Strength in Weakness, Endurance in Faith

1. The children of Israel again did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight; and Yahweh delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. 2. There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and childless. 3. Yahweh’s angel appeared to the woman, and said to her, “See now, you are barren and childless; but you shall conceive, and bear a son. 4. Now therefore please beware and drink no wine nor strong drink, and don’t eat any unclean thing: 5. for, behold, you shall conceive, and give birth to a son. No razor shall come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb. He shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” 6. Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A man of God came to me, and his face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome. I didn’t ask him where he was from, neither did he tell me his name; 7. but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink. Don’t eat any unclean thing; for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’” 8. Then Manoah entreated Yahweh, and said, “Oh, Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us, and teach us what we should do to the child who shall be born.” 9. God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but Manoah, her husband, wasn’t with her. 10. The woman hurried and ran, and told her husband, and said to him, “Behold, the man who came to me that day has appeared to me,” 11. Manoah arose, and followed his wife, and came to the man, and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” He said, “I am.” 12. Manoah said, “Now let your words happen. What shall the child’s way of life and mission be?” 13. Yahweh’s angel said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her beware. 14. She may not eat of anything that comes of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. Let her observe all that I commanded her.” 15. Manoah said to Yahweh’s angel, “Please stay with us, that we may make a young goat ready for you.” 16. Yahweh’s angel said to Manoah, “Though you detain me, I won’t eat your bread. If you will prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to Yahweh.” For Manoah didn’t know that he was Yahweh’s angel. 17. Manoah said to Yahweh’s angel, “What is your name, that when your words happen, we may honor you?” 18. Yahweh’s angel said to him, “Why do you ask about my name, since it is incomprehensible?” 19. So Manoah took the young goat with the meal offering, and offered it on the rock to Yahweh. Then the angel did an amazing thing as Manoah and his wife watched. 20. For when the flame went up toward the sky from off the altar, Yahweh’s angel ascended in the flame of the altar. Manoah and his wife watched; and they fell on their faces to the ground. 21. But Yahweh’s angel didn’t appear to Manoah or to his wife any more. Then Manoah knew that he was Yahweh’s angel. 22. Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God.” 23. But his wife said to him, “If Yahweh were pleased to kill us, he wouldn’t have received a burnt offering and a meal offering at our hand, and he wouldn’t have shown us all these things, nor would he have told us such things as these at this time.” 24. The woman bore a son, and named him Samson. The child grew, and Yahweh blessed him. 25. Yahweh’s Spirit began to move him in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. 1. Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. 2. He came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, “I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. Now therefore get her for me as my wife.” 3. Then his father and his mother said to him, “Isn’t there a woman among your brothers’ daughters, or among all my people, that you go to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?” Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she pleases me well.” 4. But his father and his mother didn’t know that it was of Yahweh; for he sought an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines ruled over Israel. 5. Then went Samson down with his father and his mother to Timnah, and came to the vineyards of Timnah; and behold, a young lion roared against him. 6. Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and he tore him as he would have torn a young goat; and he had nothing in his hand, but he didn’t tell his father or his mother what he had done. 7. He went down, and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well. 8. After a while he returned to take her; and he went over to see the carcass of the lion; and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9. He took it into his hands, and went on, eating as he went. He came to his father and mother, and gave to them, and they ate, but he didn’t tell them that he had taken the honey out of the lion’s body. 10. His father went down to the woman; and Samson made a feast there, for the young men used to do so. 11. When they saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. 12. Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle now. If you can declare it to me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing; 13. but if you can’t declare it to me, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing.” They said to him, “Tell us your riddle, that we may hear it.” 14. He said to them, “Out of the eater came out food. Out of the strong came out sweetness.” They couldn’t in three days declare the riddle. 15. On the seventh day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband, that he may declare to us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you called us to impoverish us? Isn’t that so?” 16. Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, “You just hate me, and don’t love me. You’ve told a riddle to the children of my people, and haven’t told it to me.” He said to her, “Behold, I haven’t told my father or my mother, so why should I tell you?” 17. She wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted; and on the seventh day, he told her, because she pressed him severely; and she told the riddle to the children of her people. 18. The men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” He said to them, “If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have found out my riddle.” 19. Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and struck thirty men of them, and took their plunder, then gave the changes of clothing to those who declared the riddle. His anger burned, and he went up to his father’s house. 20. But Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his friend. 1. But after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. He said, “I will go in to my wife’s room.” But her father wouldn’t allow him to go in. 2. Her father said, “I most certainly thought that you utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her, instead.” 3. Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless in the case of the Philistines, when I harm them.” 4. Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the middle between every two tails. 5. When he had set the torches on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves. 6. Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” They said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion.” The Philistines came up, and burned her and her father with fire. 7. Samson said to them, “If you behave like this, surely I will take revenge on you, and after that I will cease.” 8. He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter; and he went down and lived in the cave in Etam’s rock. 9. Then the Philistines went up, encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. 10. The men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said, “We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us.” 11. Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cave in Etam’s rock, and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.” 12. They said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves.” 13. They spoke to him, saying, “No; but we will bind you securely, and deliver you into their hands; but surely we will not kill you.” They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock. 14. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burned with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands. 15. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it. 16. Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men.” 17. When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi. 18. He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19. But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived. Therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day. 20. He judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus, 2. to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3. I thank God, whom I serve as my forefathers did, with a pure conscience. How unceasing is my memory of you in my petitions, night and day 4. longing to see you, remembering your tears, that I may be filled with joy; 5. having been reminded of the sincere faith that is in you; which lived first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and, I am persuaded, in you also. 6. For this cause, I remind you that you should stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7. For God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. 8. Therefore don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but endure hardship for the Good News according to the power of God, 9. who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, 10. but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the Good News. 11. For this, I was appointed as a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. 12. For this cause I also suffer these things. Yet I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed to him against that day. 13. Hold the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. 