Basic English Version : Read the Bible in 1 Year

Judges 2 / Basic English

1. Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, *** I took you out of Egypt, guiding you into the land which I gave by an oath to your fathers; and I said, My agreement with you will never be broken by me:
2. And you are to make no agreement with the people of this land; you are to see that their altars are broken down: but you have not given ear to my voice: what have you done?
3. And so I have said, I will not send them out from before you; but they will be a danger to you, and their gods will be a cause of falling to you.
4. Now on hearing these words which the angel of the Lord said to all the children of Israel, the people gave themselves up to loud crying and weeping.
5. And they gave that place the name of Bochim, and made offerings there to the Lord.
6. And Joshua let the people go away, and the children of Israel went, every man to his heritage, to take the land for themselves.
7. And the people were true to the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the responsible men who were still living after the death of Joshua, and had seen all the great work of the Lord which he had done for Israel.
8. And death came to Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, he being a hundred and ten years old.
9. And they put his body in the earth in the land of his heritage in Timnath-heres, in the hill-country of Ephraim to the north of Mount Gaash.
10. And in time death overtook all that generation; and another generation came after them, having no knowledge of the Lord or of the things which he had done for Israel.
11. And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord and became servants to the Baals;
12. And they gave up the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had taken them out of the land of Egypt, and went after other gods, the gods of the peoples round about them, worshipping them and moving the Lord to wrath.
13. And they gave up the Lord, and became the servants of Baal and the Astartes.
14. And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of those who violently took their property, and into the hands of their haters all round them, so that they were forced to give way before them.
15. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had taken his oath it would be; and things became very hard for them.
16. Then the Lord gave them judges, as their saviours from the hands of those who were cruel to them.
17. But still they would not give ear to their judges, but went after other gods and gave them worship; quickly turning from the way in which their fathers had gone, keeping the orders of the Lord; but they did not do so.
18. And whenever the Lord gave them judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and was their saviour from the hands of their haters all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved by their cries of grief because of those who were cruel to them.
19. But whenever the judge was dead, they went back and did more evil than their fathers, going after other gods, to be their servants and their worshippers; giving up nothing of their sins and their hard-hearted ways.
20. And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he said, Because this nation has not been true to my agreement which I made with their fathers, and has not given ear to my voice;
21. From now on I will not go on driving out from before them any of the nations which at the death of Joshua were still living in this land;
22. In order to put Israel to the test, and see if they will keep the way of the Lord, walking in it as their fathers did, or not.
23. So the Lord let those nations go on living in the land, not driving them out quickly, and did not give them up into the hands of Joshua.

Judges 3 / Basic English

1. Now these are the nations which the Lord kept in the land for the purpose of testing Israel by them, all those who had had no experience of all the wars of Canaan;
2. Only because of the generations of the children of Israel, for the purpose of teaching them war--only those who up till then had no experience of it;
3. The five chiefs of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites and the Zidonians and the Hivites living in Mount Lebanon, from the mountain Baal-hermon as far as Hamath:
4. For the purpose of testing Israel by them, to see if they would give ear to the orders of the Lord, which he had given to their fathers by the hand of Moses.
5. Now the children of Israel were living among the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites:
6. And they took as wives the daughters of these nations and gave their daughters to their sons, and became servants to their gods.
7. And the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and put out of their minds the Lord their God, and became servants to the Baals and the Astartes.
8. So the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel were his servants for eight years.
9. And when the children of Israel made prayer to the Lord, he gave them a saviour, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.
10. And the spirit of the Lord came on him and he became judge of Israel, and went out to war, and the Lord gave up Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hands and he overcame him.
11. Then for forty years the land had peace, till the death of Othniel, the son of Kenaz.
12. Then the children of Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord; and the Lord made Eglon, king of Moab, strong against Israel, because they had done evil in the Lord's eyes.
13. And Eglon got together the people of Ammon and Amalek, and they went and overcame Israel and took the town of palm-trees.
14. And the children of Israel were servants to Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years.
15. Then when the children of Israel made prayer to the Lord, he gave them a saviour, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man; and the children of Israel sent an offering by him to Eglon, king of Moab.
16. So Ehud made himself a two-edged sword, a cubit long, which he put on at his right side under his robe.
17. And he took the offering to Eglon, king of Moab, who was a very fat man.
18. And after giving the offering, he sent away the people who had come with the offering.
19. But he himself, turning back from the stone images at Gilgal, said, I have something to say to you in secret, O king. And he said, Let there be quiet. Then all those who were waiting before him went out.
20. Then Ehud came in to him while he was seated by himself in his summer-house. And Ehud said, I have a word from God for you. And he got up from his seat.
21. And Ehud put out his left hand, and took the sword from his right side, and sent it into his stomach;
22. And the hand-part went in after the blade, and the fat was joined up over the blade; for he did not take the sword out of his stomach. And he went out into the ...
23. Then Ehud went out into the covered way, shutting the doors of the summer-house on him and locking them.
24. Now when he had gone, the king's servants came, and saw that the doors of the summer-house were locked; and they said, It may be that he is in his summer-house for a private purpose.
25. And they went on waiting till they were shamed, but the doors were still shut; so they took the key, and, opening them, saw their lord stretched out dead on the floor.
26. But Ehud had got away while they were waiting and had gone past the stone images and got away to Seirah.
27. And when he came there, he had a horn sounded in the hill-country of Ephraim, and all the children of Israel went down with him from the hill-country, and he at their head.
28. And he said to them, Come after me; for the Lord has given the Moabites, your haters, into your hands. So they went down after him and took the crossing-places of Jordan against Moab, and let no one go across.
29. At that time they put about ten thousand men of Moab to the sword, every strong man and every man of war; not a man got away.
30. So Moab was broken that day under the hand of Israel. And for eighty years the land had peace.
31. And after him came Shamgar, the son of Anath, who put to death six hundred Philistines with an ox-stick; and he was another saviour of Israel.

