The elders of Gebal ¹  and her skilled men were within you, mending cracks; ²  all the ships of the sea and their mariners were within you to trade for your merchandise. ³ 

Listen to this, you elders; ¹  pay attention, ²  all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your whole life ³  or in the lifetime ⁴  of your ancestors? ⁵ 

Announce a holy fast; ¹  proclaim a sacred assembly. Gather the elders and ²  all the inhabitants of the land to the temple of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

Gather the people; sanctify an assembly! Gather the elders; gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out from his bedroom and the bride from her private quarters. ¹ 

“Go and bring together ¹  the elders of Israel and tell them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, ²  appeared ³  to me – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – saying, “I have attended carefully ⁴  to you and to what has been done ⁵  to you in Egypt,

I will be standing ¹  before you there on ²  the rock in Horeb, and you will strike ³  the rock, and water will come out of it so that the people may drink.” ⁴  And Moses did so in plain view ⁵  of the elders of Israel.

And the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to them, and he took some of the Spirit that was on Moses ¹  and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, ²  they prophesied, ³  but did not do so again. ⁴ 

So the Moabites said to the elders of Midian, “Now this mass of people ¹  will lick up everything around us, as the bull devours the grass of the field. Now Balak son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at this time.

Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out ¹  before the city’s elders.

But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ¹  must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!”

then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. ¹  She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” ² 

All the people who were at the gate and the elders replied, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built up the house of Israel! May ¹  you prosper ²  in Ephrathah and become famous ³  in Bethlehem. ⁴ 

When the army ¹  came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by ²  the Philistines? Let’s take with us the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh. When it is with us, it will save us ³  from the hand of our enemies.

Then King David sent a message to Zadok and Abiathar the priests saying, “Tell the elders of Judah, ‘Why should you delay any further in bringing the king back to his palace, ¹  when everything Israel is saying has come to the king’s attention. ² 

¹ Then Solomon convened in Jerusalem ²  Israel’s elders, all the leaders of the Israelite tribes and families, so they could witness the transferal of the ark of the Lord’s covenant from the city of David (that is, Zion). ³ 

Then Solomon convened Israel’s elders – all the leaders of the Israelite tribes and families – in Jerusalem, ¹  so they could witness the transferal of the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the City of David ²  (that is, Zion). ³ 

“I also hereby issue orders as to what you are to do with those elders of the Jews in order to rebuild this temple of God. From the royal treasury, from the taxes of Trans-Euphrates the complete costs are to be given to these men, so that there may be no interruption of the work. ¹ 

The elders of the Jews continued building and prospering, while at the same time ¹  Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo continued prophesying. They built and brought it to completion by the command of the God of Israel and by the command of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia.

Let our leaders take steps ¹  on behalf of all the assembly. Let all those in our towns who have married foreign women come at an appointed time, and with them the elders of each town and its judges, until the hot anger of our God is turned away from us in this matter.”

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from Jerusalem ¹  to Babylon. It was addressed to the elders who were left among the exiles, to the priests, to the prophets, and to all the other people who were exiled in Babylon. ²