Let them be ¹  like a snail that melts away as it moves along! ²  Let them be like ³  stillborn babies ⁴  that never see the sun!

Cursed be the man who made my father very glad when he brought him the news that a baby boy had been born to him! ¹ 

Now when he came to the house, Jesus ¹  did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John, ²  and James, and the child’s father and mother.

She named the boy Ichabod, ¹  saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.

The other woman said, “No! My son is alive; your son is dead!” But the first woman replied, “No, your son is dead; my son is alive.” Each presented her case before the king. ¹ 

for before the child knows how to cry out, ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria ¹  will be carried off by the king of Assyria.” ² 

“Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not suffer ¹  for his father’s iniquity?’ When the son does what is just and right, and observes all my statutes and carries them out, he will surely live.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, ¹  she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, that man ¹  must marry ²  the widow and father children ³  for his brother.’ ⁴ 

Indeed, the people of Israel are my dear children. They are the children I take delight in. ¹  For even though I must often rebuke them, I still remember them with fondness. So I am deeply moved with pity for them ²  and will surely have compassion on them. I, the Lord, affirm it! ³ 

“So now the Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, ¹  asks, ‘Why will you do such great harm to yourselves? Why should every man, woman, child, and baby of yours be destroyed from the midst of Judah? Why should you leave yourselves without a remnant?

Then the Lord’s angel said to her, “You are now ¹  pregnant and are about to give birth ²  to a son. You are to name him Ishmael, ³  for the Lord has heard your painful groans. ⁴ 

The priest ¹  is to present it before the Lord and make atonement ²  on her behalf, and she will be clean ³  from her flow of blood. ⁴  This is the law of the one who bears a child, for the male or the female child.

Manoah prayed to the Lord, ¹  “Please, Lord, allow the man sent from God ²  to visit ³  us again, so he can teach ⁴  us how we should raise ⁵  the child who will be born.”

Here is why this will be so: ¹  Before the child knows how to reject evil and choose what is right, the land ²  whose two kings you fear will be desolate. ³ 

As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver and strains and cries out because of her labor pains, so were we because of you, O Lord.

We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. ¹  We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; people to populate the world are not born. ² 

But Abraham said, ‘Child, ¹  remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus likewise bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. ² 

For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, who is my dear and faithful son in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ, ¹  as I teach them everywhere in every church.

Listen, ¹  my child, ²  to the instruction ³  from ⁴  your father, and do not forsake the teaching ⁵  from ⁶  your mother.