Luke 17 / Basic English

1. And he said to his disciples, It is necessary for causes of trouble to come about, but unhappy is he by whom they come.
2. It would be well for him if a great stone was put round his neck and he was dropped into the sea, before he made trouble for any of these little ones.
3. Give attention to yourselves: if your brother does wrong, say a sharp word to him; and if he has sorrow for his sin, let him have forgiveness.
4. And if he does you wrong seven times in a day, and seven times comes to you and says, I have regret for what I have done; let him have forgiveness.
5. And the twelve said to the Lord, Make our faith greater.
6. And the Lord said, If your faith was only as great as a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this tree, Be rooted up and planted in the sea; and it would be done.
7. But which of you, having a servant who is ploughing or keeping sheep, will say to him, when he comes in from the field, Come now and be seated and have a meal,
8. Will he not say, Get a meal for me, and make yourself ready and see to my needs till I have had my food and drink; and after that you may have yours?
9. Does he give praise to the servant because he did what was ordered?
10. In the same way, when you have done all the things which are given you to do, say, There is no profit in us, for we have only done what we were ordered to do.
11. And it came about that when they were on the way to Jerusalem he went through Samaria and Galilee.
12. And when he went into a certain small town he came across ten men who were lepers, and they, keeping themselves at a distance,
13. Said, in loud voices, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
14. And when he saw them he said, Go, and let the priests see you. And, while they were going, they were made clean.
15. And one of them, when he saw that he was clean, turning back, gave praise to God in a loud voice;
16. And, falling down on his face at the feet of Jesus, he gave the credit to him; and he was a man of Samaria.
17. And Jesus said, Were there not ten men who were made clean? where are the nine?
18. Have not any of them come back to give glory to God, but only this one from a strange land?
19. And he said to him, Get up, and go on your way; your faith has made you well.
20. And when the Pharisees put questions to him about when the kingdom of God would come, he gave them an answer and said, The kingdom of God will not come through observation:
21. And men will not say, See, it is here! or, There! for the kingdom of God is among you.
22. And he said to his disciples, The time will come when you will have a great desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, but you will not see it.
23. And if they say to you, See, it is there! or, It is here! do not go away, or go after them.
24. For as in a thunderstorm the bright light is seen from one end of the sky to the other, so will the Son of man be when his time comes.
25. But first, he will have to undergo much and be put on one side by this generation.
26. And as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the day of the Son of man.
27. They were feasting and taking wives and getting married, till the day of the overflowing of the waters, when Noah went into the ark, and they all came to destruction.
28. In the same way, in the days of Lot; they were feasting and trading, they were planting and building;
29. But on the day when Lot went out of Sodom, fire came down from heaven and destruction came on them all.
30. So will it be in the day of the revelation of the Son of man.
31. On that day, if anyone is on the roof of the house, and his goods are in the house, let him not go down to take them away; and let him who is in the field not go back to his house.
32. Keep in mind Lot's wife.
33. If anyone makes an attempt to keep his life, it will be taken from him, but if anyone gives up his life, he will keep it.
34. I say to you, In that night there will be two men sleeping in one bed, and one will be taken away and the other let go.
35. Two women will be crushing grain together; one will be taken away and the other let go.
36. []
37. And they, answering him, said, Where, Lord? And he said to them, Where the body is, there will the eagles come together.