Year after year visitors brought their gifts, which included items of silver, items of gold, clothes, perfume, spices, horses, and mules. ¹ 

But the king’s edict stood, despite Joab’s objections. ¹  So Joab left and traveled throughout Israel before returning to Jerusalem. ² 

and the pots, shovels, and meat forks. ¹  All the items King Solomon assigned Huram Abi to make for the Lord’s temple ²  were made from polished bronze.

As for this temple, which was once majestic, ¹  everyone who passes by it will be shocked and say, ‘Why did the Lord do this to this land and this temple?’

Year after year visitors brought their gifts, which included items of silver, items of gold, clothes, perfume, spices, horses, and mules. ¹ 

(Wicked Athaliah and her sons had broken into God’s temple and used all the holy items of the Lord’s temple in their worship of the Baals.)

Hezekiah was very wealthy and greatly respected. He made storehouses for his silver, gold, precious stones, spices, and all his other valuable possessions. ¹ 

You cause those who know me to keep their distance; you make me an appalling sight to them. I am trapped and cannot get free. ¹ 

So ¹  I was far wealthier ²  than all my predecessors in Jerusalem, yet I maintained my objectivity: ³ 

Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: ¹  Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty ²  of man.

Look, I and the sons whom the Lord has given me ¹  are reminders and object lessons ²  in Israel, sent from the Lord who commands armies, who lives on Mount Zion.

Later the Lord explained, “In the same way that my servant Isaiah has walked around in undergarments and barefoot for the past three years, as an object lesson and omen pertaining to Egypt and Cush,

(just as many were horrified by the sight of you) ¹  he was so disfigured ²  he no longer looked like a man; ³ 

You must be truthful, honest and upright when you take an oath saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’ ¹  If you do, ²  the nations will pray to be as blessed by him as you are and will make him the object of their boasting.” ³ 

For whenever I prophesy, ¹  I must cry out, ²  “Violence and destruction are coming!” ³  This message from the Lord ⁴  has made me an object of continual insults and derision.

This man, Jeconiah, will be like a broken pot someone threw away. He will be like a clay vessel ¹  that no one wants. ²  Why will he and his children be forced into exile? Why will they be thrown out into a country they know nothing about? ³ 

“Moab has vaunted itself against me. So make him drunk with the wine of my wrath ¹  until he splashes ²  around in his own vomit, until others treat him as a laughingstock.

For a nation from the north ¹  will attack Babylon. It will lay her land waste. People and animals will flee out of it. No one will inhabit it.’

A drought will come upon her land; her rivers and canals will be dried up. ¹  All of this will happen because her land is filled with idols. ²  Her people act like madmen because of ³  those idols they fear. ⁴ 

Say, ‘I am an object lesson for you. Just as I have done, it will be done to them; they will go into exile and captivity.’