The Daily Audio Bible
Today's audio is from the CSB. Switch to the CSB to read along with the audio.
Victory with a Jawbone
15 But after a while, during the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat. “I am going to my wife in her room,” he said.
But her father would not let him enter. 2 “I thought for sure you had utterly hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister—isn’t she better than her? Please, let her be yours instead.”
3 Then Samson said to them, “This time I am blameless from the Philistines when I do harm to them.” 4 So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch between every two tails. 5 Then he set fire to the torches and released them into the standing grain of the Philistines, Thus he burned up both the stacks and the standing grain, along with vineyards and olive trees.
6 Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his best man.” So the Philistines came up and burnt her and her father with fire.
7 Then Samson said to them, “Since you have acted like this, surely I will take revenge on you—after that I will quit.” 8 So he struck them leg upon thigh with a great slaughter. Then he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9 Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked, “Why have you marched against us?”
They replied, “We have come to arrest Samson—to do to him as he did to us.”
11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are ruling over us? So what is this that you have done to us?”
He said to them, “As they did to me, so I have done to them.”
12 “We have come down to bind you,” they said to him, “so that we may hand you over to the Philistines.”
So Samson said to them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”
13 “No, we won’t kill you,” they said to him, “but we will bind you fast and hand you over to them.” So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted upon meeting him. But the Ruach Adonai came mightily upon him so that the ropes that were on his arms became like flax burned with fire and his bonds melted off his wrists. 15 Then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 Then Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
a heap . . . two heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
I struck down a thousand men.”
17 As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand. Then he named that place Ramat-lehi. [a] 18 Then he became very thirsty, so he called to Adonai and said, “You have granted this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant. So now, will I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?”
19 But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he drank, he regained his strength and revived. Therefore he called it En-hakkore[b], which is in Lehi to this day. 20 Then he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.
Delilah Betrays Samson
16 Once Samson went to Gaza and eyed a prostitute there, so he went to her. 2 The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here.” So they surrounded him, lay in ambush for him all night at the gate of the city, and kept quiet all night saying, “When morning light comes, then we kill him.” 3 But Samson lay in bed till midnight, got up at midnight, grabbed the doors of the city gate along with the two gateposts and pulled them up bar and all. Then he put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is near Hebron.
4 It came about afterward that he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 So the Philistine lords came up to her and said to her, “Coax him, see where his great strength comes from and by what we may overpower him, so we may bind him to subdue him—then we’ll each of us give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”
6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me please, where does your great strength come from? How could you be bound to subdue you?”
7 Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh cords that have never been dried, then I would be weak and be like any other man.” 8 So the Philistine lords brought up to her seven fresh cords that had never been dried, and she bound him with them, 9 while an ambush was waiting in an inner room.
“The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” she said to him. But he broke the cords just as a strand of straw snaps when it touches fire. So his strength remained unknown.
10 Delilah said to Samson, “Oh, you deceived me! You lied to me! Now tell me please, how you can be bound?”
11 He told her, “If they only bind me with new ropes never used for work, then I will be weak and be like any other man.” 12 So Delilah took new ropes, tied him up with them and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” Yet while the ambush was waiting in the inner room, he snapped them from his arms like a thread.
13 So Delilah said to Samson, “Up to now you’ve mocked me and told me lies! Tell me how you can be bound!”
He told her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web of a loom.” 14 So she pinned it with a pin and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin of the loom and the web.
15 “How can you say, ‘I love you,’” she said to him, “when your heart is not with me? This is three times you’ve deceived me and not told me where your great strength comes from.”
16 Now it came about when she nagged him daily with her speeches and kept bothering him, his soul was annoyed to death. 17 So he divulged to her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever been upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me, and I will be weak and be like any other man.”
18 Now when Delilah realized that he had confided to her all his heart, she sent and called for the Philistine lords saying, “Come up this time, for he has told me all his heart.” So the Philistine lords came up to her and brought the silver in their hand. 19 Then she made him sleep upon her knees, and she called for a man and had the seven locks of his head shaved off. She even began to humiliate him while his strength departed from him. 20 Then she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” When he awoke from his sleep, he thought, “I’ll go out as at other times, and shake myself off.” He did not comprehend that Adonai had departed from him.
21 Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he became a grinder in the prison. 22 However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off.
Samson Avenged
23 Now the Philistine lords gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, as they said, “Our god has given our enemy Samson into our hand.”
