Look! I am rousing them from that place to which you sold them. I will repay you for what you have done! ¹ 

Nineveh ¹  is taken into exile ²  and is led away; ³  her slave girls moan ⁴  like doves ⁵  while they beat ⁶  their breasts. ⁷ 

Even on my servants, ¹  both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. ² 

But God spoke as follows: ‘Your ¹  descendants will be foreigners ²  in a foreign country, whose citizens will enslave them and mistreat them for four hundred years. ³ 

When the angel who had spoken to him departed, Cornelius ¹  called two of his personal servants ²  and a devout soldier from among those who served him, ³ 

She followed behind Paul and us and kept crying out, ¹  “These men are servants ²  of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way ³  of salvation.” ⁴ 

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, ¹  but you received the Spirit of adoption, ²  by whom ³  we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; ¹  only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, ²  but through love serve one another. ³ 

You shall rejoice before him ¹  – you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites in your villages, ²  the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows among you – in the place where the Lord chooses to locate his name.

“The Lord has richly blessed my master and he has become very wealthy. ¹  The Lord ²  has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys.

I have oxen, donkeys, sheep, and male and female servants. I have sent ¹  this message ²  to inform my lord, so that I may find favor in your sight.’”

When he sees ¹  a good resting place, and the pleasant land, he will bend his shoulder to the burden and become a slave laborer. ² 

So they put foremen ¹  over the Israelites ²  to oppress ³  them with hard labor. As a result ⁴  they built Pithom and Rameses ⁵  as store cities for Pharaoh.

They made their lives bitter ¹  by ²  hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service ³  in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous. ⁴ 

¹ In those days, ²  when ³  Moses had grown up, he went out to his people ⁴  and observed ⁵  their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking ⁶  a Hebrew man, one of his own people. ⁷ 

Isn’t this what we told you ¹  in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, ²  because it is better for us to serve ³  the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’” ⁴ 

For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, in order that your ox and your donkey may rest and that your female servant’s son and any hired help ¹  may refresh themselves. ² 

Also you may buy slaves ¹  from the children of the foreigners who reside with you, and from their families that are ²  with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property.

Why has the Lord brought us into this land only to be killed by the sword, that our wives and our children should become plunder? Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?”