14. That good thing which was committed to you, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. 15. This you know, that all who are in Asia turned away from me; of whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. 16. May the Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain, 17. but when he was in Rome, he sought me diligently, and found me 18. (the Lord grant to him to find the Lord’s mercy in that day); and in how many things he served at Ephesus, you know very well. 1. You therefore, my child, be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2. The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit the same to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 3. You therefore must endure hardship, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4. No soldier on duty entangles himself in the affairs of life, that he may please him who enrolled him as a soldier. 5. Also, if anyone competes in athletics, he isn’t crowned unless he has competed by the rules. 6. The farmer who labors must be the first to get a share of the crops. 7. Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things. 8. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the offspring of David, according to my Good News, 9. in which I suffer hardship to the point of chains as a criminal. But God’s word isn’t chained. 10. Therefore I endure all things for the chosen ones’ sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. 11. This saying is trustworthy: “For if we died with him, we will also live with him. 12. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. 13. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. For he can’t deny himself.” 14. Remind them of these things, charging them in the sight of the Lord, that they don’t argue about words, to no profit, to the subverting of those who hear. 15. Give diligence to present yourself approved by God, a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed, properly handling the Word of Truth. 16. But shun empty chatter, for it will go further in ungodliness, 17. and those words will consume like gangrene, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; 18. men who have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past, and overthrowing the faith of some. 19. However God’s firm foundation stands, having this seal, “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let every one who names the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.” 20. Now in a large house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of clay. Some are for honor, and some for dishonor. 21. If anyone therefore purges himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, and suitable for the master’s use, prepared for every good work. 22. Flee from youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23. But refuse foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing that they generate strife. 24. The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but be gentle towards all, able to teach, patient, 25. in gentleness correcting those who oppose him: perhaps God may give them repentance leading to a full knowledge of the truth, 26. and they may recover themselves out of the devil’s snare, having been taken captive by him to his will. 1. But know this, that in the last days, grievous times will come. 2. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3. without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, 4. traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; 5. holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. 6. For some of these are people who creep into houses, and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7. always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8. Even as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so do these also oppose the truth; men corrupted in mind, who concerning the faith are rejected. 9. But they will proceed no further. For their folly will be evident to all men, as theirs also came to be. 10. But you did follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, steadfastness, 11. persecutions, and sufferings: those things that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. I endured those persecutions. The Lord delivered me out of them all. 12. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14. But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. 15. From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. 16. Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, 17. that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. 1. I command you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom: 2. preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all patience and teaching. 3. For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts; 4. and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn away to fables. 5. But you be sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. 6. For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure has come. 7. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. 8. From now on, there is stored up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day; and not to me only, but also to all those who have loved his appearing. 9. Be diligent to come to me soon, 10. for Demas left me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. 11. Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service. 12. But I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. 13. Bring the cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus when you come, and the books, especially the parchments. 14. Alexander, the coppersmith, did much evil to me. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds, 15. of whom you also must beware; for he greatly opposed our words. 16. At my first defense, no one came to help me, but all left me. May it not be held against them. 17. But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me, that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and that all the Gentiles might hear; and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. 18. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me for his heavenly Kingdom; to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 19. Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the house of Onesiphorus. 20. Erastus remained at Corinth, but I left Trophimus at Miletus sick. 21. Be diligent to come before winter. Eubulus salutes you, as do Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brothers. 22. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen.

1. Save me, God, for the waters have come up to my neck! 2. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. 3. I am weary with my crying. My throat is dry. My eyes fail, looking for my God. 4. Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who want to cut me off, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. I have to restore what I didn’t take away. 5. God, you know my foolishness. My sins aren’t hidden from you. 6. Don’t let those who wait for you be shamed through me, Lord Yahweh of Armies. Don’t let those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, God of Israel. 7. Because for your sake, I have borne reproach. Shame has covered my face. 8. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s children. 9. For the zeal of your house consumes me. The reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. 10. When I wept and I fasted, that was to my reproach. 11. When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them. 12. Those who sit in the gate talk about me. I am the song of the drunkards. 13. But as for me, my prayer is to you, Yahweh, in an acceptable time. God, in the abundance of your loving kindness, answer me in the truth of your salvation. 14. Deliver me out of the mire, and don’t let me sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters. 15. Don’t let the flood waters overwhelm me, neither let the deep swallow me up. Don’t let the pit shut its mouth on me. 16. Answer me, Yahweh, for your loving kindness is good. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me. 17. Don’t hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress. Answer me speedily! 18. Draw near to my soul, and redeem it. Ransom me because of my enemies. 19. You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before you. 20. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none. 21. They also gave me gall for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. 22. Let their table before them become a snare. May it become a retribution and a trap. 23. Let their eyes be darkened, so that they can’t see. Let their backs be continually bent. 24. Pour out your indignation on them. Let the fierceness of your anger overtake them. 25. Let their habitation be desolate. Let no one dwell in their tents. 26. For they persecute him whom you have wounded. They tell of the sorrow of those whom you have hurt. 27. Charge them with crime upon crime. Don’t let them come into your righteousness. 28. Let them be blotted out of the book of life, and not be written with the righteous. 29. But I am in pain and distress. Let your salvation, God, protect me. 30. I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. 31. It will please Yahweh better than an ox, or a bull that has horns and hoofs. 32. The humble have seen it, and are glad. You who seek after God, let your heart live. 33. For Yahweh hears the needy, and doesn’t despise his captive people. 34. Let heaven and earth praise him; the seas, and everything that moves therein! 35. For God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah. They shall settle there, and own it. 36. The children also of his servants shall inherit it. Those who love his name shall dwell therein.