The Lover to His Beloved: You are a locked garden, ¹  my sister, my bride; you are an enclosed spring, a sealed-up fountain.

Now the young woman was very beautiful. She was a virgin; no man had ever had sexual relations with her. ¹  She went down to the spring, filled her jug, and came back up.

When I came to the spring today, I prayed, ‘O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you have decided to make my journey successful, ¹  may events unfold as follows: ² 

Here I am, standing by the spring. ¹  When ²  the young woman goes out to draw water, I’ll say, “Give me a little water to drink from your jug.”

“Before I finished praying in my heart, ¹  along came Rebekah ²  with her water jug on her shoulder! She went down to the spring and drew water. So I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’

then he promises, ¹  “I will send rain for your land ²  in its season, the autumn and the spring rains, ³  so that you may gather in your grain, new wine, and olive oil.

It then went from the top of the hill to the spring of the waters of Nephtoah, extended to the cities of Mount Ephron, and went to Baalah (that is, Kiriath Jearim).

Deborah said to Barak, “Spring into action, ¹  for this is the day the Lord is handing Sisera over to you! ²  Has the Lord not taken the lead?” ³  Barak quickly went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him.

Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and his men ¹  got up the next morning and camped near the spring of Harod. ²  The Midianites ³  were camped north of them near the hill of Moreh in the valley.

In the spring of the year, at the time when kings ¹  normally conduct wars, ²  David sent out Joab with his officers ³  and the entire Israelite army. ⁴  They defeated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. ⁵ 

The prophet ¹  visited the king of Israel and instructed him, “Go, fortify your defenses. ²  Determine ³  what you must do, for in the spring ⁴  the king of Syria will attack ⁵  you.”

He went out to the spring and threw the salt in. Then he said, “This is what the Lord says, ‘I have purified ¹  this water. It will no longer cause death or fail to produce crops.” ² 

“Because of the violence done to the oppressed, ¹  because of the painful cries ²  of the needy, I will spring into action,” ³  says the Lord. “I will provide the safety they so desperately desire.” ⁴ 

The Lord will continually lead you; he will feed you even in parched regions. ¹  He will give you renewed strength, ²  and you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring that continually produces water.

That is why the rains have been withheld, and the spring rains have not come. Yet in spite of this you are obstinate as a prostitute. ¹  You refuse to be ashamed of what you have done.

Does a bird swoop down into a trap on the ground if there is no bait? Does a trap spring up from the ground unless it has surely caught something?

Ask the Lord for rain in the season of the late spring rains ¹  – the Lord who causes thunderstorms – and he will give everyone showers of rain and green growth in the field.

When he saw the bracelets on his sister’s wrists and the nose ring ¹  and heard his sister Rebekah say, ²  “This is what the man said to me,” he went out to meet the man. There he was, standing ³  by the camels near the spring.

So God split open the basin ¹  at Lehi and water flowed out from it. When he took a drink, his strength ²  was restored and he revived. For this reason he named the spring ³  En Hakkore. ⁴  It remains in Lehi to this very day.

They tore down the cities and each man threw a stone into every cultivated field until they were covered. ¹  They stopped up every spring and chopped down every productive tree. Only Kir Hareseth was left intact, ²  but the slingers surrounded it and attacked it.