King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it. The siege began in the tenth month of the ninth year that Zedekiah ruled over Judah. ¹ 

In the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, ¹  some of the elders ²  of Israel came to seek ³  the Lord, and they sat down in front of me.

Even the calf idol ¹  will be carried to Assyria, as tribute for the great king. ²  Ephraim will be disgraced; Israel will be put to shame because ³  of its wooden idol. ⁴ 

So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for their horses, the livestock of their flocks and herds, and their donkeys. ¹  He got them through that year by giving them food in exchange for livestock.

When that year was over, they came to him the next year and said to him, “We cannot hide from our ¹  lord that the money is used up and the livestock and the animals belong to our lord. Nothing remains before our lord except our bodies and our land.

For I will drive out ¹  the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one will covet ²  your land when you go up ³  to appear before the Lord your God three times ⁴  in the year.

This is to be a perpetual statute for you ¹  to make atonement for the Israelites for ²  all their sins once a year.” ³  So he did just as the Lord had commanded Moses. ⁴ 

Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Temporary Shelters; and they must not appear before him ¹  empty-handed.

When you finish tithing all ¹  your income in the third year (the year of tithing), you must give it to the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows ²  so that they may eat to their satisfaction in your villages. ³ 

They ruthlessly oppressed ¹  the Israelites that eighteenth year ²  – that is, all the Israelites living east of the Jordan in Amorite country in Gilead.

Solomon had twelve district governors appointed throughout Israel who acquired supplies for the king and his palace. Each was responsible for one month in the year.

and Solomon supplied Hiram annually with 20,000 cors ¹  of wheat as provision for his royal court, ²  as well as 20,000 baths ³  of pure ⁴  olive oil. ⁵ 

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites left Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, during the month Ziv ¹  (the second month), he began building the Lord’s temple.

Three times a year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings ¹  on the altar he had built for the Lord, burning incense along with them before the Lord. He made the temple his official worship place. ² 

Some time later, in the third year of the famine, the Lord told Elijah, ¹  “Go, make an appearance before Ahab, so I may send rain on the surface of the ground.”

The king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was planning a revolt. ¹  Hoshea had sent messengers to King So ²  of Egypt and had not sent his annual tribute to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria arrested him and imprisoned him. ³ 

In the fourth year of King Hezekiah’s reign (it was the seventh year of the reign of Israel’s King Hoshea, son of Elah), King Shalmaneser of Assyria marched ¹  up against Samaria ²  and besieged it.

He assembled the priests and Levites and ordered them, “Go out to the cities of Judah and collect the annual quota of silver from all Israel for repairs on the temple of your God. Be quick about it!” But the Levites delayed.

“We – the priests, the Levites, and the people – have cast lots concerning the wood offerings, to bring them to the temple of our God according to our families ¹  at the designated times year by year to burn on the altar of the LORD our God, as is written in the law.

In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah ¹  concerning all the people of Judah. (That was the same as the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon.) ²