Extended Evening Devotion

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
¹ Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the LORD delivers him;
² the LORD protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.
³ The LORD sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health.
⁴ As for me, I said, “O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”
⁵ My enemies say of me in malice, “When will he die, and his name perish?”
⁶ And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity; when he goes out, he tells it abroad.
⁷ All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me.
⁸ They say, “A deadly thing is poured out on him; he will not rise again from where he lies.”
⁹ Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
¹⁰ But you, O LORD, be gracious to me, and raise me up, that I may repay them!
¹¹ By this I know that you delight in me: my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.
¹² But you have upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in your presence forever.
¹³ Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen. (ESV)

¹ The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.
² And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds.
³ For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.
⁴ They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.
⁵ For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in.
⁶ And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the LORD.
⁷ When the people of Israel cried out to the LORD on account of the Midianites,
⁸ the LORD sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery.
⁹ And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land.
¹⁰ And I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”
¹¹ Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.
¹² And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor.”
¹³ And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
¹⁴ And the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?”
¹⁵ And he said to him, “Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
¹⁶ And the LORD said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.”
¹⁷ And he said to him, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me.
¹⁸ Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you.” And he said, “I will stay till you return.”
¹⁹ So Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour. The meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the terebinth and presented them.
²⁰ And the angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them.” And he did so.
²¹ Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight.
²² Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.”
²³ But the LORD said to him, “Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.”
²⁴ Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and called it, The LORD Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites. (ESV)

¹⁹ But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.
²⁰ But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.
²¹ When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch,
²² strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
²³ And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
²⁴ Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia.
²⁵ And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia,
²⁶ and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.
²⁷ And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
²⁸ And they remained no little time with the disciples.
¹ But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
² And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.
³ So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.
⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.
⁵ But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” (ESV)

¹⁴ Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD.
¹⁵ And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made the heavens and the earth.
¹⁶ Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.
¹⁷ Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands
¹⁸ and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed.
¹⁹ So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”
²⁰ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.
²¹ This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: “She despises you, she scorns you— the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you— the daughter of Jerusalem.
²² “Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel!
²³ By your messengers you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, ‘With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I entered its farthest lodging place, its most fruitful forest.
²⁴ I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.’
²⁵ “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins,
²⁶ while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.
²⁷ “But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.
²⁸ Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.
²⁹ “And this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
³⁰ And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
³¹ For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD will do this.
³² “Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.
³³ By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD.
³⁴ For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
³⁵ And that night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
³⁶ Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh.
³⁷ And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.

¹ In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’”
² Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying,
³ “Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
⁴ And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him:
⁵ “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD,
⁶ and I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.”
⁷ And Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.”
⁸ And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What shall be the sign that the LORD will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the LORD on the third day?”
⁹ And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?”
¹⁰ And Hezekiah answered, “It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps.”
¹¹ And Isaiah the prophet called to the LORD, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz.
¹² At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that Hezekiah had been sick.
¹³ And Hezekiah welcomed them, and he showed them all his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.
¹⁴ Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, “What did these men say? And from where did they come to you?” And Hezekiah said, “They have come from a far country, from Babylon.”
¹⁵ He said, “What have they seen in your house?” And Hezekiah answered, “They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.”
¹⁶ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD:
¹⁷ Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD.
¹⁸ And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
¹⁹ Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?”
²⁰ The rest of the deeds of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?
²¹ And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and Manasseh his son reigned in his place. (ESV)

¹ After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Malta.
² The native people showed us unusual kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all, because it had begun to rain and was cold.
³ When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand.
⁴ When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.”
⁵ He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.
⁶ They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.
⁷ Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days.
⁸ It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him.
⁹ And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.
¹⁰ They also honored us greatly, and when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.
¹¹ After three months we set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods as a figurehead.
¹² Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days.
¹³ And from there we made a circuit and arrived at Rhegium. And after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli.
¹⁴ There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome.
¹⁵ And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.
¹⁶ And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who guarded him. (ESV)

A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.
¹ O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
² For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads.
³ They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones.
⁴ They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!”
⁵ For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant—
⁶ the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites,
⁷ Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
⁸ Asshur also has joined them; they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah
⁹ Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
¹⁰ who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the ground.
¹¹ Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
¹² who said, “Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God.”
¹³ O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.
¹⁴ As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
¹⁵ so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!
¹⁶ Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O LORD.
¹⁷ Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace,
¹⁸ that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth. (ESV)