The Daily Audio Bible Reading for Sunday May 5, 2019 (NIV)

600 Brides for 600 Brothers

21 The Israelites had taken an oath in Mizpah, saying, “Not one of us will allow his daughter to marry a Benjaminite.” ² So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening, weeping loudly and uncontrollably. ³ They said, “Why, O Lord God of Israel, has this happened in Israel?” An entire tribe has disappeared from Israel today!”

⁴ The next morning the people got up early and built an altar there. They offered up burnt sacrifices and tokens of peace. ⁵ The Israelites asked, “Who from all the Israelite tribes has not assembled before the Lord?” They had made a solemn oath that whoever did not assemble before the Lord at Mizpah must certainly be executed. ⁶ The Israelites regretted what had happened to their brother Benjamin. They said, “Today we cut off an entire tribe from Israel! ⁷ How can we find wives for those who are left? After all, we took an oath in the Lord’s name not to give them our daughters as wives.” ⁸ So they asked, “Who from all the Israelite tribes did not assemble before the Lord at Mizpah?” Now it just so happened no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the gathering. ⁹ When they took roll call, they noticed none of the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead were there. ¹⁰ So the assembly sent 12,000 capable warriors against Jabesh Gilead. They commanded them, “Go and kill with your swords the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, including the women and little children. ¹¹ Do this: exterminate every male, as well as every woman who has had sexual relations with a male. But spare the lives of any virgins.” So they did as instructed. ¹² They found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred young girls who were virgins—they had never had sexual relations with a male. They brought them back to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.

¹³ The entire assembly sent messengers to the Benjaminites at the cliff of Rimmon and assured them they would not be harmed. ¹⁴ The Benjaminites returned at that time, and the Israelites gave to them the women they had spared from Jabesh Gilead. But there were not enough to go around.

¹⁵ The people regretted what had happened to Benjamin because the Lord had weakened the Israelite tribes. ¹⁶ The leaders of the assembly said, “How can we find wives for those who are left? After all, the Benjaminite women have been wiped out. ¹⁷ The remnant of Benjamin must be preserved. An entire Israelite tribe should not be wiped out. ¹⁸ But we can’t allow our daughters to marry them, for the Israelites took an oath, saying, ‘Whoever gives a woman to a Benjaminite will be destroyed!’ ¹⁹ However, there is an annual festival to the Lord in Shiloh, which is north of Bethel (east of the main road that goes up from Bethel to Shechem) and south of Lebonah.” ²⁰ So they commanded the Benjaminites, “Go hide in the vineyards, ²¹ and keep your eyes open. When you see the daughters of Shiloh coming out to dance in the celebration, jump out from the vineyards. Each one of you, catch yourself a wife from among the daughters of Shiloh and then go home to the land of Benjamin. ²² When their fathers or brothers come and protest to us, we’ll say to them, “Do us a favor and let them be, for we could not get each one a wife through battle. Don’t worry about breaking your oath! You would only be guilty if you had voluntarily given them wives.’”

²³ The Benjaminites did as instructed. They abducted two hundred of the dancing girls to be their wives. They went home to their own territory, rebuilt their cities, and settled down. ²⁴ Then the Israelites dispersed from there to their respective tribal and clan territories. Each went from there to his own property. ²⁵ In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right.

A Family Tragedy: Famine and Death

1 During the time of the judges there was a famine in the land of Judah. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah went to live as a resident foreigner in the region of Moab, along with his wife and two sons. ² (Now the man’s name was Elimelech, his wife was Naomi, and his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were of the clan of Ephrath from Bethlehem in Judah.) They entered the region of Moab and settled there. ³ Sometime later Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, so she and her two sons were left alone. ⁴ So her sons married Moabite women. (One was named Orpah and the other Ruth.) And they continued to live there about ten years. ⁵ Then Naomi’s two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, also died. So the woman was left all alone—bereaved of her two children as well as her husband! ⁶ So she decided to return home from the region of Moab, accompanied by her daughters-in-law, because while she was living in Moab she had heard that the Lord had shown concern for his people, reversing the famine by providing abundant crops.

Ruth Returns with Naomi

⁷ Now as she and her two daughters-in-law began to leave the place where she had been living to return to the land of Judah, ⁸ Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Listen to me! Each of you should return to your mother’s home! May the Lord show you the same kind of devotion that you have shown to your deceased husbands and to me! ⁹ May the Lord enable each of you to find security in the home of a new husband!” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept loudly. ¹⁰ But they said to her, “No! We will return with you to your people.”

¹¹ But Naomi replied, “Go back home, my daughters! There is no reason for you to return to Judah with me! I am no longer capable of giving birth to sons who might become your husbands! ¹² Go back home, my daughters! For I am too old to get married again. Even if I thought that there was hope that I could get married tonight and conceive sons, ¹³ surely you would not want to wait until they were old enough to marry! Surely you would not remain unmarried all that time! No, my daughters, you must not return with me. For my intense suffering is too much for you to bear. For the Lord is afflicting me!”

¹⁴ Again they wept loudly. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung tightly to her. ¹⁵ So Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is returning to her people and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law back home!” ¹⁶ But Ruth replied,

¹⁸ When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to dissuade her. ¹⁹ So the two of them journeyed together until they arrived in Bethlehem.

Naomi and Ruth Arrive in Bethlehem

When they entered Bethlehem, the whole village was excited about their arrival. The women of the village said, “Can this be Naomi?” ²⁰ But she replied to them, “Don’t call me ‘Naomi’! Call me ‘Mara’ because the Sovereign One has treated me very harshly. ²¹ I left here full, but the Lord has caused me to return empty-handed. Why do you call me ‘Naomi,’ seeing that the Lord has opposed me, and the Sovereign One has caused me to suffer?” ²² So Naomi returned, accompanied by her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth, who came back with her from the region of Moab. (Now they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.)

Conversation With a Samaritan Woman

⁴ But he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat right down beside the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.) ⁹ So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water? ¹² Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.”

¹³ Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. ¹⁴ But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” ¹⁶ He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” ¹⁷ The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!”

¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. ²⁴ God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

The Disciples Return

²⁷ Now at that very moment his disciples came back. They were shocked because he was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar, went off into the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Surely he can’t be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ So they left the town and began coming to him.

Workers for the Harvest

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” ³³ So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵ Don’t you say, ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see that the fields are already white for harvest! ³⁶ The one who reaps receives pay and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together. ³⁷ For in this instance the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you did not work for; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”

The Samaritans Respond

³⁹ Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the report of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they began asking him to stay with them. He stayed there two days, ⁴¹ and because of his word many more believed. ⁴² They said to the woman, “No longer do we believe because of your words, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this one really is the Savior of the world.”

Psalm 105