Daily Devotions · September 9
Reading for September 9
Read the whole Bible in a year, a few chapters a day.
Lamentations 1–2 · Obadiah 1 · Revelation 14
Lamentations 1–2 · Obadiah 1 · Revelation 14, Berean Standard Bible
Lamentations 1
How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow. The princess of the provinces has become a slave. 2 She weeps aloud in the night, with tears upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. 3 Judah has gone into exile under affliction and harsh slavery; she dwells among the nations but finds no place to rest. All her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. 4 The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she herself is bitter with anguish. 5 Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. For the LORD has brought her grief because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away as captives before the enemy. 6 All the splendor has departed from the Daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture; they lack the strength to flee in the face of the hunter. 7 In the days of her affliction and wandering Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into enemy hands she received no help. Her enemies looked upon her, laughing at her downfall. 8 Jerusalem has sinned greatly; therefore she has become an object of scorn. All who honored her now despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns away. 9 Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O LORD, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed! 10 The adversary has seized all her treasures. For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary—those You had forbidden to enter Your assembly. 11 All her people groan as they search for bread. They have traded their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O LORD, and consider, for I have become despised. 12 Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger? 13 He sent fire from on high, and it overpowered my bones. He spread a net for my feet and turned me back. He made me desolate, faint all the day long. 14 My transgressions are bound into a yoke, knit together by His hand; they are draped over my neck, and the Lord has broken my strength. He has delivered me into the hands of those I cannot withstand. 15 The Lord has rejected all the mighty men in my midst; He has summoned an army against me to crush my young warriors. Like grapes in a winepress, the Lord has trampled the Virgin Daughter of Judah. 16 For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears. For there is no one nearby to comfort me, no one to revive my soul. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed. 17 Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. The LORD has decreed against Jacob that his neighbors become his foes. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them. 18 The LORD is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you people; look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into captivity. 19 I called out to my lovers, but they have betrayed me. My priests and elders perished in the city while they searched for food to keep themselves alive. 20 See, O LORD, how distressed I am! I am churning within; my heart is pounding within me, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is death. 21 People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have caused it. May You bring the day You have announced, so that they may become like me. 22 Let all their wickedness come before You, and deal with them as You have dealt with me because of all my transgressions. For my groans are many, and my heart is faint.
Lamentations 2
How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger. 2 Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes. 3 In fierce anger He has cut off every horn of Israel and withdrawn His right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it. 4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion. 5 The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah. 6 He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest. 7 The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast. 8 The LORD determined to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not withdraw His hand from destroying. He made the ramparts and walls lament; together they waste away. 9 Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the LORD. 10 The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. 11 My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. 12 They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers. 13 What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you? 14 The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading. 15 All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?” 16 All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!” 17 The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes. 18 The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest. 19 Arise, cry out in the night from the first watch of the night. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children who are fainting from hunger on the corner of every street. 20 Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? 21 Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion. 22 You summoned my terrors on every side, as for the day of an appointed feast. In the day of the LORD’s anger no one escaped or survived; my enemy has destroyed those I nurtured and reared.
Obadiah 1
This is the vision of Obadiah: This is what the Lord GOD says about Edom—We have heard a message from the LORD; an envoy has been sent among the nations to say, “Rise up, and let us go to battle against her!”— 2 “Behold, I will make you small among the nations; you will be deeply despised. 3 The pride of your heart has deceived you, O dwellers in the clefts of the rocks whose habitation is the heights, who say in your heart, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’ 4 Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down,” declares the LORD. 5 “If thieves came to you, if robbers by night—oh, how you will be ruined—would they not steal only what they wanted? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some gleanings? 6 But how Esau will be pillaged, his hidden treasures sought out! 7 All the men allied with you will drive you to the border; the men at peace with you will deceive and overpower you. Those who eat your bread will set a trap for you without your awareness of it. 8 In that day, declares the LORD, will I not destroy the wise men of Edom and the men of understanding in the mountains of Esau? 9 Then your mighty men, O Teman, will be terrified, so that everyone in the mountains of Esau will be cut down in the slaughter. 10 Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and cut off forever. 11 On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gate and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were just like one of them. 12 But you should not gloat in that day, your brother’s day of misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, nor boast proudly in the day of their distress. 13 You should not enter the gate of My people in the day of their disaster, nor gloat over their affliction in the day of their disaster, nor loot their wealth in the day of their disaster. 14 Nor should you stand at the crossroads to cut off their fugitives, nor deliver up their survivors in the day of their distress. 15 For the Day of the LORD is near for all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your recompense will return upon your own head. 16 For as you drank on My holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually. They will drink and gulp it down; they will be as if they had never existed. 17 But on Mount Zion there will be deliverance, and it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will reclaim their possession. 18 Then the house of Jacob will be a blazing fire, and the house of Joseph a burning flame; but the house of Esau will be stubble—Jacob will set it ablaze and consume it. Therefore no survivor will remain from the house of Esau.” For the LORD has spoken. 19 Those from the Negev will possess the mountains of Esau; those from the foothills will possess the land of the Philistines. They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria, and Benjamin will possess Gilead. 20 And the exiles of this host of the Israelites will possess the land of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath; and the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the cities of the Negev. 21 The deliverers will ascend Mount Zion to rule over the mountains of Esau. And the kingdom will belong to the LORD.
Revelation 14
Then I looked and saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him 144,000 who had His name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads. 2 And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of many waters and the loud rumbling of thunder. And the sound I heard was like harpists strumming their harps. 3 And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. And no one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. 4 These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They have been redeemed from among men as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. 5 And no lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless. 6 Then I saw another angel flying overhead, with the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation and tribe and tongue and people. 7 And he said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come. Worship the One who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and the springs of waters.” 8 Then a second angel followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, who has made all the nations drink the wine of the passion of her immorality.” 9 And a third angel followed them, calling out in a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he too will drink the wine of God’s anger, poured undiluted into the cup of His wrath. And he will be tormented in fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. Day and night there is no rest for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” 12 Here is a call for the perseverance of the saints, who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. 13 And I heard a voice from heaven telling me to write, “Blessed are the dead—those who die in the Lord from this moment on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds will follow them.” 14 And I looked and saw a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was One like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the One seated on the cloud, “Swing Your sickle and reap, because the time has come to harvest, for the crop of the earth is ripe.” 16 So the One seated on the cloud swung His sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested. 17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 Still another angel, with authority over the fire, came from the altar and called out in a loud voice to the angel with the sharp sickle, “Swing your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the vine of the earth, because its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. 20 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses for a distance of 1,600 stadia.
Scripture from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), dedicated to the public domain.
How to SOAP
Grab a journal and a pen. Read the chapters above and watch for the verse that stops you. Then take it through four steps.
-
Scripture
Write out the verse that stood out to you.
-
Observation
What is it saying? Who is speaking, and to whom?
-
Application
What does it mean for your life today? Be specific.
-
Prayer
Talk to God about it. Ask Him to help you live it.
Your SOAP journal
Write your SOAP here. Tap any verse in the reading to add it to Scripture. Your journal saves on this device only, so no one else sees it.
Added to your journal. Go to journal
Why daily devotions?
Devotions are time set aside each day to read God's Word and let Him speak. The point isn't checking off chapters. It's meeting with Him.
Ten or fifteen minutes is enough to start. Pick a time and a place and keep the appointment. Mornings work well for a lot of us, before the phone and the day start talking.
Missed a day? Don't start over. Read today's chapters and keep going.