Yes, as your judgments unfold, ¹  O Lord, we wait for you. We desire your fame and reputation to grow. ² 

We have not built any houses to live in. We do not own any vineyards, fields, or crops.

We have lived in tents. We have obeyed our ancestor Jonadab and done exactly as he commanded us. ¹ 

Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

We must pay money ¹  for our own water; ²  we must buy our own wood at a steep price. ³ 

O LORD, we have been humiliated ¹  – our kings, our leaders, and our ancestors – because we have sinned against you.

If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation, ¹  and if we stay here we’ll die! So come on, let’s defect ²  to the Syrian camp! If they spare us, ³  we’ll live; if they kill us – well, we were going to die anyway.” ⁴ 

Judah replied, “What can we say ¹  to my lord? What can we speak? How can we clear ourselves? ²  God has exposed the sin of your servants! ³  We are now my lord’s slaves, we and the one in whose possession the cup was found.”

Please let us pass through ¹  your country. We will not pass through the fields or through the vineyards, nor will we drink water from any well. We will go by the King’s Highway; ²  we will not turn to the right or the left until we have passed through your region.’” ³ 

Then we will give ¹  you our daughters to marry, ²  and we will take your daughters as wives for ourselves, and we will live among you and become one people.

Then Judah said to his father Israel, “Send the boy with me and we will go immediately. ¹  Then we will live ²  and not die – we and you and our little ones.

Look, the money that we found in the mouths of our sacks we brought back to you from the land of Canaan. Why then would we steal silver or gold from your master’s house?

Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our sheep and our cattle we will go, because we are to hold ¹  a pilgrim feast for the Lord.”

And early ¹  in the morning they went up to the crest of the hill country, ²  saying, “Here we are, and we will go up to the place that the Lord commanded, ³  for we have sinned.” ⁴ 

We swear we have done this because we were worried that ¹  in the future your descendants would say to our descendants, ‘What relationship do you have with the Lord God of Israel? ² 

They said to him, “We promise! ¹  We will only take you prisoner and hand you over to them. We promise not to kill you.” They tied him up with two brand new ropes and led him up from the cliff.

But David’s men said to him, “We are afraid while we are still here in Judah! What will it be like if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?”

So the palace supervisor, ¹  the city commissioner, ²  the leaders, ³  and the guardians sent this message to Jehu, “We are your subjects! ⁴  Whatever you say, we will do. We will not make anyone king. Do what you consider proper.” ⁵ 

For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion. They will wail, ¹  ‘We are utterly ruined! ²  We are completely disgraced! For our houses have been torn down and we must leave our land.’” ³ 

You must not say, ‘No, we will not stay. Instead we will go and live in the land of Egypt where we will not face war, ¹  or hear the enemy’s trumpet calls, ²  or starve for lack of food.’ ³