“Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness.

I for my part ¹  will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. ²  You will sow your seed in vain because ³  your enemies will eat it. ⁴ 

In the spring, at the time when kings normally conduct wars, ¹  Joab led the army into battle and devastated the land of the Ammonites. He went and besieged Rabbah, while David stayed in Jerusalem. Joab defeated Rabbah and tore it down.

Then I said to them, “You see the problem that we have: Jerusalem is desolate and its gates are burned. Come on! Let’s rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that this reproach will not continue.”

The destroyer is as good as dead, ¹  you who have not been destroyed! The deceitful one is as good as dead, ²  the one whom others have not deceived! When you are through destroying, you will be destroyed; when you finish ³  deceiving, others will deceive you!

For this is what the Lord says, the one who created the sky – he is the true God, ¹  the one who formed the earth and made it; he established it, he did not create it without order, ²  he formed it to be inhabited – “I am the Lord, I have no peer.

Wail, you people in Heshbon, because Ai in Ammon is destroyed. Cry out in anguish, you people in the villages surrounding ¹  Rabbah. Put on sackcloth and cry out in mourning. Run about covered with gashes. ²  For your god Milcom will go into exile along with his priests and officials. ³ 

ו (Vav) He destroyed his temple ¹  as if it were a vineyard; ²  he destroyed his appointed meeting place. The Lord has made those in Zion forget both the festivals and the Sabbaths. ³  In his fierce anger ⁴  he has spurned ⁵  both king and priest.

Therefore, as surely as I live,” says the Lord who commands armies, the God of Israel, “be certain that Moab will become like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah. They will be overrun by weeds, ¹  filled with salt pits, ²  and permanently desolate. Those of my people who are left ³  will plunder their belongings; ⁴  those who are left in Judah ⁵  will take possession of their land.”

‘You expected a large harvest, but instead ¹  there was little, and when you brought it home it disappeared right away. ²  Why?’ asks the Lord who rules over all. ‘Because my temple remains in ruins, thanks to each of you favoring his own house! ³ 

The Lord’s angel ¹  found Hagar near a spring of water in the desert – the spring that is along the road to Shur. ² 

Jacob’s sons killed them ¹  and looted the city because their sister had been violated. ² 

They captured as plunder ¹  all their wealth, all their little ones, and their wives, including everything in the houses.

We must go ¹  on a three-day journey ²  into the desert and sacrifice ³  to the Lord our God, just as he is telling us.” ⁴ 

Pharaoh will think ¹  regarding the Israelites, ‘They are wandering around confused ²  in the land – the desert has closed in on them.’ ³ 

Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, together with Moses’ ¹  sons and his wife, came to Moses in the desert where he was camping by ²  the mountain of God. ³ 

¹ In the third month after the Israelites went out ²  from the land of Egypt, on the very day, ³  they came to the Desert of Sinai.

I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals ¹  multiply against you.

But the meat of the bull, its skin, and its dung you are to burn up ¹  outside the camp. ²  It is the purification offering. ³ 

Then the priest ¹  must remove its entrails by cutting off its tail feathers, ²  and throw them ³  to the east side of the altar into the place of fatty ashes,