When you look up ¹  to the sky ²  and see the sun, moon, and stars – the whole heavenly creation ³  – you must not be seduced to worship and serve them, ⁴  for the Lord your God has assigned ⁵  them to all the people ⁶  of the world. ⁷ 

The two villains arrived and sat opposite him. Then the villains testified against Naboth right before the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king.” So they dragged him ¹  outside the city and stoned him to death. ² 

Then she saw ¹  the king standing by his pillar at the entrance. The officers and trumpeters stood beside the king and all the people of the land were celebrating and blowing trumpets, and the musicians with various instruments were leading the celebration. Athaliah tore her clothes and yelled, “Treason! Treason!” ² 

So his servants took him out of the chariot, put him in another chariot that he owned, and brought him to Jerusalem, ¹  where he died. He was buried in the tombs of his ancestors; ²  all the people of Judah and Jerusalem mourned Josiah.

Let our leaders take steps ¹  on behalf of all the assembly. Let all those in our towns who have married foreign women come at an appointed time, and with them the elders of each town and its judges, until the hot anger of our God is turned away from us in this matter.”

Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a particular people ¹  that is dispersed and spread among the inhabitants ²  throughout all the provinces of your kingdom whose laws differ from those of all other peoples. Furthermore, they do not observe the king’s laws. It is not appropriate for the king to provide a haven for them. ³ 

Everyone shares the same fate ¹  – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, ²  the ceremonially clean and unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. What happens to the good person, also happens to the sinner; ³  what happens to those who make vows, also happens to those who are afraid to make vows.

Foreigners from the most terrifying nations have cut it down and left it to lie there on the mountains. In all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs lie broken in the ravines of the land. All the peoples of the land ¹  have departed ²  from its shade and left it.

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?”