Daily Lectionary

October 20, 2023

October 19, 2023 October 21, 2023

These daily readings from the EHV follow the one-year daily lectionary provided in Christian Worship: Hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book, and the Treasury of Daily Prayer. In this lectionary, two readings of 15-25 verses each are provided for each day. Under this plan, nearly all of the New Testament and approximately one-third of the Old Testament are read each year. These readings fit well within the daily offices of Matins, Vespers, or Compline as daily family devotions.

Deuteronomy 19:1-20

Cities of Refuge

(Exodus 21:12-14, Numbers 35:9-34; Deuteronomy 4:41-43, Joshua 20:1-9)

19¹When the Lord your God has cut down the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have taken possession of their land and settled in their cities and houses, ²set aside three cities within the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ³Prepare roads^[] for yourselves, and divide the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance into three parts, so that anyone who has killed a person will be able to flee to one of these cities.

⁴Now this is an example of a person who has killed someone who may flee there and live: someone who has struck down his friend unintentionally, without being hateful toward him beforehand. ⁵For instance, someone goes with his friend into the forest to cut down trees, and when his hand swings the ax to cut down the tree, the iron ax head slips off the wooden handle and strikes his friend, who then dies—that person may flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue the one who has killed someone, because the avenger is hot with anger. Then because of the long distance to the city of refuge, the avenger may overtake the man and strike him down fatally. His death would not be just, because he had not been hateful toward the other one beforehand. ⁷Therefore I am commanding you this: Set aside for yourselves three cities.

⁸When the Lord your God expands your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and he gives you the entire land that he promised to give your fathers, ⁹if you carefully keep this whole set of commands that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking in his ways always, then add for yourselves three more cities in addition to these three. ¹⁰Then innocent blood will not be poured out within your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, nor will you be guilty of bloodshed.

¹¹But if there is a person who is hateful toward another, and he lies in ambush for him and springs up on him and strikes him so he dies, and the killer flees to one of the cities of God, ¹²then the elders of his home city are to send for him and take him from there. They are to hand him over to the avenger of blood, and he is to be put to death.

¹³Your eye is not to look with compassion on him. You are to purge the blood of the innocent person from Israel so that it may go well for you.

Miscellaneous Laws

¹⁴Do not move your neighbor's boundary marker, which the first generation of occupants set up as a boundary for your inherited property in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵A single witness does not have legal standing to convict a person of any guilt or sin in connection with any wrongful action he may have committed. A case is to have standing only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

¹⁶If a malicious witness rises up against a person to testify against him about a legal offense, ¹⁷and if the two people involved in the dispute stand before the Lord and before the priests and the judges who preside at that time, ¹⁸the judges are to investigate diligently. If the person is a dishonest witness because he has falsely accused his brother, ¹⁹then you are to do to him just as he had plotted to do to his brother. So you will purge the evil from among you. ²⁰The rest of the people will hear, and they will fear, and they will not do an evil thing like this among you again.

Matthew 15:1-20

Commandments and Traditions

(Mark 7:1-23)

15¹Then the Pharisees and experts in the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”

³He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴For example, God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’^[] and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of his father or mother should be put to death.’ ⁵But you say that if someone tells his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might have received from me has been dedicated as a gift to God,’^[] ⁶that man does not need to honor his father or his mother.^[] And so you set aside the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷Hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

⁸These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

⁹They worship me in vain, teaching human rules as if they are doctrines.”^[]

¹⁰Then he summoned the crowd and said to them, “Listen and understand. ¹¹What goes into the mouth does not make a person unclean, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.”

¹²Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard this saying?”

¹³He answered, “Every plant which my heavenly Father did not plant will be uprooted. ¹⁴Let them go. They are blind guides of the blind.^[] And if the blind are guiding the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

¹⁵Peter replied and said to him, “Explain the parable to us.”

¹⁶Jesus said, “Do you still not understand? ¹⁷Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated into the latrine? ¹⁸But whatever comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. That is what defiles a person. ¹⁹To be sure, out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies, and blasphemies. ²⁰These are the things that defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.”