Our ancestors ¹  ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” ² 

who said by the Holy Spirit through ¹  your servant David our forefather, ²  ‘Why do the nations ³  rage, ⁴  and the peoples plot foolish ⁵  things?

“After ¹  forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the desert ²  of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. ³ 

This man led them out, performing wonders and miraculous signs ¹  in the land of Egypt, ²  at ³  the Red Sea, and in the wilderness ⁴  for forty years.

But Saul was trying to destroy ¹  the church; entering one house after another, he dragged off ²  both men and women and put them in prison. ³ 

Then you’re not that Egyptian who started a rebellion ¹  and led the four thousand men of the ‘Assassins’ ²  into the wilderness ³  some time ago?” ⁴ 

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous before God, but those who do the law will be declared righteous. ¹ 

“Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left and they are seeking my life!” ¹ 

Let us live decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in discord and jealousy.

And I say this, brothers and sisters: ¹  The time is short. So then those who have wives should be as those who have none,

nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. ¹  Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan ²  that operates by faith.

And against whom was God ¹  provoked for forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness? ² 

(the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth.

Then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse ¹  and will say ²  to the her, “The Lord make you an attested curse ³  among your people, ⁴  if the Lord makes ⁵  your thigh fall away ⁶  and your abdomen swell; ⁷ 

When he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness – her abdomen will swell, her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people.

For ¹  in the wilderness of Zin when the community rebelled against me, you ²  rebelled against my command ³  to show me as holy ⁴  before their eyes over the water – the water of Meribah in Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin.”

Saul and his men went to look for him. ¹  But David was informed and went down to the rock and stayed in the desert of Maon. When Saul heard about it, he pursued David in the desert of Maon.

‘You displayed a sensitive spirit ¹  and humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard how I intended to make this place and its residents into an appalling example of an accursed people. ²  You tore your clothes and wept before me, and I have heard you,’ says the Lord.

For the fields of Heshbon are dried up, as well as the vines of Sibmah. The rulers of the nations trample all over its vines, which reach Jazer and spread to the desert; their shoots spread out and cross the sea.

So like a lion from the thicket their enemies will kill them. Like a wolf from the desert they will destroy them. Like a leopard they will lie in wait outside their cities and totally destroy anyone who ventures out. ¹  For they have rebelled so much and done so many unfaithful things. ²