The Lord ¹  took him outside and said, “Gaze into the sky and count the stars – if you are able to count them!” Then he said to him, “So will your descendants be.”

I will indeed bless you, ¹  and I will greatly multiply ²  your descendants ³  so that they will be as countless as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession ⁴  of the strongholds ⁵  of their enemies.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Extend your hand toward the sky ¹  that there may be ²  hail in all the land of Egypt, on people and on animals, ³  and on everything that grows ⁴  in the field in the land of Egypt.”

When Moses extended ¹  his staff toward the sky, the Lord ²  sent thunder ³  and hail, and fire fell to the earth; ⁴  so the Lord caused hail to rain down on the land of Egypt.

Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. ¹ 

But when the signal, a pillar of smoke, began to rise up from the city, the Benjaminites turned around and saw the whole city going up in a cloud of smoke that rose high into the sky. ¹ 

“The time will come when ¹  the skies are shut up tightly and no rain falls because your people ²  sinned against you. When they direct their prayers toward this place, renew their allegiance to you, ³  and turn away from their sin because you punish ⁴  them,

David did not count the males twenty years old and under, for the Lord had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars in the sky.

All the stars in the sky will fade away, ¹  the sky will roll up like a scroll; all its stars will wither, like a leaf withers and falls from a vine or a fig withers and falls from a tree. ² 

So in fact children ¹  were fathered by one man – and this one as good as dead – like the number of stars in the sky and like the innumerable grains of sand ²  on the seashore. ³ 

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel your servants, to whom you swore by yourself and told them, ‘I will multiply your descendants ¹  like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken about ²  I will give to your descendants, ³  and they will inherit it forever.’”

What is going to happen to us? Our brothers have drained away our courage ¹  by describing people who are more numerous ²  and taller than we are, and great cities whose defenses appear to be as high as heaven ³  itself! Moreover, they said they saw ⁴  Anakites ⁵  there.”

The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ¹  will rage ²  against that man; all the curses ³  written in this scroll will fall upon him ⁴  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ⁵ 

Then Absalom happened to come across David’s men. Now as Absalom was riding on his ¹  mule, it ²  went under the branches of a large oak tree. His head got caught in the oak and he was suspended in midair, ³  while the mule he had been riding kept going.

An officer who was the king’s right-hand man ¹  responded to the prophet, ²  “Look, even if the Lord made it rain by opening holes in the sky, could this happen so soon?” ³  Elisha ⁴  said, “Look, you will see it happen with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of the food!” ⁵ 

But the officer replied to the prophet, “Look, even if the Lord made it rain by opening holes in the sky, could this happen so soon?” ¹  Elisha ²  said, “Look, you will see it happen with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of the food!” ³ 

He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky ¹  and worshiped ²  them.

I thought deeply ¹  about the effects of ²  indulging ³  myself ⁴  with wine (all the while ⁵  my mind was guiding me ⁶  with wisdom) ⁷  and the effects of ⁸  behaving foolishly, ⁹  so that I might discover what is profitable for people to do on earth during the few days of their lives.

They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. ¹  These are things they ²  adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, ³  from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people ⁴  will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground. ⁵ 

He stretched out the form ¹  of a hand and grabbed me by a lock of hair on my head. Then a wind ²  lifted me up between the earth and sky and brought me to Jerusalem ³  by means of divine visions, to the door of the inner gate which faces north where the statue ⁴  which provokes to jealousy was located.