NL-Day003 Genesis 5-6; Job 3; Mark 2

12/29/24 • 19 min

How can you get more out of your Bible reading this year? My top advice is to SLOW DOWN! The readings in this plan take around 20 minutes if read aloud. If you read silently, you might finish in only 10 minutes. But if you skim through like that, you won’t retain very much! I suggest these two ways to slow down:

1. Read out loud to yourself. Read expressively. When you find that your first attempt didn’t quite have the right intonation, go back and read the sentence again. Take time to think about— and pray about, what you have just read.

2. Read along while listening to the Daily Bible Reading Podcast. This will definitely slow you down.

One advantage of listening to the podcasts is that each one ends with a short prayer that is aimed at helping you apply what you have just read. By the way, I normally don’t say an Amen at the end of the prayers. This is because I hope you keep on praying after the episode ends.

GENESIS 5-6: In chapter 3 of Genesis, the Lord gave his judgment against the serpent. God talked about the woman’s offspring (which is a collective singular noun) when speaking to the serpent, and said,

“her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel.”

This is the very first prophecy looking forward to a Messiah and Redeemer who will crush Satan’s head. Just before that, there is another picture worth noting: God provided clothes for the man and woman made from animal skins. This is the first hint of the sacrificial system that prefigures Christ.

JOB 3: Today we read Job’s first speech. In the Bible— and especially in Job and the Psalms, we find out that God thoroughly understands and takes into account the fact that humans suffer. This is shown in the fact that such deep expressions of suffering are found in God’s Word— right from the earliest writings.

MARK 2: Yesterday in the second half of Mark 1, we read of Jesus miraculously healing people in Capernaum, and his refusing to stay only there. He preached and cast out demons all over the region of Galilee. The healing of the man with leprosy is notable because of the exchange between Jesus and that man, and also the results of the man’s not following Jesus’ instructions.

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NLT Translation notes:

Mrk. 2:5 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, [PET: I have forgiven your sins.//your sins are forgiven.]”

[I will occasionally quote from the PET, which is the Plain English Translation. That is the English translation that matches our Plain Indonesian Translation (TSI). The PET was first created as part of the checking process for the TSI, and some parts have been published because so many Indonesians desire to learn English.]

9 [PET: Certainly you will have difficulty accepting that I said to this paralyzed man, ‘I have forgiven your sins.’ Will it be easier for you to accept it if I say to him, ‘Get up, pick up your mattress and go home’?//Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk’? ]

10 So I will prove to you that [I, the Son of Man have//the Son of Man has] the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, 18 Once when John’s disciples were fasting and the Pharisees were [also] fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees do?”

[The translation should not give the impression that the two groups were joining together to fast.] 28 So [I,] the Son of Man [am/is] Lord, even over the Sabbath!”

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

2. Read along while listening to the Daily Bible Reading Podcast. This will definitely slow you down.

“her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel.”

———————

NLT Translation notes:

Mrk. 2:5 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, [PET: I have forgiven your sins.//your sins are forgiven.]”

[The translation should not give the impression that the two groups were joining together to fast.] 28 So [I,] the Son of Man [am/is] Lord, even over the Sabbath!”

Previous Episode

002: Genesis 3-4; Job 2; Mark 1:29-45

It is possible to listen to these podcasts on YouTube or Facebook, but these ways are not optimal. The How-to pages pages linked in the banner of http://dailybiblereading.info give various ways to conveniently listen to these podcasts using any kind of smart device, including smart speakers. Use the Listen menu item of the How-to pages to find this information.

You will note that I read most Bible names phonetically— rather than the using normal English pronunciation. This means that the letter A will have a consistent sound ‘ah’ and the letter I will be pronounced ‘ee’. This happens to match Indonesian pronunciations and that of many other languages. This also makes the pronunciation a little more like that of the source languages, Hebrew and Greek.

GENESIS 3-4: In chapter 2 of Genesis, we saw that Eve was created and introduced to Adam. And the pair at the end of the chapter were “naked and not embarrassed/unashamed.” As I said in yesterday’s introduction, I have seen first-hand in my work in Indonesia that when a people group misunderstands and twists the story in Genesis 1-3, it will have far-reaching consequences for their lives. In the case of the Orya people, twisting the story of the fall caused much suffering and misery among families.

JOB 2: At the close of chapter 1 of Job, Job had lost virtually everything he had, including his possessions, livestock, and children. He said, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!”

