for the Lord determined to make them obstinate so they would attack Israel. He wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy, as he had instructed Moses. ¹ 

Israel sent messengers to King Sihon, the Amorite king who ruled in Heshbon, and said to him, “Please allow us to pass through your land to our land.” ¹ 

The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. ¹  For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king.

I thought, ¹  ‘Now the Philistines will come down on me at Gilgal and I have not sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I felt obligated ²  to offer the burnt offering.”

Then Absalom sent a message to Joab asking him to send him to the king, but Joab was not willing to come to him. So he sent a second message to him, but he still was not willing to come.

Elijah ¹  replied, “That’s a difficult request! ²  If you see me taken from you, may it be so, but if you don’t, it will not happen.”

So Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord and did not obey the Lord’s instructions; he even tried to conjure up underworld spirits. ¹ 

He appointed some of the Levites to serve before the ark of the Lord, to offer prayers, songs of thanks, and hymns to the Lord God of Israel.

Sanballat and Geshem sent word to me saying, “Come on! Let’s set up a time to meet together at Kephirim ¹  in the plain of Ono.” Now they intended to do me harm.

Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Before our very eyes may the shed blood of your servants be avenged among the nations! ¹ 

I also know that whatever God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken away from it. God has made it this way, so that men will fear him.

I heard the voice of the sovereign master say, “Whom will I send? Who will go on our behalf?” ¹  I answered, “Here I am, send me!”

¹ They will say to you, “Seek oracles at the pits used to conjure up underworld spirits, from the magicians who chirp and mutter incantations. ²  Should people not seek oracles from their gods, by asking the dead about the destiny of the living?” ³ 

Your mind will recall the terror you experienced, ¹  and you will ask yourselves, ²  “Where is the scribe? Where is the one who weighs the money? Where is the one who counts the towers?” ³ 

“I made myself available to those who did not ask for me; ¹  I appeared to those who did not look for me. ²  I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ to a nation that did not invoke ³  my name.

“I made the earth and the people and animals on it by my mighty power and great strength, ¹  and I give it to whomever I see fit. ² 

All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. ¹  He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. ²  They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation. ³ 

“‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty ¹  became his.

Then say, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: O city, who spills blood within herself (which brings on her doom), ¹  and who makes herself idols (which results in impurity),

I approached one of those standing nearby and asked him about the meaning ¹  of all this. So he spoke with me and revealed ²  to me the interpretation of the vision: ³