A relative ¹  offended ²  is harder to reach than ³  a strong city, and disputes are like the barred gates ⁴  of a fortified citadel. ⁵ 

Receiving such orders, he threw them in the inner cell ¹  and fastened their feet in the stocks. ² 

I appeal to Euodia and to Syntyche to agree in the Lord.

A blacksmith works with his tool ¹  and forges metal over the coals. He forms it ²  with hammers; he makes it with his strong arm. He gets hungry and loses his energy; ³  he drinks no water and gets tired.

For his hands and feet had often been bound with chains and shackles, ¹  but ²  he had torn the chains apart and broken the shackles in pieces. No one was strong enough to subdue him.

Suppose he goes with someone else ¹  to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax ²  to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose ³  from the handle and strikes ⁴  his fellow worker ⁵  so hard that he dies. The person responsible ⁶  may then flee to one of these cities to save himself. ⁷ 

You must build the altar of the Lord your God with whole stones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God.

The Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him in bronze chains. He became a grinder in the prison.

A blacksmith could not be found in all the land of Israel, for the Philistines had said, “This will prevent the Hebrews from making swords and spears.”

They charged ¹  two-thirds of a shekel ²  to sharpen plowshares and cutting instruments, and a third of a shekel ³  to sharpen picks and axes, and to set ox goads.

The king ¹  ruined Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that no one could pass his son or his daughter through the fire to Molech. ² 

Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch. ¹  The king of Babylon ²  then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

“Look, I am making you like ¹  a sharp threshing sledge, new and double-edged. ²  You will thresh the mountains and crush them; you will make the hills like straw. ³ 

Shake off the dirt! ¹  Get up, captive ²  Jerusalem! Take off the iron chains around your neck, O captive daughter Zion!

Look, I create the craftsman, who fans the coals into a fire and forges a weapon. ¹  I create the destroyer so he might devastate.

The prophets prophesy lies. The priests exercise power by their own authority. ¹  And my people love to have it this way. But they will not be able to help you when the time of judgment comes! ² 

They say, ¹  ‘The time is not near to build houses; ²  the city ³  is a cooking pot ⁴  and we are the meat in it.’

This city will not be a cooking pot for you, and you will not ¹  be meat within it; I will judge you at the border of Israel.

As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, with a powerful hand and an outstretched arm, ¹  and with an outpouring of rage, I will be king over you.

He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and tear down your towers with his weapons. ¹