Simeon and Levi are brothers, weapons of violence are their knives! ¹ 

Remember your covenant promises, ¹  for the dark regions of the earth are full of places where violence rules. ² 

Your destruction is like an incurable wound; ¹  your demise is like a fatal injury! ²  All who hear what has happened to you ³  will clap their hands for joy, ⁴  for no one ever escaped your endless cruelty! ⁵ 

Arrogance is their necklace, ¹  and violence their clothing. ² 

They are frightening and terrifying; they decide for themselves what is right. ¹ 

Asa was so angry at the prophet, he put him in jail. ¹  Asa also oppressed some of the people at that time.

Do not turn me over to my enemies, ¹  for false witnesses who want to destroy me testify against me. ² 

You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost, but with force and harshness ¹  you have ruled over them.

Wrath is cruel and anger is overwhelming, ¹  but who can stand before jealousy? ² 

Israel said, “Why did you bring this trouble ¹  on me by telling ²  the man you had one more brother?”

The Lord humiliated ¹  Judah because of King Ahaz of Israel, ²  for he encouraged Judah to sin and was very ³  unfaithful to the Lord.

For their oppressive yoke and the club that strikes their shoulders, the cudgel the oppressor uses on them, ¹  you have shattered, as in the day of Midian’s defeat. ² 

They devoured ¹  on the right, but were still hungry, they ate on the left, but were not satisfied. People even ate ²  the flesh of their own arm! ³ 

Look, the Lord’s day of judgment ¹  is coming; it is a day of cruelty and savage, raging anger, ²  destroying ³  the earth ⁴  and annihilating its sinners.

But Saul was trying to destroy ¹  the church; entering one house after another, he dragged off ²  both men and women and put them in prison. ³ 

For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

He did this so the violent deaths of Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons might be avenged and Abimelech, their half-brother ¹  who murdered them, might have to pay for their spilled blood, along with the leaders of Shechem who helped him murder them. ² 

Please let the Moabite fugitives live ¹  among you. Hide them ²  from the destroyer!” Certainly ³  the one who applies pressure will cease, ⁴  the destroyer will come to an end, those who trample will disappear ⁵  from the earth.

If the God of my father – the God of Abraham, the one whom Isaac fears ¹  – had not been with me, you would certainly have sent me away empty-handed! But God saw how I was oppressed and how hard I worked, ²  and he rebuked you last night.”