MARK 1b: Mark does not specifically identify himself as the author of this Gospel, but the church fathers unanimously say that the John Mark mentioned several times in the New Testament was the one who wrote it. Mark was a companion of Peter, and the eyewitness content in this book is that of Peter.

I previously held a view based on internal evidence and made popular in the 20th century that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, with Matthew and Luke using Mark’s record as a resource. But now I think that the testimony of the church fathers is more likely to be true: Matthew and Luke were written before this Gospel, and Mark transcribed what Peter taught about the life of Jesus, either shortly before or after Peter’s martyrdom in Rome— which happened somewhere between 64-67 AD.

If Mark wrote this account in Rome, that would help to explain why he gives background information to some Jewish customs that would have been unknown to his Roman readers, and why he doesn’t include teachings of Jesus which were based on the Jewish Scriptures and religion. Instead he tells us the plain story of Jesus and his miracles, so that the reader finds out who Jesus is.

Yesterday in chapter 1 of Mark, Jesus was baptized by John, called his first disciples, and cast out an evil spirit from a man in a synagogue.

NLT Translation notes:

Mrk 1:34 So Jesus healed many people who were sick with various diseases, and he cast out many demons. [Because//But because] the demons knew who he was, he did not allow them to speak.

38 But Jesus replied, “[No. ]We must go on to other towns

as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.”

Next Episode

NL-Day004 Genesis 7-8; Job 4; Mark 3

Most people find out about the DBRP through the YouVersion Bible reading app on their smart device. If you are one who has found out about these podcasts through some other means (such as via Apple Podcasts), then I want to make you aware that the Bible app created by YouVersion is wonderful. You can subscribe to the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan within the app, then reading along with these daily podcasts is very easy. Just start your episode using your podcast player, then go to your day in the YouVersion Reading Plan. Please be aware that you can turn on the YouVersion app’s audio for the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. If you do this, a very nice Alexa/Siri-like voice will read the devotional introductions to the three readings for the day, and after that the voice for the Bible you select will read the Bible readings. This makes a great way to add variety to your daily listening if you get tired of my voice, however, there will be no prayer at the end.

I again want to express my gratitude to Tyndale House Foundation for their permission to publish the full audio of the NLT Bible through this podcast series. The full copyright attribution text is found at the end of the episode notes for each podcast.

Based on my experience as a Bible translator, I have made a few changes to the text of the NLT for these podcasts. These are for the sake of clarity and naturalness for those who are only listening to the recordings without reading along. All of my changes are documented in the episode notes, sometimes with brief explanations.

GENESIS 7-8: In Genesis 5, we heard the overview of the descendants of Adam and Eve up to Noah. In chapter 6, Noah was further introduced. Also the reason for the flood was explained.

JOB 4: In chapter 3 Job cursed the day he was born and expressed his deep misery.

Remember that in the speeches of Job’s three friends we will see a mixture of truth and error. In particular, we should not follow Eliphaz’s example in today’s chapter. The Bible tells us repeatedly that we are not to trust or listen to communication from spirits. We will read the second chapter of Eliphaz’ response tomorrow.

MARK 3: In Mark 2, Jesus shocked his listeners by first forgiving a paralyzed man’s sins before actually healing the man’s body. And in three other events in chapter 2 we can see the beginnings of the conflict between Jesus and the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees.

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NLT Translation notes: Job 4:6 How come//Doesn’t] your reverence for God [doesn't/0] give you confidence?

[Perhaps you place too much confidence in your own integrity.//Doesn’t your life of integrity give you hope?]

[Translation note: I have interpreted the two questions in v6 as rebuking rhetorical questions and translated them as statements. See the note

at the end of Mark 3.]

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Mrk. 3:10 He had healed many people that day, so all the [other/0] sick people eagerly pushed forward to touch him.

23 Jesus called them over and responded with an

illustration. [It is not possible that Satan would drive out his own demons.”//“How can Satan cast out Satan?” he asked.]

33 Jesus replied, [“Let me show you the kind of people whom I regard as my mother and brothers!”// “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?]

[In verse 23, Jesus was not asking a real question. He was using a rhetorical question to open the topic he was going to teach about. In our translations in Indonesia, we frequently changed Jesus' rhetorical questions to statements. This is because in many languages (and really even in English) people do not use rhetorical questions as their topic sentence at the beginning of a teaching. So if we didn't change such questions to statements, our readers would wrongly think that Jesus was unsure about what He was talking about and that He often started by asking his audience for advice.]