Daily Readings - 24/06/2026

^49:1 Islands, listen to me, pay attention, remotest peoples. Yahweh called me before I was born, from my mother’s womb he pronounced my name.

^49:2 He made my mouth a sharp sword, and hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me into a sharpened arrow, and concealed me in his quiver.

^49:3 He said to me, ‘You are my servant (Israel) in whom I shall be glorified’;

^49:4 while I was thinking, ‘I have toiled in vain, I have exhausted myself for nothing’; and all the while my cause was with Yahweh, my reward with my God.

^49:6 ‘It is not enough for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel; I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth’.

^139:1 Yahweh, you examine me and know me,

^139:2 you know if I am standing or sitting, you read my thoughts from far away,

^139:3 whether I walk or lie down, you are watching, you know every detail of my conduct.

^139:4 The word is not even on my tongue, Yahweh, before you know all about it;

^139:5 close behind and close in front you fence me round, shielding me with your hand.

^139:6 Such knowledge is beyond my understanding, a height to which my mind cannot attain.

^139:7 Where could I go to escape your spirit? Where could I flee from your presence?

^139:8 If I climb the heavens, you are there, there too, if I lie in Sheol

^139:9 If I flew to the point of sunrise, or westward across the sea,

^139:10 your hand would still be guiding me, your right hand holding me.

^139:11 If I asked darkness to cover me, and light to become night around me,

^139:12 that darkness would not be dark to you, night would be as light as day.

^139:13 It was you who created my inmost self, and put me together in my mother’s womb;

^139:14 for all these mysteries I thank you: for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of your works. You know me through and through,

^139:15 from having watched my bones take shape when I was being formed in secret, knitted together in the limbo of the womb.

^139:16 You had scrutinised my every action, all were recorded in your book, my days listed and determined, even before the first of them

^139:17 occurred. God, how hard it is to grasp your thoughts! How impossible to count them!

^139:18 I could no more count them than I could the sand, and suppose I could, you would still be with me.

^139:19 God, If only you would kill the wicked! Men of blood, away from me!

^139:20 They talk blasphemously about you, regard your thoughts as nothing.

^139:21 Yahweh, do I not hate those who hate you, and loathe those who defy you?

^139:22 I hate them with a total hatred, I regard them as my own enemies.

^139:23 God, examine me and know my heart, probe me and know my thoughts;

^139:24 make sure I do not follow pernicious ways, and guide me in the way that is everlasting.

^13:22 Benjamin. After forty years, he deposed him and made David their king, of whom he approved in these words, “I have selected David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will carry out my whole purpose”.[*b]

^13:23 To keep his promise, God has raised up for Israel one of David’s descendants, Jesus, as Saviour,

^13:24 whose coming was heralded by John when he proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the whole people of Israel.

^13:25 Before John ended his career he said, “I am not the one you imagine me to be; that one is coming after me and I am not fit to undo his sandal”.

^13:26 ‘My brothers, sons of Abraham’s race, and all you who fear God, this message of salvation is meant for you.

^1:57 Meanwhile the time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son;

^1:58 and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.

^1:59 Now on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; they were going to call[*j] him Zechariah after his father,

^1:60 but his mother spoke up. ‘No,’ she said ‘he is to be called John.’

^1:61 They said to her, ‘But no one in your family has that name’,

^1:62 and made signs to his father to find out what he wanted him called.

^1:63 The father asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John’. And they were all astonished.

^1:64 At that instant his power of speech returned and he spoke and praised God.

^1:65 All their neighbours were filled with awe and the whole affair was talked about throughout the hill country of Judaea.

^1:66 All those who heard of it treasured it in their hearts. ‘What will this child turn out to be?’ they wondered. And indeed the hand of the Lord was with him.

^1:80 Meanwhile the child grew up and his spirit matured. And he lived out in the wilderness until the day he appeared openly to Israel.