Extended Evening Devotion

¹ Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty,
² covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.
³ He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind;
⁴ he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.
⁵ He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.
⁶ You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.
⁷ At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
⁸ The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.
⁹ You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
¹⁰ You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills;
¹¹ they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹² Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; they sing among the branches.
¹³ From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
¹⁴ You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth
¹⁵ and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
¹⁶ The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
¹⁷ In them the birds build their nests; the stork has her home in the fir trees.
¹⁸ The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.
¹⁹ He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting.
²⁰ You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about.
²¹ The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.
²² When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens.
²³ Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.
²⁴ O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
²⁵ Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.
²⁶ There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.
²⁷ These all look to you, to give them their food in due season.
²⁸ When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
³⁰ When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
³¹ May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works,
³² who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke!
³³ I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.
³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD! (ESV)

¹⁴ “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.
¹⁵ You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed.
¹⁶ You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.
¹⁷ Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord GOD.
¹⁸ “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning.
¹⁹ “The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
²⁰ “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
²¹ Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
²² “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
²³ “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out,
²⁴ you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
²⁵ You shall serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.
²⁶ None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
²⁷ I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
²⁸ And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.
²⁹ I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.
³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.
³¹ And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
³² You shall make no covenant with them and their gods.
³³ They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.” (ESV)

³¹ And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath,
³² and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority.
³³ And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice,
³⁴ “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
³⁵ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm.
³⁶ And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!”
³⁷ And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.
³⁸ And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf.
³⁹ And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.
⁴⁰ Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.
⁴¹ And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.
⁴² And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them,
⁴³ but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.”
⁴⁴ And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. (ESV)

¹ “If in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him,
² then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities.
³ And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke.
⁴ And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.
⁵ Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the LORD, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled.
⁶ And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley,
⁷ and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed.
⁸ Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.’
⁹ So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.
¹⁰ “When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive,
¹¹ and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife,
¹² and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails.
¹³ And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
¹⁴ But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
¹⁵ “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,
¹⁶ then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn,
¹⁷ but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.
¹⁸ “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them,
¹⁹ then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives,
²⁰ and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’
²¹ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
²² “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
²³ his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

¹ “You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother.
² And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him.
³ And you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother’s, which he loses and you find; you may not ignore it.
⁴ You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again.
⁵ “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
⁶ “If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.
⁷ You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.
⁸ “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.
⁹ “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard.
¹⁰ You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.
¹¹ You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.
¹² “You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.
¹³ “If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her
¹⁴ and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity,’
¹⁵ then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate.
¹⁶ And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man to marry, and he hates her;
¹⁷ and behold, he has accused her of misconduct, saying, “I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity.” And yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city.
¹⁸ Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him,
¹⁹ and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days.
²⁰ But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman,
²¹ then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
²² “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
²³ “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her,
²⁴ then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
²⁵ “But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
²⁶ But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor,
²⁷ because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
²⁸ “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,
²⁹ then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.
³⁰ “A man shall not take his father’s wife, so that he does not uncover his father’s nakedness. (ESV)

¹ He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.
² And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’
³ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.
⁴ I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’
⁵ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
⁶ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’
⁷ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’
⁸ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
⁹ And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
¹⁰ “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
¹¹ If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
¹² And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?
¹³ No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
¹⁴ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.
¹⁵ And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
¹⁶ “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.
¹⁷ But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.
¹⁸ “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. (ESV)

¹³ The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.
¹⁴ She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
¹⁵ calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,
¹⁶ “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says,
¹⁷ “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
¹⁸ But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol. (ESV)