24 When the people saw him, they praised their god, as they said, “Our god has given into our hand our enemy and the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us.”
25 Now it came about when their hearts were merry that they said, “Call for Samson, that he may amuse us.” So they called for Samson from the prison, and he did make them laugh, when they made him stand between the pillars.
26 Then Samson said to the lad that held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the temple rests, so I may lean on them.” 27 Now the temple was full of men and women. All the Philistine lords were there and about 3,000 men and women on the roof looking on while Samson was amusing them.
28 Then Samson called out to Adonai and said, “My Lord Adonai, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, so that I may this once take revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29 Then Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the temple rested and leaned on them, one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He bent with all his might so that the temple fell on the lords and on all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life.
31 Then his kinsmen and all his father’s household came down, lifted him, brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. For he had judged Israel 20 years.
Water to Wine
2 On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in the Galilee. Yeshua’s mother was there, 2 and Yeshua and His disciples were also invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine ran out, Yeshua’s mother said to Him, “They don’t have any wine!”
4 Yeshua said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with you and Me? My hour hasn’t come yet.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”
6 Now there were six stone jars, used for the Jewish ritual of purification, each holding two to three measures. [a] 7 Yeshua said to them, “Fill the jars with water!” So they filled them up to the top. 8 Then He said to them, “Take some water out, and give it to the headwaiter.” And they brought it.
9 Now the headwaiter did not know where it had come from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew. As the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, he calls the bridegroom 10 and says to him, “Everyone brings out the good wine first, and whenever they are drunk, then the worse. But you’ve reserved the good wine until now!” 11 Yeshua did this, the first of the signs, in Cana of the Galilee—He revealed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.
Yeshua Purges the Temple
12 After this Yeshua went down to Capernaum with His mother, brothers,[b] and disciples, and they stayed there a few days. 13 The Jewish feast of Passover was near, so Yeshua went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the Temple, He found the merchants selling oxen, sheep, and doves; also the moneychangers sitting there. 15 Then He made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the Temple, both the sheep and oxen. He dumped out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. 16 To those selling doves, He said, “Get these things out of here! Stop making My Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your House will consume Me!”[c]
18 The Judean leaders responded, “What sign do You show us, since You are doing these things?”
19 “Destroy this Temple,” Yeshua answered them, “and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Judean leaders then said to Him, “Forty-six years this Temple was being built, and You will raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was talking about the temple of His body. 22 So after He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He was talking about this. Then they believed the Scripture and the word that Yeshua had spoken.
23 Now when He was in Jerusalem for the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, seeing the signs He was doing. 24 But Yeshua did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all men. 25 He did not need anyone to testify about man, for He knew what was in man.
As a Father Has Compassion
Psalm 103
1 Of David.
Bless Adonai, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless His holy Name.
2 Bless Adonai, O my soul,
and forget not all His benefits:
3 He forgives all your iniquity.
He heals all your diseases.
4 He redeems your life from the Pit.
He crowns you with lovingkindness and compassions.
5 He satisfies your years with good things,
so that your youth is renewed like an eagle.
6 Adonai executes justice—
judgments for all who are oppressed.
7 He made His ways known to Moses,
His deeds to the children of Israel.
8 Adonai is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, and plentiful in mercy.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will He keep His anger forever.
10 He has not treated us according to our sins,
or repaid us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His mercy for those who fear Him.
12 As far as the east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so Adonai has compassion on those who fear Him.
14 For He knows our frame.
He remembers that we are but dust.
15 As for man, his days are like grass—
he flourishes like a flower of the field,
16 but when the wind blows over it, it is gone,
and its place is no longer known.
17 But the mercy of Adonai is from everlasting to everlasting
on those who revere Him,
His righteousness to children’s children,
18 to those who keep His covenant,
who remember to observe His instructions.
19 Adonai has set up His throne in the heavens,
and His kingdom rules over all.
20 Bless Adonai, you angels of His:
mighty in strength, performing His word,
upon hearing the utterance of His word.
21 Bless Adonai, all you His armies,
His servants who do His will.
22 Bless Adonai, all His works everywhere in His dominion.
Bless Adonai, O my soul!
17 One with a short temper acts foolishly,
and one with crafty schemes is hated.
18 The naïve inherit folly,
but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.
19 Evil men will bow in the presence of the good,
and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.
Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society.