If you do not release ¹  my people, then I am going to send ²  swarms of flies ³  on you and on your servants and on your people and in your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground they stand on. ⁴ 

They captured as plunder ¹  all their wealth, all their little ones, and their wives, including everything in the houses.

He tore down the quarters ¹  of the male cultic prostitutes in the Lord’s temple, where women were weaving shrines ²  for Asherah.

David constructed buildings in the City of David; he then prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it.

There were others who said, “We are putting up our fields, our vineyards, and our houses as collateral in order to obtain grain during the famine.”

Mourn ¹  over the land of my people, which is overgrown with thorns and briers, and over all the once-happy houses ²  in the city filled with revelry. ³ 

houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill,

I replied, “How long, sovereign master?” He said, “Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated, and houses are uninhabited, and the land is ruined and devastated,

“As for the sons of Merari, you are to number them by their families and by their clans.

Those numbered from the families of the Merarites, by their families, by their clans,

Jeuz, Sakia, and Mirmah. These were his sons; they were family leaders.

rock badgers ¹  are creatures with little power, but they make their homes in the crags;

After twenty years, during which Solomon built the Lord’s temple and the royal palace, ¹ 

Their relatives, listed in their genealogical records, numbered 956. All these men were leaders of their families. ¹ 

I know ¹  what to do so that when I am put out of management, people will welcome me into their homes.’ ² 

The Lord did so; a ¹  thick ²  swarm of flies came into ³  Pharaoh’s house and into the houses ⁴  of his servants, and throughout the whole land of Egypt the land was ruined ⁵  because of the swarms of flies.

For seven days ¹  yeast must not be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is made with yeast – that person ²  will be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a foreigner ³  or one born in the land.

The houses of villages, however, ¹  which have no wall surrounding them ²  must be considered as the field ³  of the land; they will have the right of redemption and must revert in the jubilee.

When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he ¹  is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

The Lord comes to pronounce judgment on the leaders of his people and their officials. He says, ¹  “It is you ²  who have ruined ³  the vineyard! ⁴  You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor. ⁵