: Monday, January 6 [Press play below]

19.1 The two angels arrived at Sodom by evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the earth.
19.2 And he said: “Please, my lords, turn aside, please, into the house of your servant and stay overnight and have your feet washed. Then you may get up early and travel on your way.” To this they said: “No, we will stay overnight in the public square.”
19.3 But he was so insistent with them that they went with him to his house. Then he made a feast for them, and he baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
19.4 Before they could lie down to sleep, the men of the city—the men of Sodom from boy to old man, all of them—surrounded the house in one mob.
19.5 And they kept calling out to Lot and saying to him: “Where are the men who came in to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have sex with them.”
19.6 Then Lot went out to them to the doorway, and he shut the door behind him.
19.7 He said: “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.
19.8 Please, here I have two daughters who have never had sexual relations with a man. Please, let me bring them out to you for you to do to them whatever seems good to you. But do not do anything to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
19.9 At this they said: “Stand back!” And they added: “This lone foreigner came to live here, and yet he dares to judge us! Now we are going to do worse to you than to them.” And they crowded in on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
19.10 So the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and they shut the door.
19.11 But they struck the men who were at the entrance of the house with blindness, from the least to the greatest, so that they wore themselves out trying to find the doorway.
19.12 Then the men said to Lot: “Do you have anyone else here? Sons-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and all your people in the city, bring out of this place!
19.13 For we are going to destroy this place, because the outcry against them has indeed grown great before Jehovah, so that Jehovah sent us to destroy the city.”
19.14 So Lot went out and began to speak to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters, and he kept saying: “Get up! Get out of this place, because Jehovah will destroy the city!” But to his sons-in-law, he seemed to be joking.
19.15 As dawn was breaking, the angels became urgent with Lot, saying: “Get up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here with you, so that you will not be swept away in the error of the city!”
19.16 When he kept lingering, then because of Jehovah’s compassion for him, the men seized hold of his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, and they brought him out and stationed him outside the city.
19.17 As soon as they had brought them to the outskirts, he said: “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you and do not stand still in any part of the district! Escape to the mountainous region so that you may not be swept away!”
19.18 Then Lot said to them: “Not there, please, Jehovah!
19.19 Please, now, your servant has found favor in your eyes and you are showing great kindness to me by preserving me alive, but I am not able to flee to the mountainous region because I am afraid that disaster may overtake me and I will die.
19.20 Please, now, this town is nearby and I can flee there; it is only a small place. May I, please, escape there? It is only a small place. Then I will survive.”
19.21 So he said to him: “Very well, I will also show you consideration by not overthrowing the town you speak of.
19.22 Hurry! Escape there, because I cannot do anything until you arrive there!” That is why he named the town Zoar.
19.23 The sun had risen over the land when Lot arrived at Zoar.
19.24 Then Jehovah made it rain sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah—it came from Jehovah, from the heavens.
19.25 So he overthrew these cities, yes, the entire district, including all the inhabitants of the cities and the plants of the ground.
19.26 But Lot’s wife, who was behind him, began to look back, and she became a pillar of salt.
19.27 Now Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before Jehovah.
19.28 When he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the district, he saw quite a sight. There was dense smoke rising from the land like the dense smoke of a kiln!
19.29 So when God destroyed the cities of the district, God kept Abraham in mind by sending Lot out from the cities he overthrew, the cities where Lot had been dwelling.
19.30 Later Lot went up from Zoar with his two daughters and began living in the mountainous region, because he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he began living in a cave with his two daughters.
19.31 And the firstborn said to the younger: “Our father is old, and there is not a man in the land to have relations with us according to the custom of the whole earth.
19.32 Come, let us give our father wine to drink, and let us lie down with him and preserve offspring from our father.”
19.33 So that night they kept giving their father wine to drink; then the firstborn went in and lay down with her father, but he did not know when she lay down and when she got up.
19.34 Then on the next day, the firstborn said to the younger: “Here I lay down with my father last night. Let us give him wine to drink tonight also. Then you go in and lie down with him, and let us preserve offspring from our father.”
19.35 So that night also, they repeatedly gave their father wine to drink; then the younger went and lay down with him, but he did not know when she lay down and when she got up.
19.36 So both daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
19.37 The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab. He is the father of the Moabites of today.
19.38 The younger also gave birth to a son, and she named him Ben-ammi. He is the father of the Ammonites of today.
20.1 Now Abraham moved his camp from there to the land of the Negeb and began dwelling between Kadesh and Shur. While he was residing at Gerar,
20.2 Abraham repeated concerning his wife Sarah: “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her.
20.3 Afterward, God came by night to Abimelech in a dream and said to him: “Here you are as good as dead because of the woman whom you have taken, since she is married and belongs to another man.”
20.4 However, Abimelech had not gone near her. So he said: “Jehovah, will you kill a nation that is really innocent?
20.5 Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister,’ and did she too not say, ‘He is my brother’? I did this with an honest heart and innocent hands.”
20.6 Then the true God said to him in the dream: “I know that you did this with an honest heart, so I held you back from sinning against me. That is why I did not allow you to touch her.
20.7 Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will make supplication for you and you will keep living. But if you are not returning her, know that you will surely die, you and all who are yours.”
20.8 Abimelech got up early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things, and they became very frightened.
20.9 Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him: “What have you done to us? What sin have I committed against you that you would bring upon me and my kingdom such a great sin? What you have done to me was not right.”
20.10 And Abimelech went on to say to Abraham: “What were your intentions when you did this thing?”
20.11 Abraham said: “It was because I said to myself, ‘Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’
20.12 And besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.
20.13 So when God caused me to wander from the house of my father, I said to her: ‘Let this be how you show loyal love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”
20.14 Abimelech then took sheep and cattle and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham, and he returned his wife Sarah to him.
