This is what will happen throughout ¹  the earth, among the nations. It will be like when they beat an olive tree, and just a few olives are left at the end of the harvest. ² 

I, the Lord, protect it; ¹  I water it regularly. ²  I guard it night and day, so no one can harm it. ³ 

Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? ¹  Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? ²  Even if mothers ³  were to forget, I could never forget you! ⁴ 

I have seen their behavior, ¹  but I will heal them and give them rest, and I will once again console those who mourn. ² 

From earliest times our worship of that shameful god, Baal, has taken away ¹  all that our ancestors ²  worked for. It has taken away our flocks and our herds, and even our sons and daughters.

They sow the wind, and so they will reap the whirlwind! The stalk does not have any standing grain; it will not produce any flour. Even if it were to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it all up.

Give them, O Lord – what will you give them? Give them wombs that miscarry, and breasts that cannot nurse! ¹ 

They ¹  have destroyed our ²  vines; ³  they have turned our ⁴  fig trees into mere splinters. They have completely stripped off the bark ⁵  and thrown them aside; the ⁶  twigs are stripped bare. ⁷ 

but ¹  worldly cares, the seductiveness of wealth, ²  and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, ³  and it produces nothing.

Then ¹  he said, ‘I ²  will do this: I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. ¹  For apart from the law, sin is dead.

Also greet the church in their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, ¹  who was the first convert ²  to Christ in the province of Asia. ³ 

revealing ¹  that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, ²  written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets ³  but on tablets of human hearts.

who is the down payment ¹  of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession, ²  to the praise of his glory.

But if someone does not provide for his own, ¹  especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Here is another way that our people ¹  can learn ²  to engage in good works to meet pressing needs and so not be unfruitful.

For if ¹  these things are really yours ²  and are continually increasing, ³  they will keep you from becoming ⁴  ineffective and unproductive in your pursuit of ⁵  knowing our Lord Jesus Christ more intimately. ⁶ 

Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access ¹  to the tree of life and can enter into the city by the gates.

The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, ¹  every tree that was pleasing to look at ²  and good for food. (Now ³  the tree of life ⁴  and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ⁵  were in the middle of the orchard.)

When Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must sleep ¹  with me because I have paid for your services ²  with my son’s mandrakes.” So he had marital relations ³  with her that night.