Basic English Version : Read the Bible in 1 Year

Ezekiel 45 / Basic English

1. And when you are making a distribution of the land, by the decision of the Lord, for your heritage, you are to make an offering to the Lord of a part of the land as holy: it is to be twenty-five thousand long and twenty thousand wide: all the land inside these limits is to be holy.
2. Of this, a square five hundred long and five hundred wide is to be for the holy place, with a space of fifty cubits all round it.
3. And of this measure, let a space be measured, twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide: in it there will be the holy place, even the most holy.
4. This holy part of the land is to be for the priests, the servants of the holy place, who come near to the Lord to do his work; it is to be a place for their houses and for grass-land and for cattle.
5. A space of land twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide is to be for the Levites, the servants of the house, a property for themselves, for towns for their living-places.
6. And as the property for the town you are to have a part five thousand wide and twenty-five thousand long, by the side of the offering of the holy part of the land: this is to be for all the children of Israel.
7. And for the ruler there is to be a part on one side and on the other side of the holy offering and of the property of the town, in front of the holy offering and in front of the property of the town on the west of it and on the east: measured in the same line as one of the parts of the land, from its limit on the west to its limit on the east of the land.
8. And this will be his heritage in Israel: and my rulers will no longer be cruel masters to my people; but they will give the land as a heritage to the children of Israel by their tribes.
9. This is what the Lord has said: Let this be enough for you, O rulers of Israel: let there be an end of violent behaviour and wasting; do what is right, judging uprightly; let there be no more driving out of my people, says the Lord.
10. Have true scales and a true ephah and a true bath.
11. The ephah and the bath are to be of the same measure, so that the bath is equal to a tenth of a homer, and the ephah to a tenth of a homer: the unit of measure is to be a homer.
12. And the shekel is to be twenty gerahs: five shekels are five, and ten shekels are ten, and your maneh is to be fifty shekels
13. This is the offering you are to give: a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of wheat, and a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of barley;
14. And the fixed measure of oil is to be a tenth of a bath from the cor, for ten baths make up the cor;
15. And one lamb from the flock out of every two hundred, from all the families of Israel, for a meal offering and for a burned offering and for peace-offerings, to take away their sin, says the Lord.
16. All the people are to give this offering to the ruler.
17. And the ruler will be responsible for the burned offering and the meal offering and the drink offering, at the feasts and the new moons and the Sabbaths, at all the fixed feasts of the children of Israel: he will give the sin-offering and meal offering and burned offering and the peace-offerings, to take away the sin of the children of Israel.
18. This is what the Lord has said: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you are to take a young ox without any mark on him, and you are to make the holy place clean.
19. And the priest is to take some of the blood of the sin-offering and put it on the uprights at the sides of the doors of the house, and on the four angles of the shelf of the altar, and on the sides of the doorway of the inner square.
20. And this you are to do on the seventh day of the month for everyone who is in error and for the feeble-minded: you are to make the house free from sin.
21. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you are to have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread is to be your food.
22. And on that day the ruler is to give for himself and for all the people of the land an ox for a sin-offering.
23. And on the seven days of the feast he is to give a burned offering to the Lord, seven oxen and seven sheep without any mark on them, every day for seven days; and a he-goat every day for a sin-offering.
24. And he is to give a meal offering, an ephah for every ox and an ephah for every sheep and a hin of oil to every ephah.
25. In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast, he is to give the same for seven days; the sin-offering, the burned offering, the meal offering, and the oil as before.

