Egypt will be desolate and Edom will be a desolate wilderness, because of the violence they did to the people of Judah, ¹  in whose land they shed innocent blood.

This is what the Lord says: “Because Moab has committed three crimes ¹  – make that four! ²  – I will not revoke my decree of judgment. ³  They burned the bones of Edom’s king into lime. ⁴ 

“I will turn Samaria ¹  into a heap of ruins in an open field – vineyards will be planted there! ²  I will tumble ³  the rubble of her stone walls ⁴  down into the valley, and tear down her fortifications to their foundations. ⁵ 

‘Rather, I will sweep them away in a storm into all the nations they are not familiar with.’ Thus the land had become desolate because of them, with no one crossing through or returning, for they had made the fruitful ¹  land a waste.”

But when he saw many Pharisees ¹  and Sadducees ²  coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You offspring of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

For I tell you the truth, ¹  many prophets and righteous people longed to see ²  what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, ¹  they followed him on foot from the towns. ² 

Then ¹  he said to them, “Watch out and guard yourself from ²  all types of greed, ³  because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

then the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not foresee, and will cut him in two, ¹  and assign him a place with the unfaithful. ² 

Thus they were looking for Jesus, ¹  and saying to one another as they stood in the temple courts, ²  “What do you think? That he won’t come to the feast?”

and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. ¹  So ²  for a whole year Barnabas and Saul ³  met with the church and taught a significant number of people. ⁴  Now it was in Antioch ⁵  that the disciples were first called Christians. ⁶ 

These Jews ¹  were more open-minded ²  than those in Thessalonica, ³  for they eagerly ⁴  received ⁵  the message, examining ⁶  the scriptures carefully every day ⁷  to see if these things were so.

So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity ¹  is like gold or silver or stone, an image ²  made by human ³  skill ⁴  and imagination. ⁵ 

And you see and hear that this Paul has persuaded ¹  and turned away ²  a large crowd, ³  not only in Ephesus ⁴  but in practically all of the province of Asia, ⁵  by saying ⁶  that gods made by hands are not gods at all. ⁷ 

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – and not with clever speech, so that the cross of Christ would not become useless. ¹ 

For though you may have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, because I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

I am saying this for your benefit, not to place a limitation on you, but so that without distraction you may give notable and constant service to the Lord.

among whom ¹  all of us ²  also ³  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ⁴  even as the rest… ⁵ 

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I fill up in my physical body – for the sake of his body, the church – what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.

Let no one who delights in humility and the worship of angels pass judgment on you. That person goes on at great lengths ¹  about what he has supposedly seen, but he is puffed up with empty notions by his fleshly mind. ²