Deuteronomy 9

• 1. "Hear, O Israel! Today you are about to cross the Jordan River to occupy the land belonging to nations much greater and more powerful than you. They live in cities with walls that reach to the sky!
• 2. They are strong and tall--descendants of the famous Anakite giants. You've heard the saying, `Who can stand up to the Anakites?'
• 3. But the LORD your God will cross over ahead of you like a devouring fire to destroy them. He will subdue them so that you will quickly conquer them and drive them out, just as the LORD has promised.
• 4. "After the LORD your God has done this for you, don't say to yourselves, `The LORD has given us this land because we are so righteous!' No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is doing it.
• 5. It is not at all because you are such righteous, upright people that you are about to occupy their land. The LORD your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness, and to fulfill the oath he had sworn to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 6. I will say it again: The LORD your God is not giving you this good land because you are righteous, for you are not--you are a stubborn people.
• 7. "Remember how angry you made the LORD your God out in the wilderness. From the day you left Egypt until now, you have constantly rebelled against him.
• 8. Remember how angry you made the LORD at Mount Sinai, where he was ready to destroy you.
• 9. That was when I was on the mountain receiving the tablets of stone inscribed with the covenant that the LORD had made with you. I was there for forty days and forty nights, and all that time I ate nothing and drank no water.
• 10. The LORD gave me the covenant, the tablets on which God himself had written all the words he had spoken to you from the fire on the mountain.
• 11. "At the end of the forty days and nights, the LORD handed me the two stone tablets with the covenant inscribed on them.
• 12. Then the LORD said to me, `Go down immediately because the people you led out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have already turned from the way I commanded them to live and have cast an idol for themselves from gold.'
• 13. "The LORD said to me, `I have been watching this people, and they are extremely stubborn.
• 14. Leave me alone so I may destroy them and erase their name from under heaven. Then I will make a mighty nation of your descendants, a nation larger and more powerful than they are.'
• 15. "So I came down from the fiery mountain, holding in my hands the two stone tablets of the covenant.
• 16. There below me I could see the gold calf you had made in your terrible sin against the LORD your God. How quickly you had turned from the path the LORD had commanded you to follow!
• 17. So I raised the stone tablets and dashed them to the ground. I smashed them before your very eyes.
• 18. Then for forty days and nights I lay prostrate before the LORD, neither eating bread nor drinking water. I did this because you had sinned by doing what the LORD hated, thus making him very angry.
• 19. How I feared for you, for the LORD was ready to destroy you. But again he listened to me.
• 20. The LORD was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him. But I prayed for Aaron, and the LORD spared him.
• 21. I took your sin--the calf you had made--and I melted it in the fire and ground it into fine dust. I threw the dust into the stream that cascades down the mountain.
• 22. "You also made the LORD angry at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth-hattaavah.
• 23. And at Kadesh-barnea the LORD sent you out with this command: `Go up and take the land I have given you.' But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God and refused to trust him or obey him.
• 24. Yes, you have been rebelling against the LORD as long as I have known you.
• 25. "That is why I fell down and lay before the LORD for forty days and nights when he was ready to destroy you.
• 26. I prayed to the LORD and said, `O Sovereign LORD, do not destroy your own people. They are your special possession, redeemed from Egypt by your mighty power and glorious strength.
• 27. Overlook the stubbornness and sin of these people, but remember instead your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 28. If you destroy these people, the Egyptians will say, "The LORD destroyed them because he wasn't able to bring them to the land he had sworn to give them." Or they might say, "He destroyed them because he hated them; he brought them into the wilderness to slaughter them."
• 29. But they are your people and your special possession, whom you brought from Egypt by your mighty power and glorious strength.'

Psalms 92

• 1. It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to the Most High.
• 2. It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening,
• 3. accompanied by the harp and lute and the harmony of the lyre.
• 4. You thrill me, LORD, with all you have done for me! I sing for joy because of what you have done.
• 5. O LORD, what great miracles you do! And how deep are your thoughts.
• 6. Only an ignorant person would not know this! Only a fool would not understand it.
• 7. Although the wicked flourish like weeds, and evildoers blossom with success, there is only eternal destruction ahead of them.
• 8. But you are exalted in the heavens. You, O LORD, continue forever.
• 9. Your enemies, LORD, will surely perish; all evildoers will be scattered.
• 10. But you have made me as strong as a wild bull. How refreshed I am by your power!
• 11. With my own eyes I have seen the downfall of my enemies; with my own ears I have heard the defeat of my wicked opponents.
• 12. But the godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon.
• 13. For they are transplanted into the LORD's own house. They flourish in the courts of our God.
• 14. Even in old age they will still produce fruit; they will remain vital and green.
• 15. They will declare, "The LORD is just! He is my rock! There is nothing but goodness in him!"

