and say ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Woe to those who sew bands ¹  on all their wrists ²  and make headbands ³  for heads of every size to entrap people’s lives! ⁴  Will you entrap my people’s lives, yet preserve your own lives?

For when anyone from the house of Israel, or the foreigner who lives in Israel, separates himself from me and erects his idols in his heart and sets the obstacle leading to his iniquity before his face, and then consults a prophet to seek something from me, I the Lord am determined to answer him personally.

and say to the scrub land of the Negev, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: This is what the sovereign Lord says: Look here, ¹  I am about to start a fire in you, ²  and it will devour every green tree and every dry tree in you. The flaming fire will not be extinguished, and the whole surface of the ground from the Negev to the north will be scorched by it.

you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom; ¹  the end of your years has come. ²  Therefore I will make ³  you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands.

I saw it approaching the ram. It went into a fit of rage against the ram ¹  and struck it ²  and broke off its two horns. The ram had no ability to resist it. ³  The goat hurled the ram ⁴  to the ground and trampled it. No one could deliver the ram from its power. ⁵ 

How can I give you up, ¹  O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart! ²  All my tender compassions are aroused! ³ 

No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. ¹  What did our ancestor ²  do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. ³ 

If ¹  your hand or your foot causes you to sin, ²  cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have ³  two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

When ¹  they had entered Jerusalem, ²  they went to the upstairs room where they were staying. Peter ³  and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James were there. ⁴ 

keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. ¹ 

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us insight to know ¹  him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one ²  is the true God and eternal life.

So ¹  I threw myself down ²  at his feet to worship him, but ³  he said, “Do not do this! ⁴  I am only ⁵  a fellow servant ⁶  with you and your brothers ⁷  who hold to the testimony about ⁸  Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. Then ¹  books were opened, and another book was opened – the book of life. ²  So ³  the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds. ⁴ 

May the Lord punish him for the blood he shed; ¹  behind my father David’s back he struck down and murdered with the sword two men who were more innocent and morally upright than he ²  – Abner son of Ner, commander of Israel’s army, and Amasa son of Jether, commander of Judah’s army.

Instead we will do everything we vowed we would do. ¹  We will sacrifice and pour out drink offerings to the goddess called the Queen of Heaven ²  just as we and our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders previously did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and had no troubles. ³