Ezekiel 46 / Basic English

1. This is what the Lord has said: The doorway of the inner square looking to the east is to be shut on the six working days; but on the Sabbath it is to be open, and at the time of the new moon it is to be open.
2. And the ruler is to go in through the covered way of the outer doorway outside, and take his place by the pillar of the doorway, and the priests will make his burned offering and his peace-offerings and he will give worship at the doorstep of the doorway; then he will go out, and the door will not be shut till the evening.
3. And the people of the land are to give worship at the door of that doorway before the Lord on the Sabbaths and at the new moons.
4. And the burned offering offered to the Lord by the ruler on the Sabbath day is to be six lambs without a mark on them and a male sheep without a mark;
5. And the meal offering is to be an ephah for the sheep, and for the lambs whatever he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah.
6. And at the time of the new moon it is to be a young ox of the herd without a mark on him, and six lambs and a male sheep, all without a mark:
7. And he is to give a meal offering, an ephah for the ox and an ephah for the sheep, and for the lambs whatever he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah.
8. And when the ruler comes in, he is to go in through the covered way of the doorway, and he is to go out by the same way.
9. But when the people of the land come before the Lord at the fixed feasts, he who comes in by the north doorway to give worship is to go out by the south doorway; and he who comes in by the south doorway is to go out by the north doorway: he is not to come back by the doorway through which he went in, but is to go straight before him.
10. And the ruler, when they come in, is to come among them, and is to go out when they go out.
11. At the feasts and the fixed meetings the meal offerings are to be an ephah for an ox, and an ephah for a male sheep, and for the lambs whatever he is able to give, and a hin of oil to an ephah.
12. And when the ruler makes a free offering, a burned offering or a peace-offering freely given to the Lord, the doorway looking to the east is to be made open for him, and he is to make his burned offering and his peace-offerings as he does on the Sabbath day: and he will go out; and the door will be shut after he has gone out.
13. And you are to give a lamb a year old without any mark on it for a burned offering to the Lord every day: morning by morning you are to give it.
14. And you are to give, morning by morning, a meal offering with it, a sixth of an ephah and a third of a hin of oil dropped on the best meal; a meal offering offered to the Lord at all times by an eternal order.
15. And they are to give the lamb and the meal offering and the oil, morning by morning, for a burned offering at all times.
16. This is what the Lord has said: If the ruler gives a property to any of his sons, it is his heritage and will be the property of his sons; it is theirs for their heritage.
17. And if he gives a part of his heritage to one of his servants, it will be his till the year of making free, and then it will go back to the ruler; for it is his sons' heritage, and is to be theirs.
18. And the ruler is not to take the heritage of any of the people, driving them out of their property; he is to give a heritage to his sons out of the property which is his: so that my people may not be sent away from their property.
19. And he took me through by the way in at the side of the doorway into the holy rooms which are the priests', looking to the north: and I saw a place at the side of them to the west.
20. And he said to me, This is the place where the offering for error and the sin-offering are to be cooked in water by the priests, and where the meal offering is to be cooked in the oven; so that they may not be taken out into the outer square to make the people holy.
21. And he took me out into the outer square and made me go by the four angles of the square; and I saw that in every angle of the open square there was a space shut in.
22. In the four angles there were spaces walled in, forty cubits long and thirty wide; the four were of the same size.
23. And there was a line of wall all round inside them, round all four, and boiling-places were made under it all round about.
24. And he said to me, These are the boiling-rooms, where the offering of the people is cooked by the servants of the house.

James 4 / Basic English

1. What is the cause of wars and fighting among you? is it not in your desires which are at war in your bodies?
2. You are burning with desire, and have not your desire, so you put men to death; you are full of envy, and you are not able to get your desire, so you are fighting and making war; you have not your desire, because you do not make request for it.
3. You make your request but you do not get it, because your request has been wrongly made, desiring the thing only so that you may make use of it for your pleasure.
4. O you who are false to God, do you not see that the friends of this world are not God's friends? Every man desiring to be a friend of this world makes himself a hater of God.
5. Or does it seem to you that it is for nothing that the holy Writings say, The spirit which God put into our hearts has a strong desire for us?
6. But he gives more grace. So that the Writings say, God is against the men of pride, but he gives grace to those who make themselves low before him.
7. For this cause be ruled by God; but make war on the Evil One and he will be put to flight before you.
8. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Make your hands clean, you evil-doers; put away deceit from your hearts, you false in mind.
9. Be troubled, with sorrow and weeping; let your laughing be turned to sorrow and your joy to grief.
10. Make yourselves low in the eyes of the Lord and you will be lifted up by him.
11. Do not say evil against one another, my brothers. He who says evil against his brother or makes himself his brother's judge, says evil against the law and is judging the law: and in judging the law you become, not a doer of the law but a judge.
12. There is only one judge and law-giver, even he who has the power of salvation and of destruction; but who are you to be your neighbour's judge?
13. How foolish it is to say, Today or tomorrow we will go into this town, and be there for a year and do business there and get wealth:
14. When you are not certain what will take place tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist, which is seen for a little time and then is gone.
15. But the right thing to say would be, If it is the Lord's pleasure and if we are still living, we will do this and that.
16. But now you go on glorying in your pride: and all such glorying is evil.
17. The man who has knowledge of how to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.