Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why are you here? ¹  Go to your father’s prophets or your mother’s prophets!” The king of Israel replied to him, “No, for the Lord is the one who summoned these three kings so that he can hand them over to Moab.”

King David rose to his feet and said: “Listen to me, my brothers and my people. I wanted to build a temple where the ark of the Lord’s covenant could be placed as a footstool for our God. ¹  I have made the preparations for building it.

King David said to the entire assembly: “My son Solomon, the one whom God has chosen, is just an inexperienced young man, ¹  and the task is great, for this palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.

and the whole assembly made a covenant with the king in the temple of God. Jehoiada ¹  said to them, “The king’s son will rule, just as the Lord promised David’s descendants.

For the music director; by the Lord’s servant David, who sang ²  to the Lord the words of this song when ³  the Lord rescued him from the power ⁴  of all his enemies, including Saul. ⁵  He said: ⁶  “I love ⁷  you, Lord, my source of strength! ⁸ 

The following events occurred in that same year, early in the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. To be more precise, it was the fifth month of the fourth year of his reign. ¹  The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, spoke to Jeremiah ²  in the Lord’s temple in the presence of the priests and all the people. ³ 

Then he spoke up in the presence of all the people. “The Lord says, ‘In the same way I will break the yoke of servitude of all the nations to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ¹  before two years are over.’” After he heard this, the prophet Jeremiah departed and went on his way. ² 

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from Jerusalem ¹  to Babylon. It was addressed to the elders who were left among the exiles, to the priests, to the prophets, and to all the other people who were exiled in Babylon. ² 

So the royal scribes ¹  were summoned in the first month, on the thirteenth day of the month. Everything Haman commanded was written to the king’s satraps ²  and governors who were in every province and to the officials of every people, province by province according to its script and people by people according to its language. In the name of King Ahasuerus it was written and sealed with the king’s signet ring.

The king’s scribes were quickly ¹  summoned – in the third month (that is, the month of Sivan), on the twenty-third day. ²  They wrote out ³  everything that Mordecai instructed to the Jews and to the satraps and the governors and the officials of the provinces all the way from India to Ethiopia ⁴  – a hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all – to each province in its own script and to each people in their own language, and to the Jews according to their own script and their own language.