and as they sailed he fell asleep. Now a violent windstorm ¹  came down on the lake, ²  and the boat ³  started filling up with water, and they were in danger.

When a gentle south wind sprang up, they thought ¹  they could carry out ²  their purpose, so they weighed anchor ³  and sailed close along the coast ⁴  of Crete.

And even if I am unskilled ¹  in speaking, yet I am certainly not so in knowledge. Indeed, we have made this plain to you in everything in every way.

Let nobody deceive you with empty words, for because of these things God’s wrath comes on the sons of disobedience. ¹ 

For we never appeared ¹  with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed – God is our witness –

For some of these insinuate themselves ¹  into households and captivate weak women ²  who are overwhelmed with sins and led along by various passions.

and make straight paths for your feet, ¹  so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but be healed.

I will lead the blind along an unfamiliar way; ¹  I will guide them down paths they have never traveled. ²  I will turn the darkness in front of them into light, and level out the rough ground. ³  This is what I will do for them. I will not abandon them.

They will come back shedding tears of contrition. I will bring them back praying prayers of repentance. ¹  I will lead them besides streams of water, along smooth paths where they will never stumble. ²  I will do this because I am Israel’s father; Ephraim ³  is my firstborn son.’”

from Mount Halak on up to Seir, as far as Baal Gad in the Lebanon Valley below Mount Hermon. He captured all their kings and executed them. ¹ 

So he went down and dipped in the Jordan seven times, as the prophet had instructed. ¹  His skin became as smooth as a young child’s ²  and he was healed.

“Look, I am making you like ¹  a sharp threshing sledge, new and double-edged. ²  You will thresh the mountains and crush them; you will make the hills like straw. ³ 

It is me – I stir him up and commission him; ¹  I will make all his ways level. He will rebuild my city; he will send my exiled people home, but not for a price or a bribe,” says the Lord who commands armies.

Come through! Come through the gates! Prepare the way for the people! Build it! Build the roadway! Remove the stones! Lift a signal flag for the nations!

As a matter of fact, ¹  even your own brothers and the members of your own family have betrayed you too. Even they have plotted to do away with you. ²  So do not trust them even when they say kind things ³  to you.

Yet my people have forgotten me and offered sacrifices to worthless idols! This makes them stumble along in the way they live and leave the old reliable path of their fathers. ¹  They have left them to walk in bypaths, in roads that are not smooth and level. ² 

For he is the one about whom Isaiah the prophet had spoken: ¹  “The voice ²  of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make ³  his paths straight.’” ⁴ 

But ¹  he said to them, “Why are you cowardly, you people of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked ²  the winds and the sea, ³  and it was dead calm.

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice ¹  of one shouting in the wilderness: ²  ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make ³  his paths straight.

They ¹  came ²  and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, ³  we are about to die!” So ⁴  he got up and rebuked ⁵  the wind and the raging waves; ⁶  they died down, and it was calm.