Be sure of this! The Lord who commands armies has decreed: The nations’ efforts will go up in smoke; their exhausting work will be for nothing. ¹ 

On that day,” says the Lord, “a loud cry will go up ¹  from the Fish Gate, ²  wailing from the city’s newer district, ³  and a loud crash ⁴  from the hills.

Those who live by the sea, the people who came from Crete, ¹  are as good as dead. ²  The Lord has decreed your downfall, ³  Canaan, land of the Philistines: “I will destroy everyone who lives there!” ⁴ 

‘The future splendor of this temple will be greater than that of former times,’ ¹  the Lord who rules over all declares, ‘and in this place I will give peace.’” ² 

I struck all the products of your labor ¹  with blight, disease, and hail, and yet you brought nothing to me,’ ²  says the Lord.

Speak up again with the message of the Lord who rules over all: ‘My cities will once more overflow with prosperity, and once more the Lord will comfort Zion and validate his choice of Jerusalem.’”

“You there! ¹  Flee from the northland!” says the Lord, “for like the four winds of heaven ²  I have scattered you,” says the Lord.

Do not plan evil in your hearts against one another. Do not favor a false oath – these are all things that I hate,’ says the Lord.”

The revelation of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: The Lord – he who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth, who forms the human spirit within a person ¹  – says,

It will happen in all the land, says the Lord, that two-thirds of the people ¹  in it will be cut off and die, but one-third will be left in it. ² 

Then you will know that I sent this commandment to you so that my covenant ¹  may continue to be with Levi,” says the Lord who rules over all.

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, to whom at Horeb ¹  I gave rules and regulations for all Israel to obey. ² 

He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me, ¹  so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment.” ² 

Listen, ¹  I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, ²  but we will all be changed –

If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits ¹  of the world, why do you submit to them as though you lived in the world?

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 

The king’s scribes were quickly ¹  summoned – in the third month (that is, the month of Sivan), on the twenty-third day. ²  They wrote out ³  everything that Mordecai instructed to the Jews and to the satraps and the governors and the officials of the provinces all the way from India to Ethiopia ⁴  – a hundred and twenty-seven provinces in all – to each province in its own script and to each people in their own language, and to the Jews according to their own script and their own language.

So Joseph made it a statute, ¹  which is in effect ²  to this day throughout the land of Egypt: One-fifth belongs to Pharaoh. Only the land of the priests did not become Pharaoh’s.

He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him ¹  a tree. ²  When Moses ³  threw it into the water, the water became safe to drink. There the Lord ⁴  made for them ⁵  a binding ordinance, ⁶  and there he tested ⁷  them.

Every male among the sons of Aaron may eat it. It is a perpetual allotted portion ¹  throughout your generations ²  from the gifts of the Lord. Anyone who touches these gifts ³  must be holy.’” ⁴