They have been informed about you – that you teach all the Jews now living ¹  among the Gentiles to abandon ²  Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children ³  or live ⁴  according to our customs.

because they hinder us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they constantly fill up their measure of sins, ¹  but wrath ²  has come upon them completely. ³ 

For if after they have escaped the filthy things ¹  of the world through the rich knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, ²  they ³  again get entangled in them and succumb to them, ⁴  their last state has become worse for them than their first.

So ¹  I said to him, “My lord, you know the answer.” ²  Then ³  he said to me, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. They ⁴  have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb!

Then ¹  I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: ‘Blessed are the dead, those who die in the Lord from this moment on!’” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so they can rest from their hard work, ²  because their deeds will follow them.” ³ 

Laban replied ¹  to Jacob, “These women ²  are my daughters, these children are my grandchildren, ³  and these flocks are my flocks. All that you see belongs to me. But how can I harm these daughters of mine today ⁴  or the children to whom they have given birth?

then they will tell it to the inhabitants ¹  of this land. They have heard that you, Lord, are among this people, that you, Lord, are seen face to face, ²  that your cloud stands over them, and that you go before them by day in a pillar of cloud and in a pillar of fire by night.

So I am ready to bring disaster ¹  on the dynasty ²  of Jeroboam. I will cut off every last male belonging to Jeroboam in Israel, including even the weak and incapacitated. ³  I will burn up the dynasty of Jeroboam, just as one burns manure until it is completely consumed. ⁴ 

So the God of Israel stirred up ¹  King Pul of Assyria (that is, King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria), ²  and he carried away the Reubenites, Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh and took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan, where they remain to this very day.

Lord, use your power to deliver me from these murderers, ¹  from the murderers of this world! ²  They enjoy prosperity; ³  you overwhelm them with the riches they desire. ⁴  They have many children, and leave their wealth to their offspring. ⁵ 

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 

I said, ¹  “I will weep and mourn ²  for the grasslands on the mountains, ³  I will sing a mournful song for the pastures in the wilderness because they are so scorched no one travels through them. The sound of livestock is no longer heard there. Even the birds in the sky and the wild animals in the fields have fled and are gone.”

Then the Lord said to me, “Those prophets are prophesying lies while claiming my authority! ¹  I did not send them. I did not commission them. ²  I did not speak to them. They are prophesying to these people false visions, worthless predictions, ³  and the delusions of their own mind.

The people to whom they are prophesying will die through war and famine. Their bodies will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem ¹  and there will be no one to bury them. This will happen to the men and their wives, their sons, and their daughters. ²  For I will pour out on them the destruction they deserve.” ³ 

I will do so because these people ¹  have rejected me and have defiled ²  this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors ³  nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. ⁴ 

Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize ¹  how I was crushed by their unfaithful ²  heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves ³  because of the evil they have done and because of all their abominable practices.

Yet some survivors will be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out. They will come out to you, and when you see their behavior and their deeds, you will be consoled about the catastrophe I have brought on Jerusalem – for everything I brought on it.

“Son of man, King Nebuchadrezzar ¹  of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre. ²  Every head was rubbed bald and every shoulder rubbed bare; yet he and his army received no wages from Tyre for the work he carried out against it.

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 false prophets arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. ¹  These false teachers ²  will ³  infiltrate your midst ⁴  with destructive heresies, ⁵  even to the point of ⁶  denying the Master who bought them. As a result, they will bring ⁷  swift destruction on themselves.