Psalms 93

• 1. The LORD is king! He is robed in majesty. Indeed, the LORD is robed in majesty and armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.
• 2. Your throne, O LORD, has been established from time immemorial. You yourself are from the everlasting past.
• 3. The mighty oceans have roared, O LORD. The mighty oceans roar like thunder; the mighty oceans roar as they pound the shore.
• 4. But mightier than the violent raging of the seas, mightier than the breakers on the shore--the LORD above is mightier than these!
• 5. Your royal decrees cannot be changed. The nature of your reign, O LORD, is holiness forever.

Isaiah 37

• 1. When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the Temple of the LORD to pray.
• 2. And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the court secretary, and the leading priests, all dressed in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
• 3. They told him, "This is what King Hezekiah says: This is a day of trouble, insult, and disgrace. It is like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver it.
• 4. But perhaps the LORD your God has heard the Assyrian representative defying the living God and will punish him for his words. Oh, pray for those of us who are left!"
• 5. After King Hezekiah's officials delivered the king's message to Isaiah,
• 6. the prophet replied, "Say to your master, `This is what the LORD says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king's messengers.
• 7. Listen! I myself will make sure that the king will receive a report from Assyria telling him that he is needed at home. Then I will make him want to return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.'"
• 8. Meanwhile, the Assyrian representative left Jerusalem and went to consult his king, who had left Lachish and was attacking Libnah.
• 9. Soon afterward King Sennacherib received word that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent this message back to Hezekiah in Jerusalem:
• 10. "This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don't let this God you trust deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria.
• 11. You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have crushed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different?
• 12. Have the gods of other nations rescued them--such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? The former kings of Assyria destroyed them all!
• 13. What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?"
• 14. After Hezekiah received the letter and read it, he went up to the LORD's Temple and spread it out before the LORD.
• 15. And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the LORD:
• 16. "O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth.
• 17. Listen to me, O LORD, and hear! Open your eyes, O LORD, and see! Listen to Sennacherib's words of defiance against the living God.
• 18. "It is true, LORD, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations, just as the message says.
• 19. And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all--only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands.
• 20. Now, O LORD our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
• 21. Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: This is my answer to your prayer concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria.
• 22. This is the message that the LORD has spoken against him: `The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and laughs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem scoffs and shakes her head as you flee.
• 23. `Whom do you think you have been insulting and ridiculing? Against whom did you raise your voice? At whom did you look in such proud condescension? It was the Holy One of Israel!
• 24. By your messengers you have mocked the Lord. You have said, "With my many chariots I have conquered the highest mountains--yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest cypress trees. I have reached its farthest corners and explored its deepest forests.
• 25. I have dug wells in many a foreign land and refreshed myself with their water. I even stopped up the rivers of Egypt so that my armies could go across!"
• 26. `But have you not heard? It was I, the LORD, who decided this long ago. Long ago I planned what I am now causing to happen, that you should crush fortified cities into heaps of rubble.
• 27. That is why their people have so little power and are such easy prey for you. They are as helpless as the grass, as easily trampled as tender green shoots. They are like grass sprouting on a housetop, easily scorched by the sun.
• 28. `But I know you well--your comings and goings and all you do. I know the way you have raged against me.
• 29. And because of your arrogance against me, which I have heard for myself, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your mouth. I will make you return by the road on which you came.'"
• 30. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Here is the proof that the LORD will protect this city from Assyria's king. This year you will eat only what grows up by itself, and next year you will eat what springs up from that. But in the third year you will plant crops and harvest them; you will tend vineyards and eat their fruit.
• 31. And you who are left in Judah, who have escaped the ravages of the siege, will take root again in your own soil, and you will flourish and multiply.
• 32. For a remnant of my people will spread out from Jerusalem, a group of survivors from Mount Zion. The passion of the LORD Almighty will make this happen!
• 33. "And this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: His armies will not enter Jerusalem to shoot their arrows. They will not march outside its gates with their shields and build banks of earth against its walls.
• 34. The king will return to his own country by the road on which he came. He will not enter this city, says the LORD.
• 35. For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David, I will defend it."
• 36. That night the angel of the LORD went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian troops. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere.
• 37. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there.
• 38. One day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king of Assyria.

New Living Translation: 156 of 365 days.