“Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: Because you are more arrogant ¹  than the nations around you, ²  you have not followed my statutes and have not carried out my regulations. You have not even ³  carried out the regulations of the nations around you!

saying, “Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, in whom I know there to be a spirit of the holy gods and whom no mystery baffles, consider ¹  my dream that I saw and set forth its interpretation!

When Daniel realized ¹  that a written decree had been issued, he entered his home, where the windows ²  in his upper room opened toward Jerusalem. ³  Three ⁴  times daily he was ⁵  kneeling ⁶  and offering prayers and thanks to his God just as he had been accustomed to do previously.

Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak, ¹  along with the whole remnant of the people, ²  obeyed ³  the Lord their God. They responded favorably to the message of the prophet Haggai, who spoke just as the Lord their God had instructed him, ⁴  and the people began to respect the Lord. ⁵ 

I asked, “What are these going to do?” He answered, “These horns are the ones that have scattered Judah so that there is no one to be seen. ¹  But the blacksmiths have come to terrify Judah’s enemies ²  and cut off the horns of the nations that have thrust themselves against the land of Judah in order to scatter its people.” ³ 

For who dares make light of small beginnings? These seven eyes ¹  will joyfully look on the tin tablet ²  in Zerubbabel’s hand. (These are the eyes of the Lord, which constantly range across the whole earth.)

“The Lord who rules over all also says, ‘Gather strength, you who are listening to these words today from the mouths of the prophets who were there at the founding of the house of the Lord who rules over all, ¹  so that the temple might be built.

You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” Because you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the Lord’s opinion, ¹  and he delights in them,” or “Where is the God of justice?”

and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ ¹  and ‘with their hands they will lift you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” ² 

Then Jesus called the ¹  disciples and said, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have already been here with me three days and they have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away hungry since they may faint on the way.”

But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas ¹  in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force ²  the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

yet we know ¹  that no one ²  is justified by the works of the law ³  but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. ⁴  And ⁵  we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ ⁶  and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one ⁷  will be justified.

Then ¹  another angel came out of the temple, shouting in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use ²  your sickle and start to reap, ³  because the time to reap has come, since the earth’s harvest is ripe!”

The beast you saw was, and is not, but is about to come up from the abyss ¹  and then go to destruction. The ²  inhabitants of the earth – all those whose names have not been written in the book of life since the foundation of the world – will be astounded when they see that ³  the beast was, and is not, but is to come.

As for that prophet or dreamer, ¹  he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge out evil from within. ² 

Indeed, for forty years the Israelites traveled through the desert until all the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt, the ones who had disobeyed the Lord, died off. ¹  For the Lord had sworn a solemn oath to them that he would not let them see the land he had sworn on oath to give them, ²  a land rich in ³  milk and honey.

When the man got ready to leave ¹  with his concubine and his servant, ²  his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look! The day is almost over! ³  Stay another night! Since the day is over, ⁴  stay another night here and have a good time. You can get up early tomorrow and start your trip home.” ⁵ 

“You know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me – how he murdered two commanders of the Israelite armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. ¹  During peacetime he struck them down like he would in battle; ²  when he shed their blood as if in battle, he stained his own belt and the sandals on his feet. ³ 

They replied, ¹  “A man came up to meet us. He told us, “Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, ‘This is what the Lord says: “You must think there is no God in Israel! That explains why you are sending for an oracle from Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. ²  Therefore you will not leave the bed you lie on, for you will certainly die.”’”