Be strong and courageous! Do not fear or tremble before them, for the Lord your God is the one who is going with you. He will not fail you or abandon you!”

The Lord is indeed going before you – he will be with you; he will not fail you or abandon you. Do not be afraid or discouraged!”

He said, “I will reject them, ¹  I will see what will happen to them; for they are a perverse generation, children ²  who show no loyalty.

If ¹  you abandon the Lord and worship ²  foreign gods, he will turn against you; ³  he will bring disaster on you and destroy you, ⁴  though he once treated you well.” ⁵ 

He was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord and said, “You have given your servant ¹  this great victory. But now must I die of thirst and fall into hands of the Philistines?” ² 

But Samuel said, “What have you done?” Saul replied, “When I saw that the army had started to abandon me ¹  and that you didn’t come at the appointed time and that the Philistines had assembled at Micmash,

Saul ¹  again replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel. Go back with me so I may worship the Lord your God.”

“But if you or your sons ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, ¹  and decide to serve and worship other gods, ² 

“But if you people ¹  ever turn away from me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, ²  and decide to serve and worship other gods, ³ 

They abandoned the temple of the Lord God of their ancestors, ¹  and worshiped ²  the Asherah poles and idols. Because of this sinful activity, God was angry with Judah and Jerusalem.

Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend, and do not enter your brother’s house in the day of your disaster; a neighbor nearby is better than a brother far away. ¹ 

Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, come with me from Lebanon. Descend from the crest of Amana, from the top of Senir, the summit of Hermon, from the lions’ dens and the mountain haunts of the leopards.

At that time ¹  men will throw their silver and gold idols, which they made for themselves to worship, ²  into the caves where rodents and bats live, ³ 

The oppressed and the poor look for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched from thirst. I, the Lord, will respond to their prayers; ¹  I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them.

The Lord says, ¹  “As surely as I am the living God, you, Jeconiah, ²  king of Judah, son of Jehoiakim, will not be the earthly representative of my authority. Indeed, I will take that right away from you. ³ 

Just as surely as I have done this, so surely will I never reject the descendants of Jacob. Nor will I ever refuse to choose one of my servant David’s descendants to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Indeed, ¹  I will restore them ²  and show mercy to them.”

Foreigners living there will say, ¹  ‘We tried to heal her, but she could not be healed. Let’s leave Babylonia ²  and each go back to his own country. For judgment on her will be vast in its proportions. It will be like it is piled up to heaven, stacked up into the clouds.’ ³ 

She did not abandon the prostitution she had practiced in Egypt; for in her youth men had sex with her, fondled her virgin breasts, and ravished her. ¹ 

So the twelve ¹  called ²  the whole group ³  of the disciples together and said, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to wait on tables. ⁴ 

They have been informed about you – that you teach all the Jews now living ¹  among the Gentiles to abandon ²  Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children ³  or live ⁴  according to our customs.