Then the one who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Sir, I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed,

speaking of these things in all his letters. ¹  Some things in these letters ²  are hard to understand, things ³  the ignorant and unstable twist ⁴  to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures. ⁵ 

You know that I’ve worked for your father as hard as I could, ¹ 

They will not be ashamed when hard times come; ¹  when famine comes they will have enough to eat. ² 

who turned a rock into a pool of water, a hard rock into springs of water! ¹ 

“You aggressively attacked me ¹  and tried to knock me down, ²  but the Lord helped me.

Give them a distraught heart; ¹  may your curse be on them!

For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry.”

in beatings, in imprisonments, in riots, ¹  in troubles, ²  in sleepless nights, in hunger,

And if the righteous are barely saved, what will become of ¹  the ungodly and sinners? ² 

But the magicians of Egypt did the same ¹  by their secret arts, and so ²  Pharaoh’s heart remained hard, ³  and he refused to listen to Moses and Aaron ⁴  – just as the Lord had predicted.

The men of Israel realized they had a problem because their army was hard pressed. So the army hid in caves, thickets, cliffs, strongholds, ¹  and cisterns.

Who is ¹  a ²  wise person? Who knows the solution ³  to a problem? ⁴  A person’s wisdom brightens his appearance, ⁵  and softens ⁶  his harsh countenance. ⁷ 

The people ¹  to whom I am sending you are obstinate and hard-hearted, ²  and you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says.’ ³ 

Instead, they tried to row ¹  back to land, ²  but they were not able to do so ³  because the storm kept growing worse and worse. ⁴ 

They ¹  tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them.

But Jacob ¹  said to him, “My lord knows that the children are young, ²  and that I have to look after the sheep and cattle that are nursing their young. ³  If they are driven too hard for even a single day, all the animals will die.

Then he appeared to the eleven themselves, while they were eating, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen him resurrected.

When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ¹  ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? You are hurting yourself ²  by kicking against the goads.’ ³ 

When her labor was at its hardest, ¹  the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, for you are having another son.” ²