ג (Gimel) Judah ¹  has departed into exile under ²  affliction and harsh oppression. ³  She ⁴  lives among the nations; she has found no resting place. All who pursued her overtook her in ⁵  narrow straits. ⁶ 

For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. ¹ 

You, however, are not in ¹  the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him.

For David said, “The Lord God of Israel has given his people rest and has permanently settled in Jerusalem. ¹ 

The king said to Nathan the prophet, “Look! I am living in a palace made from cedar, while the ark of God sits in the middle of a tent.”

Because of this the earth ¹  will quake, ²  and all who live in it will mourn. The whole earth ³  will rise like the River Nile, ⁴  it will surge upward ⁵  and then grow calm, ⁶  like the Nile in Egypt. ⁷ 

When a foreigner resides ¹  with you in your land, you must not oppress him.

Fire resides in his tent; ¹  over his residence burning sulfur is scattered.

Of Benjamin he said: The beloved of the Lord will live safely by him; he protects him all the time, and the Lord ¹  places him on his chest. ² 

At the sound of the approaching horsemen and archers the people of every town will flee. Some of them will hide in the thickets. Others will climb up among the rocks. All the cities will be deserted. No one will remain in them.

“The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹  says, ‘You have seen all the disaster I brought on Jerusalem ²  and all the towns of Judah. Indeed, they now lie in ruins and are deserted. ³ 

“‘As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, surely in the city ¹  of the king who crowned him, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke – in the middle of Babylon he will die!

But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.

He alone possesses immortality and lives in unapproachable light, whom no human has ever seen or is able to see. To him be honor and eternal power! Amen.

And we have come to know and to believe ¹  the love that God has in us. ²  God is love, and the one who resides ³  in love resides in God, and God resides in him.

Therefore, I have said to the Israelites: No person among you is to eat blood, ¹  and no resident foreigner who lives among you is to eat blood. ² 

Israel lives in safety, the fountain of Jacob is quite secure, ¹  in a land of grain and new wine; indeed, its heavens ²  rain down dew. ³ 

The towns of Babylonia have become heaps of ruins. She has become a dry and barren desert. No one lives in those towns any more. No one even passes through them. ¹ 

God understands the way to it, and he alone knows its place.

Strength lodges in its neck, and despair ¹  runs before it.