20.15 Abimelech also said: “Here my land is available to you. Dwell wherever you please.”
20.16 And to Sarah he said: “Here I give 1,000 pieces of silver to your brother. It is a sign of your innocence to all who are with you and before everybody, and you are cleared of reproach.”
20.17 And Abraham began to make supplication to the true God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his slave girls, and they began having children;
20.18 for Jehovah had made all the women of the house of Abimelech barren because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
21.1 Jehovah turned his attention to Sarah just as he had said, and Jehovah did for Sarah what he had promised.
21.2 So Sarah became pregnant and then bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time God had promised him.
21.3 Abraham named his newborn son, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac.
21.4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, just as God had commanded him.
21.5 Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
21.6 Then Sarah said: “God has brought me laughter; everybody hearing of it will laugh with me.”
21.7 And she added: “Who would have said to Abraham, ‘Sarah will certainly nurse children’? Yet, I have given birth to a son for him in his old age.”
21.8 Now the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham prepared a big feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
21.9 But Sarah kept noticing that the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, was mocking Isaac.
21.10 So she said to Abraham: “Drive out this slave girl and her son, for the son of this slave girl is not going to be an heir along with my son, with Isaac!”
21.11 But what she said about his son was very displeasing to Abraham.
21.12 Then God said to Abraham: “Do not be displeased by what Sarah is saying to you about the boy and about your slave girl. Listen to her, for what will be called your offspring will be through Isaac.
21.13 As for the son of the slave girl, I will also make a nation out of him, because he is your offspring.”
21.14 So Abraham got up early in the morning and took bread and a skin bottle of water and gave it to Hagar. He set these on her shoulder and then sent her away along with the boy. So she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
21.15 Finally the water in the skin bottle was used up, and she pushed the boy under one of the bushes.
21.16 Then she went on and sat down by herself, about the distance of a bowshot away, because she said: “I do not want to watch the boy die.” So she sat down at a distance and began to cry aloud and to weep.
21.17 At that God heard the voice of the boy, and God’s angel called to Hagar from the heavens and said to her: “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the boy there where he is.
21.18 Get up, lift the boy and take hold of him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation.”
21.19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin bottle with water and gave the boy a drink.
21.20 And God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an archer.
21.21 He took up dwelling in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
21.22 At that time Abimelech together with Phicol the chief of his army said to Abraham: “God is with you in everything you are doing.
21.23 So now swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me and with my offspring and with my descendants, and that you will deal with me and with the land where you have been residing with the same loyal love that I have shown you.”
21.24 So Abraham said: “I swear to this.”
21.25 However, Abraham complained to Abimelech about the well of water that the servants of Abimelech had violently seized.
21.26 Abimelech replied: “I do not know who did this; you did not tell me about it, and I heard nothing about it until today.”
21.27 At that Abraham took sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant.
21.28 When Abraham set seven female lambs apart from the flock by themselves,
21.29 Abimelech said to Abraham: “Why have you set these seven female lambs here by themselves?”
21.30 Then he said: “You are to accept the seven female lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.”
21.31 That is why he called that place Beer-sheba, because there both of them had taken an oath.
21.32 So they made a covenant at Beer-sheba, after which Abimelech got up together with Phicol the chief of his army, and they returned to the land of the Philistines.
21.33 After that he planted a tamarisk tree at Beer-sheba, and there he called on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God.
21.34 And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time.
22.1 Now after this the true God put Abraham to the test, and he said to him: “Abraham!” to which he replied: “Here I am!”
22.2 Then he said: “Take, please, your son, your only son whom you so love, Isaac, and travel to the land of Moriah and offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will designate to you.”
22.3 So Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his servants along with him and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and then he rose and traveled to the place that the true God indicated to him.
22.4 On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place from a distance.
22.5 Abraham now said to his servants: “You stay here with the donkey, but the boy and I will go over there and worship and return to you.”
22.6 So Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. Then he took in his hands the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together.
22.7 Then Isaac said to his father Abraham: “My father!” He replied: “Yes, my son!” So he continued: “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
22.8 To this Abraham said: “God himself will provide the sheep for the burnt offering, my son.” And both of them walked on together.
22.9 Finally they reached the place that the true God had indicated to him, and Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac hand and foot and put him on the altar on top of the wood.
22.10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.
22.11 But Jehovah’s angel called to him from the heavens and said: “Abraham, Abraham!” to which he answered: “Here I am!”
22.12 Then he said: “Do not harm the boy, and do not do anything at all to him, for now I do know that you are God-fearing because you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.”
22.13 At that Abraham looked up, and there just beyond him was a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.
22.14 And Abraham named that place Jehovah-jireh. This is why it is still said today: “In the mountain of Jehovah it will be provided.”
22.15 And Jehovah’s angel called to Abraham a second time from the heavens,
22.16 saying: “‘By myself I swear,’ declares Jehovah, ‘that because you have done this and you have not withheld your son, your only one,
22.17 I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring like the stars of the heavens and like the grains of sand on the seashore, and your offspring will take possession of the gate of his enemies.
22.18 And by means of your offspring all nations of the earth will obtain a blessing for themselves because you have listened to my voice.’”
22.19 After that Abraham returned to his servants, and they got up and went back together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham continued to dwell at Beer-sheba.
22.20 After this it was reported to Abraham: “Here Milcah has also borne sons to Nahor your brother:
22.21 Uz his firstborn, Buz his brother, Kemuel the father of Aram,
22.22 Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.”
22.23 Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Milcah bore these eight to Nahor the brother of Abraham.
22.24 His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore sons: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.