Peninnah ¹  would behave this way year after year. Whenever Hannah ²  went up to the Lord’s house, Peninnah ³  would upset her so that she would weep and refuse to eat.

Will your idle talk ¹  reduce people to silence, ²  and will no one rebuke ³  you when you mock? ⁴ 

and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, ¹  having appointed ²  them to serve as an example ³  to future generations of the ungodly, ⁴ 

By the multitude of your iniquities, through the sinfulness of your trade, you desecrated your sanctuaries. So I drew fire out from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth before the eyes of all who saw you.

Remember that you have made me as with ¹  the clay; will ²  you return me to dust?

My bones stick to my skin and my flesh; ¹  I have escaped ²  alive ³  with only the skin of my teeth.

He has flung me into the mud, and I have come to resemble dust and ashes.

His flesh wastes away from sight, and his bones, which were not seen, are easily visible. ¹ 

Consider the work of God: For who can make straight what he has bent?

The thickets of the forest will be chopped down with an ax, and mighty Lebanon will fall. ¹ 

To whom can you compare and liken me? Tell me whom you think I resemble, so we can be compared!

I will lay waste your cities; and you will become desolate. Then you will know that I am the Lord!

I will turn Mount Seir into a desolate ruin; ¹  I will cut off ²  from it the one who passes through or returns.

and rejected Esau. ¹  I turned Esau’s ²  mountains into a deserted wasteland ³  and gave his territory ⁴  to the wild jackals.”

But at his gate lay ¹  a poor man named Lazarus ²  whose body was covered with sores, ³ 

For I will give you the words ¹  along with the wisdom ²  that none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

I wish I could be with you now and change my tone of voice, ¹  because I am perplexed about you.

“I hereby give orders that if anyone changes this directive a beam is to be pulled out from his house and he is to be raised up and impaled ¹  on it, and his house is to be reduced ²  to a rubbish heap ³  for this indiscretion. ⁴ 

I will turn the land of Egypt into a desolation in the midst of desolate lands; for forty years her cities will lie desolate in the midst of ruined cities. I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them among foreign countries.

I hereby decree ¹  that any people, nation, or language group that blasphemes ²  the god of Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego will be dismembered and his home reduced to rubble! For there exists no other god who can deliver in this way.”