So when the Midianite ¹  merchants passed by, Joseph’s brothers pulled ²  him ³  out of the cistern and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. The Ishmaelites ⁴  then took Joseph to Egypt.

At this very moment he is hiding out in one of the caves or in some other similar place. If it should turn out that he attacks our troops first, ¹  whoever hears about it will say, ‘Absalom’s army has been slaughtered!’

Then ¹  he began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. ²  He put a fence around it, dug a pit for its winepress, and built a watchtower. Then ³  he leased it to tenant farmers ⁴  and went on a journey.

For he has been thrown into a net by his feet ¹  and he wanders into a mesh. ² 

Reuben continued, ¹  “Don’t shed blood! Throw him into this cistern that is here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” ²  (Reuben said this ³  so he could rescue Joseph ⁴  from them ⁵  and take him back to his father.)

They did not ask: ‘Where is the Lord who delivered us out of Egypt, who brought us through the wilderness, through a land of desert sands and rift valleys, through a land of drought and deep darkness, ¹  through a land in which no one travels, and where no one lives?’ ² 

Therefore, as surely as I live,” says the Lord who commands armies, the God of Israel, “be certain that Moab will become like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah. They will be overrun by weeds, ¹  filled with salt pits, ²  and permanently desolate. Those of my people who are left ³  will plunder their belongings; ⁴  those who are left in Judah ⁵  will take possession of their land.”

The beast you saw was, and is not, but is about to come up from the abyss ¹  and then go to destruction. The ²  inhabitants of the earth – all those whose names have not been written in the book of life since the foundation of the world – will be astounded when they see that ³  the beast was, and is not, but is to come.

The angel ¹  then ²  threw him into the abyss and locked ³  and sealed it so that he could not deceive the nations until the one thousand years were finished. (After these things he must be released for a brief period of time.)

You will not abandon me ¹  to Sheol; ²  you will not allow your faithful follower ³  to see ⁴  the Pit. ⁵ 

He sent them an assuring word ¹  and healed them; he rescued them from the pits where they were trapped. ² 

Those who revolt are knee-deep in slaughter, ¹  but I will discipline them all. ² 

He said, “Capture them alive!” So they captured them alive and then executed all forty-two of them in the cistern at Beth Eked. He left no survivors.

They and all that they had went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed over them. So they perished from among the community.

But as soon as they were inside the city, Ishmael son of Nethaniah and the men who were with him slaughtered them and threw their bodies ¹  in a cistern.

Then ¹  he said to them, “Which of you, if you have a son ²  or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?”

A rope is hidden for him ¹  on the ground and a trap for him ²  lies on the path.

The wicked become ¹  a ransom ²  for the righteous, and the faithless ³  are taken ⁴  in the place of the upright.

The waters closed over my head; I thought ¹  I was about to die. ² 

in whom we have redemption, ¹  the forgiveness of sins.