All of them intend ¹  to do violence; every face is determined. ²  They take prisoners as easily as one scoops up sand. ³ 

Your creditors will suddenly attack; ¹  those who terrify you will spring into action, ²  and they will rob you. ³ 

Her princes ¹  are as fierce as roaring lions; ²  her rulers ³  are as hungry as wolves in the desert, ⁴  who completely devour their prey by morning. ⁵ 

Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ ¹  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

If ¹  you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ ²  you would not have condemned the innocent.

For unclean spirits, ¹  crying with loud shrieks, were coming out of many who were possessed, ²  and many paralyzed and lame people were healed.

Remember those in prison as though you were in prison with them, ¹  and those ill-treated as though you too felt their torment. ² 

For the bodies of those animals whose blood the high priest brings ¹  into the sanctuary as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp.

“Then I wanted to know the meaning ¹  of the fourth beast, which was different from all the others. It was very dreadful, with two rows of iron teeth and bronze claws, and it devoured, crushed, and trampled anything that was left with its feet.

Then, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not stay on the crosses on the Sabbath ¹  (for that Sabbath was an especially important one), ²  the Jewish leaders ³  asked Pilate to have the victims’ legs ⁴  broken ⁵  and the bodies taken down. ⁶ 

But God turned away from them and gave them over ¹  to worship the host ²  of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘It was not to me that you offered slain animals and sacrifices ³  forty years in the wilderness, was it, ⁴  house of Israel?

Why has the Lord brought us into this land only to be killed by the sword, that our wives and our children should become plunder? Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?”

Indeed, the people will rise up like a lioness, and like a lion raises himself up; they will not lie down until they eat their ¹  prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” ² 

They killed the kings of Midian in addition to those slain – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – five Midianite kings. ¹  They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. ² 

and the avenger of blood finds him outside the borders of the town of refuge, and the avenger of blood kills the slayer, he will not be guilty of blood,

Also, your infants, who you thought would die on the way, ¹  and your children, who as yet do not know good from bad, ²  will go there; I will give them the land and they will possess it.

They lamented and wept and fasted until evening because Saul, his son Jonathan, the Lord’s people, and the house of Israel had fallen by the sword.

I will abandon this last remaining tribe among my people ¹  and hand them over to their enemies; they will be plundered and robbed by all their enemies, ² 

Furthermore Manasseh killed so many innocent people, he stained Jerusalem with their blood from end to end, ¹  in addition to encouraging Judah to sin by doing evil in the sight of the Lord. ² 

He lies in ambush in a hidden place, like a lion in a thicket; ¹  he lies in ambush, waiting to catch ²  the oppressed; he catches the oppressed ³  by pulling in his net. ⁴