Even if they raise their children, I will take away every last one of them. ¹  Woe to them! For I will turn away from them.

Other seed fell among the thorns, ¹  and they grew up and choked it, ²  and it did not produce grain.

He goes to sleep and gets up, night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.

Brothers and sisters, ¹  do not be children in your thinking. Instead, be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

But practicing the truth in love, ¹  we will in all things grow up into Christ, who is the head.

Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. ¹  If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways. ² 

But solid food is for the mature, whose perceptions are trained by practice to discern both good and evil.

So put away all filth and evil excess and humbly ¹  welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls.

“‘If you present a grain offering of first ripe grain to the Lord, you must present your grain offering of first ripe grain as soft kernels roasted in fire – crushed bits of fresh grain. ¹ 

If, as far as the priest can see, the scall has stayed the same ¹  and black hair has sprouted in it, the scall has been healed; the person is clean. So the priest is to pronounce him clean. ² 

The priest is to examine it, ¹  and if ²  the swelling of the infection is reddish white in the back or front bald area like the appearance of a disease on the skin of the body, ³ 

“‘You must not present to the Lord something blind, or with a broken bone, or mutilated, or with a running sore, ¹  or with a festering eruption, or with a feverish rash. ²  You must not give any of these as a gift ³  on the altar to the Lord.

You must not eat bread, roasted grain, or fresh grain until this very day, ¹  until you bring the offering of your God. This is a perpetual statute throughout your generations ²  in all the places where you live.

You must not gather in the aftergrowth of your harvest and you must not pick the grapes of your unpruned ¹  vines; the land must have a year of complete rest.

That fiftieth year will be your jubilee; you must not sow the land, harvest its aftergrowth, or pick the grapes of its unpruned vines. ¹ 

Just as you do not know the path ¹  of the wind, or how the bones form ²  in the womb of a pregnant woman, ³  so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

At that time ¹  the crops given by the Lord will bring admiration and honor; ²  the produce of the land will be a source of pride and delight to those who remain in Israel. ³ 

But you have been thrown out of your grave like a shoot that is thrown away. ¹  You lie among ²  the slain, among those who have been slashed by the sword, among those headed for ³  the stones of the pit, ⁴  as if you were a mangled corpse. ⁵ 

It will be as when one gathers the grain harvest, and his hand gleans the ear of grain. It will be like one gathering the ears of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

The day you begin cultivating, you do what you can to make it grow; ¹  the morning you begin planting, you do what you can to make it sprout. Yet the harvest will disappear ²  in the day of disease and incurable pain.