I am not worthy of all the faithful love ¹  you have shown ²  your servant. With only my walking stick ³  I crossed the Jordan, ⁴  but now I have become two camps.

Now these are the names of the sons of Levi, according to their records: ¹  Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. (The length of Levi’s life was 137 years.)

Now Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the fathers’ households ¹  of Levi according to their clans.

“Every one ¹  of the Israelites must camp ²  under his standard with the emblems of his family; ³  they must camp at some distance ⁴  around the tent of meeting. ⁵ 

To a larger group you will give a larger inheritance, ¹  and to a smaller group you will give a smaller inheritance. ²  To each one its inheritance must be given according to the number of people in it. ³ 

So I chose ¹  as your tribal leaders wise and well-known men, placing them over you as administrators of groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and also as other tribal officials.

When the Most High ¹  gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided up humankind, ²  he set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the heavenly assembly. ³ 

He divided the three hundred men into three units. ¹  He gave them all trumpets and empty jars with torches inside them. ² 

he took his men ¹  and divided them into three units and set an ambush in the field. When he saw the people coming out of the city, ²  he attacked and struck them down. ³ 

Abimelech and his units ¹  attacked and blocked ²  the entrance to the city’s gate. Two units then attacked all the people in the field and struck them down.

Then he brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its families, and the family of Matri was chosen by lot. At last Saul son of Kish was chosen by lot. But when they looked for him, he was nowhere to be found.

At that time the people of Israel were divided in their loyalties. Half the people supported Tibni son of Ginath and wanted to make him king; the other half supported Omri.

When Jezebel was killing ¹  the Lord’s prophets, Obadiah took one hundred prophets and hid them in two caves in two groups of fifty. He also brought them food and water.)

Indeed, ¹  fire came down from the sky and consumed the two captains who came before me, along with their men. ²  So now, please have respect for my life.”

But each of these nations made ¹  its own gods and put them in the shrines on the high places that the people of Samaria ²  had made. Each nation did this in the cities where they lived.

This was the order in which they carried out their assigned responsibilities when they entered the Lord’s temple, according to the regulations given them by their ancestor ¹  Aaron, just as the Lord God of Israel had instructed him. ² 

They appointed the priests by their divisions and the Levites by their divisions over the worship of God at Jerusalem, ¹  in accord with ²  the book of Moses.

“I hate their deeds and thoughts! So I am coming ¹  to gather all the nations and ethnic groups; ²  they will come and witness my splendor.

The land will mourn, clan by clan – the clan of the royal household of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the clan of the family of Nathan ¹  by itself and their wives by themselves;

Then the heads of the family groups ¹  of the Gileadites, the descendant of Machir, the descendant of Manasseh, who were from the Josephite families, approached and spoke before Moses ²  and the leaders who were the heads of the Israelite families. ³