Read To Me DAILYSample

EXODUS 36-37:
Yesterday we read about how Moses returned to the top of the mountain, taking two stone tablets which he had made, and God repeated many of the terms of the covenant. In the Hebrew text, chapter 34:28 says that ‘he’ engraved the Ten Commandments over again on the second set of stone tablets. Because Moses is the last actor mentioned, some translations take it that Moses engraved the second set of tablets. But we know from Exodus 34:1 and Deuteronomy 10:2-4 that God engraved both sets. Then after Moses came back down the mountain, the people responded to God by willingly bringing all that was required to make the Tabernacle.

PSALM 7:
Psalm 7 is the song of a slandered saint.

Psalm 7 is one of the Psalms and in our English translations where it seems like the writer shifted unexpected from praying to God directly, to speaking to the reader about God. Some Psalms shift back and forth between speaking about and praying to God with dizzying frequency.  However readers of the original Hebrew may understand such psalms as praying directly to God from start to finish. I don’t have the space here to explain the vast differences between Hebrew and English that have skewed our translations in this way, and I admit that I don’t understand the causes well enough to write clearly about them.

I can only say this: When reading Old Testament prayers in the NLT, GNT, or NIV, you may notice rapid changes: Talk to God, talk about God, pray to God again, then talk about God again. If you want to see a translation which does a more coherent job of translating OT prayers, take a look at the Contemporary English Version. The CEV is available in the YouVersion Bible app, but does not have recordings. I appreciate that the CEV translators made many Psalms sound like the writer is praying to God all the way through.

LUKE 6b:
In the first half of Luke 6 yesterday, we saw the beginning of opposition to Jesus based on the way He kept the Sabbath law. He kept the Law, but did not follow added traditions. He chose his 12 disciples, and called them apostles. This biblical term basically means representatives. Then he gave the Beatitudes, which in Luke— unlike the more famous set in Matthew, include both the Blessings and corresponding Woes.